Decision Making & Negotiations

This paper addresses the simultaneous determination of pricing and inventory replenishment strategies in the face of demand uncertainty. More specifically, we analyze the following single item, periodic review model. Demands in consecutive periods are independent, but their distributions depend on the item's price in accordance with general stochastic demand functions. The price charged in any given period can be specified dynamically as a function of the state of the system. A replenishment order may be placed at the beginning of some or all of the periods. Stockouts are fully backlogged.

This paper describes a family of discrete-review policies for scheduling open multiclass queueing networks. Each of the policies in the family is derived from what we call a dynamic reward function: such a function associates with each queue length vector q and each job class k a positive value rk(q), which is treated as a reward rate for time devoted to processing class k jobs. Assuming that each station has a traffic intensity parameter less than one, all policies in the family considered are shown to be stable.

This article analyzes how Knowledge Management (KM) is likely to affect competition in the management consulting industry. KM represents a fundamental and qualitative change in this industry's basic production technology. Because management consultants acquire information directly from their customers, for these firms, KM technology exhibits increasing returns to scale. As such, although KM clearly represents an opportunity for some consultants to build a sustainable competitive advantage, it is likely to lead to a shake-out.

For most firms, successful new product introductions are rare, and failed products represent substantial monetary loss, particularly at the market launch stage. Unfortunately, the ability to reliably predict successes/failures early in the new product development process remains an elusive goal.

We analyze forms of synergy between emic and etic approaches to research on culture and cognition. Drawing on the justice judgment literature, we describe dynamics through which the two approaches stimulate each other's progress. Moreover, we delineate ways in which integrative emic/etic frameworks overcome limitations of narrower frameworks in modeling culture and cognition. Finally, we identify advantages of integrative frameworks in guiding responses to the diverse justice sensitivities in international organizations.

Generalized knowledge comes from cumulating results across studies, a process known as meta-analysis. Efficiently increasing generalized knowledge in a defined area-estimates of price or advertising, for example-is one important goal for research. Because (1) most meta-analyses are based on highly inefficient and unbalanced natural experiments or designs and (2) additional studies are costly, carefully selecting the next study is important.

We study the Mt/G/∞ queue where customers arrive according to a sinusoidal function λt = λ + A sin(2 π t/T) and the service rate is μ. We show that the expected number of customers in the system during peak congestion can be closely approximated by (λ + A)/ μ for service distributions with coefficient of variation between 0 and 1.

This paper describes novel market-based technologies for systematic, quantifiable and predictable protection of information systems against attacks. MarketNet establishes a financial market to regulate and protect access resource access and to account for their use. A domain offers access to its resources to cIients who can pay with its currency. It controls its exposure to attacks by pricing critical resources high and by limiting the currency available to potential attackers.

It has been suggested that evaluations may be based on a "How-do-I-feel-about-it?" heuristic, which involves holding a representation of the target in mind and inspect feelings that this representation may elicit. Previous studies have shown that reliance on such feelings depends on whether they are believed to be representative of the target. This paper argues that it also depends on whether feelings toward the target are regarded as relevant.