Editorial

Citation

Moutinho, L. (2006), "Editorial", Journal of Modelling in Management, Vol. 1 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jm2.2006.29701baa.001

Editorial

Following a constructive learning curve, and always attempting to improve the quality of academic and administrative processes, here it is the second issue of the Journal of Modelling in Management (JM2). The pattern of submissions with regard to research topics, modelling approaches and research contexts has been enriching and challenging.

Success of a television game show requires brand-building effort and brand value management like any other product. However, aspects of information, entertainment, novelty, instant gratification, and experience dimensions are more salient in game shows. This has been amply proven by the television game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The purpose of the first paper of this issue is to explore why some entertainment products succeed, while others fail.

In this paper, Mukherjee and Roy present the system dynamic model of brand management of the game show Kaun Benga Crorepati (KBC), the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Initially, they present the reference mode behaviour, drawn from published data. In the dynamic model, they include factors such as channel popularity, host popularity, prize money, and competition that work towards building the viewership and influencing operational revenues. Computer-based simulation and experimentalism are then applied as a research method to the model to explore its dynamic behaviour. Their analysis shows that the right mix of host popularity, channel popularity and prize money has enabled KBC to achieve unprecedented success.

The validated model is used to draw what-if scenarios, some of which resemble the experiences of competing game shows. Understanding the dynamics of brand management of this game show can serve as an important tool for brand management or entertainment products. Further, the use of system dynamics for dynamic modelling of brand value has application in broader areas of marketing, and would be of interest to a wide managerial audience.

The numbers of collaborative initiatives are increasing, mostly motivated by the desire for improving competitive advantage for participants. The emergence of collaborative networks has received considerable attention both by academics and practitioners. However, there are many unanswered questions regarding the dynamics of collaboration. One of the problems is that an understanding of measurement in the success of a collaborative network is lacking. Therefore, the objective behind the paper by Parung and Bititci is to provide an insight into the indicators that could be used to define success in a collaborative network by measuring:

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  partners' contribution;

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  health of the relationship between partners; and

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  partners' outcome.

This paper contributes to the body of knowledge, by developing a methodology for measuring partners' activities in the collaborative network as a system within IDFEFO functional modelling.

In his paper, Gomes, studies the behaviour of a worker within an organization. There are two groups inside the firm that develop their work in different ways (sharing different codes) The worker will choose to converge to one of those groups, through an investment in learning the correspondent languages and skills. The convergence process is analyzed under an optimality setup. The framework allows to determine steady state points for both investment alternatives; it is not optimal to converge to a full identification with one group, given that the worker benefits from the proximity to both groups, and therefore, the steady state if found to be an intermediate point somewhere in between the groups' locations. On a second stage, the choice among investment alternatives is addressed. Under a discrete choice setup, where adaptation and entropy are considered, one observes that the least likely investment process might be chosen (there is a positive probability associated with such an option).

In this study, HSU develops a new model for selecting public relations (PR) firms based on high-tech industry perceptions. The proposed model comprises two parts. The first part employs the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for criteria weighting. The second part applies the Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) to rank alternatives and select the optimum PR firm in the high-tech industry. The analytical results indicated that high-tech enterprises consider criteria in the following order of priority: media ability, campaign ability, strategic planning, service team, cost consciousness, and relationship maintenance. Furthermore, this study uses the example of a famous high-tech communication manufacturer in Taiwan to demonstrate PR firm selection using this model. The proposed model helps high-tech enterprises to effectively select PR firms, and thus is highly applicable in academia and commerce.

Globalization, the tremendous and rapid developments in information technology, and the world trade treaty, have made it impossible for many organizations to work only locally, but I fact it forces them to spread their activities globally. This has made the field of supply chain management a fertile field for research. In the final paper of this issues, Lashine, Fattouh and Issa present an integrated model for the location of a warehouse, the allocation of customers to warehouses, and finding the number of vehicles to deliver the demand and the required vehicle routing in order to minimize the total transportation costs, fixed and operating costs, and routing costs. The model was formulated as a mixed integer linear programming model and was solved using Lagrange relaxation and a subgradient search for the location/allocation module and a travelling salesman heuristic for the routing module. The model was tested for several large-scale problems and was also applied to a case study.

As always, I would like to thank Wendy Weaver and Sylvia Kerrigan for helping me put together this issue of JM2 as well as all the authors who have submitted their work and had the patience to wait for their reviews. Moreover, I would also like to thank all the reviewers, members of the Editorial Board and, in particular, my three Associate Editors for the amount of work and support given to the journal. We will always be striving for improvement.

All the best.

Luiz Moutinho