Editorial

Citation

Moutinho, L. and Huarng, K.-H. (2012), "Editorial", Journal of Modelling in Management, Vol. 7 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jm2.2012.29707baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Modelling in Management, Volume 7, Issue 2

Following a consolidation approach in our research publishing policy, this issue seems to be a good example of the speed and strength of modelling techniques that are the primary raison d’être of JM2. This issue comprises research modelling that range from visualizations techniques, quadratic demand pricing and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to neural networks and the fuzzy topsis methods.

Most of the proposed decision aid methods provide the user only with a prescriptive approach (quantitative analysis) without any descriptive approach (qualitative analysis). It is therefore not possible to justify and recommend way of improvements. In this paper, Nemery et al. introduce visualization techniques to complement prescriptive approaches.

Visual techniques have been developed for the FlowSort sorting method, namely the FS – GAIA and stacked bar diagrams.

Findings with visual techniques, fine details can be captured, e.g. detection of incomparability (with FS-GAIA) and the composition of a score (with stacked bar diagrams). The paper provides important new tools to enhance the quality of the decisions.

In the conventional economic order quantity, it was assumed that the buyer must pay immediately for the procured units when these items are received. In practice, offering trade credit to buyers is one of the promotional tools for vendors to encourage buyers to order large quantities. Shah et al. develop an integrated vendor-buyer inventory model where the demand rate is an increasing function of the time and a decreasing function of the retail price. The trade credit is linked to pre-specified order quantity. The objective of the study is to determine the selling price, the size of the order and the number of transshipment from the vendor to the buyer during a production run to maximize the joint total profit per unit time. An algorithm is developed to determine the optimal solution and numerical examples are presented to validate the developed model.

Although the safety culture has been highlighted in the safety management, another factor, the employee-organizational identification, has been neglected in aviation industry. Most studies conceptualize organizational identity as a cognitive construct. Lin examines the relationship of safety culture and organizational identity on safety management system (SMS). It provides more awareness for how airline employees perceive organizational identity and safety culture how to implement SMS success. A conceptual path model analysis was tested using data analysis research design. The finding shows that safety culture was strengthened related to the implementation of SMS. Further, loyalty factor of organizational identity positively and significantly predicts the performance of SMS through the safety culture.

A large-scale economic and political reform has been going on in India for past few years. In the process of economy restructuring, private partnership or private investment in heavy industries like mining, steel, aluminum, infrastructure, construction, artillery, etc. is invited which were monopolized by state enterprises. In addition, service sectors such as banking, telecommunication, insurance, recreation, tourism, health care, education are also being privatized. Therefore, the problem of occupational safety, earlier exclusively the state’s concern, has now become the shared responsibility of the owners of enterprises, government and non-government organizations. Mahapatra et al. aim to assess the perception of safety officers on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) norms extended to workforce in Indian industries, understand implementation levels and find out deficiency existing thereon. Factor analysis was used to develop a construct specifically responsible for assessing OHS norms in three major industrial sectors through a broad based questionnaire survey. A neural network approach is adopted to carry out sensitivity analysis and identify important deficient items. Exploratory factor analysis has been carried out on the responses to the designed questionnaire. Sector-wise deficient items have been identified and strategies for improvement upon them have been proposed.

In the competitive scenario, customer experience (CE) has turn out to be a hotspot in the growth cycle of businesses. Due to the increase in diversified and customized needs of customers and strength of competition in terms of homogenized offerings, experiential aspect of products/services have become central to the customers Creating and delivering superior CE has become one of the objectives of organizations. So, marketing managers need to craft appealing and long-lasting CE for their customers. Garg et al. intend to identify and evaluate the critical success factors which make the dimensions for measuring CE in banking organizations more effective and purposeful by using AHP. The findings suggest that the factors like convenience, employees, online functional elements, and servicescape are critical for measuring CE in banking organizations.

We hope you enjoyed the breadth and depth of the modeling methods included in this issue of JM2. We do hope that we can continue to disseminate more challenging and useful modeling approaches so that the searches can benefit from their applications.

Thanks for your continued support and readership.

Luiz Moutinho, Kun-Huang Huarng