To determine how leading companies in North America, Europe, and Asia develop and sustain strong talent pipelines, this research investigates talent management processes and practices in a sample of 37 multinational corporations, selected on the basis of their international scope, reputation, and long-term performance. In-depth case studies and a Web-based survey of human resources professionals identify various effective practices that can help companies attract, select, develop, and retain talent. However, the results suggest that competitive advantage comes not primarily from designing and implementing best practices but rather from the proper internal alignment of various elements of a company's talent management system, as well as their embeddedness in the value system of the firm, their links to business strategy, and their global coordination.

There is still very little known about network dynamics (Bell et al., 2006), especially when focusing on interorganisational networks (Provan et al., 2007). There is also limited empirical evidence on leadership within these complex network contexts (Davenport, 2005; Osborn et al., 2002). This thesis addresses these limitations by developing a theoretical framework for process leadership in the complex, often unpredictable and turbulent context of the interorganisational networked ecosystem. Understanding the complexity of networks and leadership is crucial to advancing network research, which this study aims to accomplish. Although previous studies indicate leader characteristics and behaviours (Huxham & Vangen, 2000), less evidence on the processes and dynamics of leadership within networks exists. Few studies have longitudinally examined the multiple boundaries and multi-level interactions within a complex interorganisational network, as the unit of analysis, as this thesis achieves. Moreover, little research has been conducted to understand network leadership processes, which represents a major gap in the network theory and complexity leadership literatures. In order to address these gaps as well as the gap between the two literatures, this thesis presents a comprehensive, longitudinal case investigation of network process leadership (NPL) within an interorganisational network embedded in the British National Health Service (NHS). By analysing processual dynamics, this thesis’s contribution is the foundation of a preliminary NPL framework. Based on analysing a public sector healthcare network over time, the findings emphasise four dominant thematic constructs surrounding NPL that emerged as highly significant: leveraging strategic system stressors and turbulence; adopting focal and non-focal roles; maximising social proximity; and the complementary, reciprocal formal and informal coproduction of leadership. These constructs provide the empirical and analytical grounds to help explain the critical leadership processes that drive a complex, interorganisational public sector network. Significantly, social capital dimensions underlie these interrelated higher order themes; thereby affecting wider inter-organisational network processes. As a primary contribution of this thesis, I argue that social capital is the critical concept linking network and complexity leadership theories, in order to provide a better understanding of NPL. The findings suggest network leadership calls for NPL and its relational, collective, facilitative approach involving social capital among multiple participants in a complex interorganisational network context. This is highly differentiated from studying unidirectional effects of a hierarchical, central leader within a single organisation. Theoretically, I argue the importance of social capital in the complex nature of leadership processes within interorganisational networked contexts. The research contributes to an understanding of how networks and social capital can be adapted or created by formal and informal leaders within networks to reflect changing processes to shape practices and network-wide development over time. Finally, I offer several operational mechanisms policymakers and network leaders could pragmatically employ to manage, lead, and facilitate interorganisational network processes. Overall, the significance of this study involves: filling gaps in the literature, offering a longitudinal case study on an interorganisational network over time, providing a foundation for theoretical development on leading in networks, illuminating insights into professional leadership within networks, and identifying policy and practical implications for leaders and managers.

This dissertation reports on an effort to design, construct, test, and adjust an expert system for making certain business decisions. A widely used approach to recurring judgmental decisions in business and other social organizations is the "rule-based decision system". This arrangement employs staff experts to propose decision choices and selections to a decisionmaker. Such decisions can be very important because of the large resources involved. Rules and values encountered in such systems are often vague and uncertain. Major questions explored by this experimental effort were: (1) could the output of such a decision system be mimicked easily by a mechanism incorporating the rules people say they use, and (2) could the imprecision endemic in such a system be represented by fuzzy set constructs. The task environment chosen for the effort was a computer-based game which required player teams to make a number of interrelated, recurring decisions in a realistic business situation. The primary purpose of this research is to determine the feasibility of using these methods in real decision systems. The expert system which resulted is a relatively complicated, feed-forward network of "simple" inferences, each with no more than one consequent and one or two antecedents. Rules elicited from an expert in the game or from published game instructions become the causal implications in these inferences. Fuzzy relations are used to represent imprecise rules and two distinctly different fuzzy set formats are employed to represent imprecise values. Once imprecision appears from the environment or rules the mechanism propagates it coherently through the inference network to the proposed decision values. The mechanism performs as well as the average human team, even though the strategy is relatively simple and the inferences crude linear approximations. Key aspects of this model, distinct from previous work, include: (1) the use of a mechanism to propose decisions in situations usually considered ill-structured; (2) the use of continuous rather than two-valued variables and functions; (3) the large scale employment of fuzzy set constructs to represent imprecision; and (4) use of feed forward network structure and simple inferences to propose human-like decisions.

If you have an idea about applying a proven technology to improve the processes in a new area of society, what does it take to implement it in a way that it has wide impact and endures? This is a relevant question particularly now, at the dawn of the age of 'big data', as information and communication technologies are adopted in many areas to harness the ability to collect, retrieve and analyse large amounts of information, and be made available at the level of individual users. Extraordinarily powerful devices developed in recent years offer much promise, but as many examples, such as Betamax, WAP-technology, HD DVD and netbooks, show that even potent technologies may fail to gain predominance and survive. The concept of institutional entrepreneurship is a useful framework to analyse these complex issues as it embodies a comprehensive analytical perspective, combining attention to the institutional environment as well as to the efforts by interested and re-sourced actors. I use this concept to I investigate the efforts to introduce mobile technology into health care in England and Finland. I employ a distinct research strategy that avoids a retrospective bias, through the collection and analysis of qualitative data before known outcomes, from a wide range of technology, care, regulatory and intermediary organisations. I uncover some of the difficulties to technology adoption and develop arguments about the types of efforts and the impact of context at the early moment stage that contribute to the further development of the concept of institutional entrepreneurship.

Nesta tese propõe-se um método heurístico para o problema de Projeto de Rede da Cadeia de Suprimentos (Supply Chain Network Design) considerando vários aspectos de relevância prática, tais como: fornecedores e matérias-primas, localização e operação de instalações, atribuição de Centros de Distribuição (CD), e grande número de clientes e produtos. Uma eficiente abordagem heurística de duas fases é proposta para a obtenção de soluções viáveis para os problemas, que inicialmente é modelado como um Programa Linear Inteiro Misto (PLIM) de grande escala. Na fase de construção, uma estratégia de Linear Programming Rounding é aplicada para se obter os valores iniciais para as variáveis de localização inteira do modelo. Simultaneamente, um método Multi-start foi desenvolvido para gerar soluções iniciais diversificadas para cada nova iteração da heurística de Rounding. Na segunda fase, dois procedimentos de Busca Local foram desenvolvidos no sentido de melhorar a solução fornecida pelo método de Rounding. Implementamos duas diferentes abordagens de Busca Local: remoção-inserção e troca. Uma técnica de Busca Tabu para orientar o procedimento de Busca Local para explorar os diferentes espaços de soluções foi desenvolvida. As formulações e algoritmos foram implementados na linguagem C++ utilizando ferramentas de otimização da COIN-OR. O método de solução foi experimentado em instâncias geradas aleatoriamente, com tamanhos diferentes em termos do número de parâmetros, tais como o número de produtos, zonas de clientes, CDs e fábricas considerando um sistema logístico de quatro níveis. As implementações computacionais mostram que o método de solução proposto obteve resultados satisfatórios quando comparados com a literatura. Para validar este método heurístico também foi usado em um caso realista, com base em dados de uma empresa de borracha que está reestruturando sua cadeia de suprimentos devido ao projeto de uma nova uma nova fábrica e produção de novos produtos. A abordagem heurística proposta revelou-se adequada para aplicação prática em um caso real de uma indústria multicommodity em um contexto determinístico. / In this thesis we propose a heuristic method for the Supply Chain Network Design (SCND) problem considering several aspects of practical relevance: suppliers and raw materials, location and operation facilities, distribution center (DC) assignments, and large numbers of customers and products. An efficient two-phase heuristic approach is proposed for obtaining feasible solutions to the problems, which is initially modeled as a large-scale Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP). In the construction phase, a linear programming rounding strategy is applied to obtain initial values for the integer location variables in the model. Simultaneously, a Multi-start method was developed to generate diversified initial solutions from each new iteration in the rounding heuristic. In the second phase, two Local Search procedures were developed towards to improve the solution provided by the rounding method. We implemented two different Local Search approaches: removal-insertion and exchange. A Tabu Search technique was developed to guide the Local Search procedure to explore the different spaces of solutions. The formulations and algorithms were implemented in C++ code language using the optimization engine COIN-OR. The solution method was experimented in randomly generated instances, with different sizes in terms of the number of parameters, such as number of products, customer zones, DCs, and factories considering a four-echelon logistic system. The computational implementations show that the solution method proposed obtained satisfactory results when compared to the literature review. To validate this heuristic method was also used in a realistic case, based on data from a rubber company that is restructuring its supply chain due to the overture of a new factory, producing new products. The proposed heuristic approach proved appropriate to practical application in a realistic case of a multi commodity industry in a deterministic context.

Cette thèse prend pour objet la diffusion dans les grandes écoles et les universités de modules de sensibilisation et de formation à « l’entrepreneuriat » ou à l’ « esprit d’entreprendre » destinés aux étudiants. Articulant science politique, sociologie de l’éducation et sociologie économique, ce travail retrace la genèse d’un problème public, sa mise en politique publique, et sa traduction en curriculum pour produire des conduites économiques d’un type particulier. Basé sur une enquête combinant méthodes qualitatives (entretiens, observations, archives) et quantitatives (passage et traitement de questionnaires), cette recherche montre, d’une part, comment certains espaces de l’enseignement supérieur se transforment sous l’effet de l’appropriation de cette nouvelle mission éducative et, d’autre part, comment le projet d’éduquer à l’entreprise se voit à son tour transformé par sa mise en forme scolaire et académique. Par ailleurs, ce travail établit que, si l’acclimatation de l’entrepreneuriat dans l’enseignement supérieur est rendue possible par la variété des usages dont il fait l’objet dans cet espace, ceux-ci ne sont toutefois jamais en mesure de modifier radicalement la signification d’un projet d’ « éducation au libéralisme » dont le cadre sémantique s’est cristallisé de longue date. En proposant une sociologie historique et politique de l’éducation à l’entrepreneuriat, cette thèse entend renouveler la connaissance de l’enseignement supérieur de deux façons : d’abord, en en donnant à voir des espaces et des acteurs jusqu’ici mal connus ; ensuite, en étudiant conjointement des dimensions rarement appréhendées ensemble (politiques universitaires et contenus d’enseignement). Ce faisant, ce travail contribue à la compréhension des mécanismes sociaux de production, de circulation et de légitimation de croyances et de pratiques économiques propres au capitalisme contemporain. / This thesis analyzes the dissemination of training modules on « entrepreneurship » or « entrepreneurial spirit » to the students of the « grandes écoles » and universities in France. Located at the intersection of political science, sociology of education and economic sociology, this research traces the genesis of a public problem, policy-making surrounding it and its translation into a curriculum to produce specific economic behaviors.Based on a field survey combining qualitative methods (interviews, participatory observations, archival research) and quantitative methods (questionnaires), this thesis demonstrates how certain areas of higher education are transformed by the appropriation of this new educational mission, and how the project of entrepreneurship education is in turn transformed by its school and academic formatting. This thesis then highlights that if the various uses of entrepreneurship in higher education have made its acclimatization in this space possible, these uses, however, are never able to radically change the meaning of a project of « education to liberalism » whose semantic framework has crystallized for a long time. Proposing a historical and political sociology of entrepreneurship education, this research intends to renew the knowledge on higher education in two ways : first, it analyzes spaces and actors that are typically/historicallunderstudied ; second, it analyzes two dimensions rarely considered together (university policies and content). This thesis therefore contributes to understanding the social mechanisms of production, circulation and legitimization of economic beliefs and practices characteristic of contemporary capitalism.

Understanding the wide range of outcomes achieved by firms trying to implement TQM and similar process improvement initiatives presents a challenge to management science and organization theory: a few firms reap sustained benefits from their programs, but most efforts fail and are abandoned. A defining feature of such techniques is the reliance on the front-line workforce to do the work of improvement, thus creating the possibility of agency problems; different incentives facing managers and workers. Specifically, successfully improving productivity can lead to lay-offs. The literature provides two opposing theories of how agency interacts with the ability of quality-oriented improvement techniques to dramaticlly increase productivity. The 'Drive Out Fear' school argues that firms must commit to job security, while the 'Drive In Fear' school emphasizes the positive role that insecurity plays in motivating change. In this study a contract theoretic model is developed to analyze the role of agency in process improvement. The main insight of the study is that there are two types of job security, internal and external, that have opposite impacts on the firm's abilty to implement improvement initiatives. The distinction is useful in explaining the results of different case studies and can reconcile the two change theories. / National Science Foundation, grant SBR-9422228, the Ford Motor Company and the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. MIT Sloan School of Management, Center for Innovation in Product Development

In this thesis, we study three emerging applications of OR/MS, namely, (i) disease spread modeling, intervention strategies, and food supply chain management during an influenza pandemic, (ii) the practical applications of production planning and scheduling in the commercial lithographic printing industry, and (iii) packing/placement problems in chip design in the semiconductor industry. In the first part of the thesis, we study an emergency response planning problem motivated by discussions with the American Red Cross, which has taken on a responsibility to feed people in case of an influenza pandemic. During an emergency such as an influenza pandemic or a bioterror attack, regular distribution channels of critical products and services including food and water may be disrupted, or some of the infected individuals may not be able to go to grocery stores. We analyze the geographical spread of the disease and develop solution approaches for designing the food distribution supply chain network in case of an influenza pandemic. In addition, we investigate the effect of voluntary quarantine on the disease spread and food distribution supply chain network. Finally, we analyze the effect of influenza pandemic on the workforce level. In the second part, we study a real life scheduling/packing problem motivated by the practices in the commercial lithographic printing industry which make up the largest segment of the printing industry. We analyze the problem structure and develop efficient algorithms to form cost effective production schedules. In addition, we propose a new integer programming formulation, strengthen it by adding cuts and propose several preprocessing steps to solve the problem optimally. In the last part of the thesis, motivated by the chip design problem in the semiconductor industry, we study a rectangle packing/placement problem. We discuss the hardness of the problem, explore the structural properties, and discuss a special case which is polynomially solvable. Then, we develop an integer programming formulation and propose efficient algorithms to find a ``good' placement.

No description available.

No description available.