Business Commons^™

Communities Of Practice, Cailin B. Hochradel

Instructional Design Capstones Collection

Communities of Practice (CoP) are groups where users who share the same interests can discuss a particular practice while sharing resources, tools, and work arounds. With a unique business model and product line as well as a significant portion of Mabey Inc. employees in remote locations, a CoP will bridge the communication and distance gap to make learning and development easier and more fluid. Mabey Inc. chose to install Yammer to facilitate their CoP. With this initiative all employees were enrolled in the system and encouraged to use it but not given any directive on how or how often to …

Predicting Hospital Patients' Admission To Reduce Emergency Department Boarding, Mohammadmahdi Moqri

Graduate Masters Theses

Emergency Department (ED) boarding - the inability to transfer emergency patients to inpatient beds- is a key factor contributing to ED overcrowding. This paper presents a novel approach to improving hospital operational efficiency and, therefore, to decreasing ED boarding. Using the historic data of 15,000 patients, admission results and patient information are correlated in order to identify important admission predictor factors. For example, the type of radiology exams prescribed by the ED physician is identified as among the most important predictors of admission. Based on these factors, a real-time prediction model is developed which is able to correctly predict the …

Outsourcing Through Competition: What Is The Best Competition Parameter?, Ehsan Elahi

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

In this paper we consider a single buyer who wants to outsource the manufacturing of a product to N potential suppliers. The buyer’s objective is to maximize the service level she receives from the suppliers. The suppliers compete for the buyer’s demand based on a competition parameter which the buyer announces along with an allocation rule. We model each supplier as a make-to-stock queueing system. Using a simple proportional allocation function, we compare two competition parameters: service level and inventory level. We show that inventory competition creates a higher overall service level for the buyer. We also show an optimal …

Product Bundling: Impacts Of Product Heterogeneity And Risk Considerations, Mehdi Sheikhzadeh, Ehsan Elahi

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

Bundling has been extensively studied in the literature and its benefits have been manifested through three perspectives of achieving better price discrimination, helping to save costs, and preserving the power for deterring a potential entrant. In this study, we examine two aspects of bundling which have not been studied before. We examine the impact of product heterogeneity on bundling decisions. We also address risk considerations in a bundling problem. Specifically, we consider a retailer who has the option of selling a bundle of two products (pure bundling policy), or selling the products separately (no-bundling policy). The retailer could also face …

Outsourcing Through Competition: What Is The Best Competition Parameter?, Ehsan Elahi

Ehsan Elahi

In this paper we consider a single buyer who wants to outsource the manufacturing of a product to N potential suppliers. The buyer’s objective is to maximize the service level she receives from the suppliers. The suppliers compete for the buyer’s demand based on a competition parameter which the buyer announces along with an allocation rule. We model each supplier as a make-to-stock queueing system. Using a simple proportional allocation function, we compare two competition parameters: service level and inventory level. We show that inventory competition creates a higher overall service level for the buyer. We also show an optimal …

How Risk Management Can Turn Into Competitive Advantage: Examples And Rationale, Ehsan Elahi

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

In light of the occurrence of many disruptive events since the beginning of this millennium, we can observe a change in the way risks and uncertainties are being viewed in the business world. To put this change into perspective we compare the evolution in the companies’ perception of risk management with the evolution in how companies look at their supply chain management. The main driver behind the change in the way companies view risk management is the increased level of uncertainties. There are many evidences that suggest the current very high level of volatilities in the business world is going …

Engaging And Expanding Communities: Widening The Circle Of Stakeholders, Lisa Deangelis, Maureen A. Scully, Andrea Wight

Emerging Leaders Program Team Projects

The 32 fellows in the 2013 Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) worked with community partners to investigate the theme, “Engaging and Expanding Communities".

They worked with six community partners, and identified ways to help them expand beyond their core stakeholders to a wider circle of stakeholders and broader potential impact. The fellows gave their time and professional skills to understand how to reach new business partners, new participants, new advisors, and new donors. They conducted surveys, interviews, and focus groups; explored social media options; examined best practices; and considered ways to tell powerful stories about the vitally important work of the …

Would Women Leaders Have Prevented The Global Financial Crisis? Teaching Critical Thinking By Questioning A Question, Julie A. Nelson

Economics Faculty Publication Series

Would having more women in leadership have prevented the financial crisis? This question, raised in the popular media, can make effective fodder for teaching critical thinking within courses such as gender and economics, money and financial institutions, pluralist economics, or behavioural economics. While the question, as posed, demands an answer of 'Yes - sex differences in traits are important' or 'No - gender is irrelevant', students can be encouraged to question the question itself. The first part of this essay briefly reviews literature on the sameness-versus-difference debate, noting that the belief in exaggerated behavioural differences between men and women is …

Social Media Assimilation In Firms: Investigating The Roles Of Absorptive Capacity And Institutional Pressures, Pratyush Bharati, Chen Zhang, Abhijit Chaudhury

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

Firms are increasingly employing social media to manage relationships with partner organizations, yet the role of institutional pressures in social media assimilation has not been studied. We investigate social media assimilation in firms using a model that combines the two theoretical streams of IT adoption: organizational innovation and institutional theory. The study uses a composite view of absorptive capacity that includes both previous experience with similar technology and the general ability to learn and exploit new technologies. We find that institutional pressures are an important antecedent to absorptive capacity, an important measure of organizational learning capability. The paper augments theory …

Would Women Leaders Have Prevented The Global Financial Crisis? Teaching Critical Thinking By Questioning A Question, Julie Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

Would having more women in leadership have prevented the financial crisis? This question, raised in the popular media, can make effective fodder for teaching critical thinking within courses such as gender and economics, money and financial institutions, pluralist economics, or behavioural economics. While the question, as posed, demands an answer of 'Yes - sex differences in traits are important' or 'No - gender is irrelevant', students can be encouraged to question the question itself. The first part of this essay briefly reviews literature on the sameness-versus-difference debate, noting that the belief in exaggerated behavioural differences between men and women is …

Understanding & Crafting Development Agreements In Massachusetts, Edward J. Collins, Jr. Center For Public Management, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Edward J. Collins Center for Public Management Publications

The report first briefly explains the real estate development business from the developer’s perspective. It then identifies the components of a typical development agreement. Following this, it describes how agreements change and grow over time and offers an outline of the negotiation process. The appendices provide an overview of five development agreements and highlights interesting provisions that may be food for thought during negotiations on future development agreements. Two of these agreements are for gaming-related projects and three do not include gaming as a potential land use. Copies of the actual agreements can be accessed via links found within the …

The Campus Kitchen At Umass Boston, Liz Moniz

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Campus Kitchen at the University of Massachusetts Boston (CKUMB) is a part of The Campus Kitchens Project. CKP, a national network of student volunteers, works to rescue excess food to create meals for those in need. CKUMB opened in 2010 to provide meals for the Dorchester community. By taking the initiative to run a community kitchen, students develop entrepreneurial and leadership skills, along with a commitment to serve their community, that they will carry with them into future careers.

Commonwealth Compact Talent Network: A Resource For And About Talented Professionals Of Color In Massachusetts, Georgianna Melendez

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Commonwealth Compact seeks to increase the visibility of and access to professionals of color in Massachusetts. We seek to establish Massachusetts as a uniquely inclusive, honest, and supportive community of – and for – diverse people. We have created an online tool to establish this visible network. Our target audience for this tool includes employers and talent.

Finishing The Job: A Partnership For Diversity In The Construction Workforce, Susan Moir, Liz Skidmore, Janet Jones, Brian Doherty

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Policy Group on Tradeswomen’s Issues (PGTI) is a regional collaboration of construction industry stakeholders working together since 2008 to tackle the persistent failure of policies enacted to open up good paying jobs in the construction trades to women. Our focus on women explicitly supports efforts to increase all forms of diversity in the construction industry. Following the publication of our 2011 founding document, Unfinished Business: Building Equality for Women in the Construction Trades, PGTI has focused on the development and implementation of best practices for a diverse construction workforce in public and non-profit construction.

Upham’S Corner Main Street: Developing Ideas For Promoting Arts And Businesses In Upham’S Corner, Werner Kunz, Barbara Lewis, Upham's Corner Main Street

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Dorchester’s Upham’s Corner neighborhood is home to a diverse mix of neighborhood residents, many historical landmarks, and a commercial district. At one point, Upham’s Corner was one of the top five market hubs for New England. It was because of this market history that the Strand Theater was built as a community home, as a community connection, and as a network. UMass Boston’s College of Management undergraduate students have developed ideas for promoting the arts and bringing businesses to the Upham’s Corner neighborhood. Assistant Professor of Marketing, Werner Kunz, coordinated the project with students in his “Services Marketing” class to …

Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network: Boston Regional Office And Minority Business Center, Massachusetts Small Business Development Center, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Hosted by the College of Management, we are part of a statewide business assistance program providing FREE one-on-one counsel to entrepreneurs, seeking help with business growth, financing, loan assistance, strategic marketing and operational analysis. Our services are available to the public and members of the University of Massachusetts Boston community, including students, faculty, and staff. We also offer workshops and training programs on a variety of topics targeted to the needs of small business.

Our network structure enables us to offer three integrated product lines: Business Advisory Services, Government Contracting, and International Trade Assistance. Services are delivered through a statewide …

Supporting Employment First: Assisting States In Achieving Improved Employment Outcomes For Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities, Cindy Thomas, Institute For Community Inclusion, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

A membership network of 29 states, the State Employment Leadership Network is a community of practice where members meet to connect, collaborate, and share information and lessons learned across state lines and system boundaries. Participating state agency officials build cross-community support for pressing employment-related issues and policies at state and federal levels. States commit to work together and engage in a series of activities to analyze key elements in their systems to improve the integrated employment outcomes for their citizens with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Review Of Proposed Zoning Bylaw Amendments & Concept Plan For 129 Parker Street, Maynard, Ma, Edward J. Collins, Jr. Center For Public Management, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Edward J. Collins Center for Public Management Publications

The Edward J. Collins, Jr. Center for Public Management was hired by the Town of Maynard to analyze the proposed amendment to the Neighborhood Business Overlay District (NBOD) of the Maynard Zoning Bylaw and associated concept plan for the property located at 129 Parker Street in Maynard. The bylaw amendment and concept plan have been proposed by Capital Group Properties, LLC, the developer of the site. Specifically, the Center was tasked with preparing the following materials:

• Task 1 – Economic Development and Impact Study;
• Task 2 – Traffic Peer Review and Analysis; and,
• Task 3 – Recommendations on proposed bylaw …

Common Sense And Civic Virtue: Institutional Investors, Responsible Ownership, And The Democratic Ideal, Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

On matters of governance, the people’s good is the highest law, as Cicero said two millennia ago. Unfortunately, these days personal greed has trumped the people’s good, enflaming the current governance crisis affecting our public, nonprofit, and private spheres. The spate of corporate governance scandals over the past several years jeopardizes equity investments, harms beneficiaries, and weakens global capital markets. The remedy is not just more laws and regulation but revitalization of the system of corporate checks and balances that already exists. To get better corporate governance, corporate shareowners, especially institutional investors, need to assert their rights and responsibilities more …

How Can We Improve The Performance Of Supply Chain Contracts? An Experimental Study, Ehsan Elahi, Narasimha Lamba, Chinthana Ramaswamy

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

Although optimal forms of supply chain contracts have been widely studied in the literature, it has also been observed that decision makers fail to make optimal decisions in these contract setups. In this research, we propose different approaches to improve the performance of supply chain contracts in practice. We consider revenue sharing and buyback contracts between a rational supplier and a retailer who, unlike the supplier, is susceptible to decision errors. We propose five approaches to improve the retailer’s decisions which are in response to contract terms offered by the supplier. Through laboratory experiments, we examine the effectiveness of each …

How Can We Improve The Performance Of Supply Chain Contracts? An Experimental Study, Ehsan Elahi, Narasimha Lamba, Chinthana Ramaswamy

Ehsan Elahi

Although optimal forms of supply chain contracts have been widely studied in the literature, it has also been observed that decision makers fail to make optimal decisions in these contract setups. In this research, we propose different approaches to improve the performance of supply chain contracts in practice. We consider revenue sharing and buyback contracts between a rational supplier and a retailer who, unlike the supplier, is susceptible to decision errors. We propose five approaches to improve the retailer’s decisions which are in response to contract terms offered by the supplier. Through laboratory experiments, we examine the effectiveness of each …

Project Management Decisions With Uncertain Targets, Jeffrey Keisler, Robert Bordley

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Connecting Big Data With Big Decisions: Ideas For Synthesizing Analytics And Decision Analysis, Jeffrey Keisler

Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series

This paper describes an approach to connect decision analysis models with outputs of analytic methods applied to various types of big data. Decision analysis models focus on issues of concern to a decision maker and incorporate use of a range of methods and axioms to develop insights about what the decision maker should do. In particular, decision analysis models typically use subjective judgments from the decision maker to describe beliefs about the likelihood of events and the desirability of outcomes. In order for human judgments to be improved by the availability of large amounts of data and processing power, it …

Not-So-Strong Evidence For Gender Differences In Risk, Julie Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

In their article "Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking," Gary Charness and Uri Gneezy (2012) review a number of experimental studies regarding investments in risky assets, and claim that these yield strong evidence that females are more risk averse than males. This study replicates and extends their article, demonstrating that its methods are highly problematic. While the methods used would be appropriate for categorical, individual-­‐level differences, the data reviewed are not consistent with such a model. Instead, modest differences (at most) exist only at aggregate levels, such as group means. The evidence in favor of gender difference is …

Statedata: The National Report On Employment Services And Outcomes, 2013, John Butterworth, Frank A. Smith, Allison Cohen Hall, Alberto Migliore, Jean Winsor, Daria Domin

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This report provides statistics over 25 years from several existing national datasets that address the status of employment and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The authors use abbreviations for both intellectual disability (ID) and intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in this report. We do this because data sources vary in the specific target groups that can be described.

We provide a comprehensive overview that describes national trends in employment for people with IDD, and the appendix provides individual state profiles with data from several sources. These include the ICI’s IDD Agency National Survey of Day and …

Statedata: The National Report On Employment Services And Outcomes, 2012, John Butterworth, Allison Cohen Hall, Frank A. Smith, Alberto Migliore, Jean Winsor, Daria Domin, Jennifer Sulewski

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This report provides statistics over 20 years from several existing national datasets that address the status of employment and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The authors use abbreviations for both intellectual disability (ID) and intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in this report. We do this because data sources vary in the specific target groups that can be described.

We provide a comprehensive overview that describes national trends in employment for people with IDD, and the appendix provides individual state profiles with data from several sources. These include the ICI’s National Survey of State Intellectual and Developmental …

Contested Imaginaries And The Cultural Political Economy Of Climate Change, David L. Levy, Andre Spicer

David L. Levy

This article analyses the evolving cultural political economy of climate change by developing the concept of ‘climate imaginaries’. These are shared socio-semiotic systems that structure a field around a set of shared understandings of the climate. Climate imaginaries imply a particular mode of organizing production and consumption, and a prioritization of environmental and cultural values. We use this concept to examine the struggle among NGOs, business and state agencies over four core climate imaginaries. These are ‘fossil fuels forever’, ‘climate apocalypse’, ‘technomarket’ and ‘sustainable lifestyles’. These imaginaries play a key role in contentions over responses to climate change, and we …

Data Note: Shifts In Vr Outcome Trends For Vr Customers With And Without Intellectual Disabilities, Frank A. Smith

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

People with intellectual disabilities (ID) aspire to gainful employment1. To assist them with this goal, state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies offer employment services based upon Individualized Plans for Employment (IPEs). A commonly used measure of outcomes is the rehabilitation rate, defined as the percentage of individuals exiting the program who have achieved an employment outcome after receiving services with an IPE. This indicator does not consider that not all eligible consumers progress to receive services after an IPE is developed. This occurs for a variety of individual, service, and systems reasons. Reviewing data for eligible consumers who do not receive …

Emerging Capability Or Continuous Challenge? Relocating Knowledge Work And Managing Process Interfaces, Stephan Manning, Thomas Hutzschenreuter, Alexander Strathmann

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

This study examines interface management as a dynamic organizational capability supporting an increasing global distribution of knowledge work, based on an in-depth case of an automotive supplier. We show how local responses to experiences of task and interface ambiguity following the relocation of R&D processes may lead to a shift of organizational attention from ex-ante process design to continuous process and interface management. Findings suggest that flexible interface manager positions and partnership structures across locations facilitate local experimentation with effective transfer and handling of ambiguous and partially tacit tasks. This enhances the firm’s capacity to distribute an increasing variety of …

New Silicon Valleys Or A New Species? Commoditization Of Knowledge Work And The Rise Of Knowledge Services Clusters, Stephan Manning

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

This paper explores knowledge services clusters (KSCs) as a distinct and increasingly important form of geographic cluster, in particular in emerging economies: KSCs are defined as geographic concentrations of lower-cost skills serving global demand for increasingly commoditized knowledge services. Based on prior research on clusters and services offshoring, and data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN), major properties and contingencies of KSC growth are discussed and compared with both high-tech clusters and low-cost manufacturing clusters. Special emphasis is put on the ambivalent effect of commoditization of knowledge work on KSC growth: It is proposed that KSCs attract most projects if …