The impact of operational decisions on the design of salesforce incentives

When facing high levels of overstock inventories, firms often push their salesforce to work harder than usual to attract more demand, and one way to achieve that is to offer attractive incentives. However, most research on the optimal design of salesforce incentives ignores this dependency and assumes that operational decisions of production/inventory management are separable from design of salesforce incentives. We investigate this dependency in the problem of joint salesforce incentive design and inventory/production control. We develop a dynamic Principal‐Agent model with both Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in which the principal is strategic and risk‐neutral but the agent is myopic and risk‐averse. We find the optimal joint incentive design and inventory control strategy, and demonstrate the impact of operational decisions on the design of a compensation package. The optimal strategy is characterized by a menu of inventory‐dependent salesforce compensation contracts. We show that the optimal compensation package depends highly on the operational decisions; when inventory levels are high, (a) the firm offers a more attractive contract and (b) the contract is effective in inducing the salesforce to work harder than usual. In contrast, when inventory levels are low, the firm can offer a less attractive compensation package, but still expect the salesforce to work hard enough. In addition, we show that although the inventory/production management and the design of salesforce compensation package are highly correlated, information acquisition through contract design allows the firm to implement traditional inventory control policies: a market‐based state‐dependent policy (with a constant base‐stock level when the inventory is low) that makes use of the extracted market condition from the agent is optimal. This work appears to be the first article on operations that addresses the important interplay between inventory/production control and salesforce compensation decisions in a dynamic setting. Our findings shed light on the effective integration of these two significant aspects for the successful operation of a firm. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 320–340, 2014     

基于激励机制的装备采办风险总量控制

针对装备采办中的风险总量控制,提出一种激励方式来提高承包商的积极性。在单目标风险控制模型的基础上,建立了多目标风险控制模型,推导出了激励机制下风险控制的最优合同公式。对激励机制中存在的两类错误进行了理论分析和实例验证,得出了两类错误对收益的影响,并在成本控制中得到了应用,有效地提高了装备采办的质量和效率,为军方决策者在装备采办中提供了合理的参考依据。     

军队工程招标激励模型研究

运用激励理论研究了军队工程招标采购过程中军方与承包商之间的关系,建立了军队工程招标激励模型。在不完全信息和竞争性招标中,投标人的行为是追求最大的效用,军方则需要建立一种机制诱使投标人按真实成本信息报价,以达到预期支付最小的目的。这种招标博弈的结果是军方与投标人之间达成贝叶斯纳什均衡(Bayesian Nash equilib- rium),即军方利用激励合同诱使投标人报出其真实成本,而投标人为达到中标目的则必须采取讲真话的占优策略,最终在双方均可接受的条件下达成协议。在此基础上,结合实际研究提出了改进的综合评标模型。     

论公共消防安全管理中的利益诱导手段

强制手段、利益诱导手段、劝告与指导手段是管理学中所倡导的主要管理手段。在我国利益诱导手段尚未引起重视。以“以人为本,构建社会主义和谐社会”为指导,分析讨论了利益诱导手段在公共消防安全管理中的应用,并详细分析了经济手段、保险手段、激励手段的具体内容,意在改变我国公共消防管理手段单一的局面。     

One size does not fit all: personalized incentives in military compensation

A critical element in implementing a compensation scheme including nonmonetary incentives (NMIs) is recognizing that preferences vary widely across Service members. There are at least three sources of variability: across different population classes, across individuals within a population class, and across NMI packages for a particular individual. Surveys across different military communities, ranks, and years of Service show the difficulty of identifying any NMI that has significant value for even 50% of the active duty force. At the same time, approximately 80% of the surveyed Service members expressed a significant positive value for at least one NMI. Therefore, one-size-fits-all incentive packages will not be nearly as effective as more personalized incentive packages. The authors discuss variability in Service member NMI preferences and outline an approach to implementing personalized NMI packages in military compensation through a sealed-bid reverse auction, where Service members select individual NMIs from a “cafeteria-style” menu of options.     

装备采购多目标激励模型研究

在将质量货币化从而实现激励目标测度统一的基础上,根据委托代理理论建立了委托人风险中性,代理人风险规避时的多目标激励数学模型,给出了激励系数的表达式,对激励系数与随机变量相关系数之间的关系进行了讨论。     

激励视角下幼儿教师频繁流动的问题与对策

频繁流动已成为当代幼儿教师队伍建设中一个值得研究的课题。本研究借助对不同类型流动幼儿教师的访谈,揭示了激励机制与幼儿教师流动之间的关系,并在激励视角下,针对幼儿教师的频繁流动问题提出了相应的解决策略,以确保幼儿教师队伍建设的稳定性。     

Deterrence of Nuclear Terror

Nuclear proliferation, lax security standards in the storage of fissile materials, and international apathy in the prosecution of terrorists make nuclear terror a serious threat to the United States and its allies, yet no doctrine of retaliation has been established. To decrease the probability of terrorist use of nuclear weapons, a doctrine of retaliation—a negligence doctrine—should be considered. If the United States can distinguish whose fissile material was used for a nuclear terror event, a negligence doctrine would prescribe retaliation against that state. Where the proximate cause—terrorists—is unavailable for deterrent retaliation, deterring an accessible mediate cause—a state that has failed to adequately secure its fissile material—is one of a few effective alternatives. In the absence of such a negligence doctrine, the United States and its allies are increasingly vulnerable to a nuclear terror attack and the ensuing negative consequences.     

Supplier‐buyer contracting: Asymmetric cost information and cutoff level policy for buyer participation

We consider the problem of designing a contract to maximize the supplier's profit in a one‐supplier–one‐buyer relationship for a short‐life‐cycle product. Demand for the finished product is stochastic and price‐sensitive, and only its probability distribution is known when the supply contract is written. When the supplier has complete information on the marginal cost of the buyer, we show that several simple contracts can induce the buyer to choose order quantity that attains the single firm profit maximizing solution, resulting in the maximum possible profit for the supplier. When the marginal cost of the buyer is private information, we show that it is no longer possible to achieve the single firm solution. In this case, the optimal order quantity is always smaller while the optimal sale price of the finished product is higher than the single firm solution. The supplier's profit is lowered while that of the buyer is improved. Moreover, a buyer who has a lower marginal cost will extract more profit from the supplier. Under the optimal contract, the supplier employs a cutoff level policy on the buyer's marginal cost to determine whether the buyer should be induced to sign the contract. We characterize the optimal cutoff level and show how it depends on the parameters of the problem. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 48: 41–64, 2001     

关于在公安现役部队推行全面预算管理的几点思考

对现阶段公安现役部队全面预算管理现状和面临的问题进行了分析,从确定部队战略目标,党委重视和全员参与,构建全面预算管理组织结构及制度体系,全面预算的编制、控制、调整及考评等几个方面提出了有效实施全面预算管理的思路和具体措施。