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。     

带有活动收益不确定特征的成像侦察卫星调度问题

根据区域目标的侦察需求,研究了面向区域目标的多星调度问题。分析了调度问题中活动收益不确定特征,讨论了活动收益的上下界。针对收益不确定的特点,设计了影响力指标用于评估活动对调度方案的影响。基于活动影响力与执行时间设计了一种带局部诱导的禁忌搜索算法,采用分层次的、变评价函数机制引导求解过程趋向多目标优化,在优先提高覆盖率的同时兼顾减少资源消耗。最后,以算例验证了算法的有效性,并通过方案比较说明算法具有较好的寻优能力。     

少数民族教育的经济学分析

少数民族教育是我国教育的重要组成部分。发展少数民族教育，提高民族素质具有重要意义。本文从经济学中的效率与公平、供给与需求、成本与效益三个方面理论来分析我国的少数民族教育，从而更好地发展少数民族教育。     

Equilibrium customer strategies and social–profit maximization in the single‐server constant retrial queue

We consider the single‐server constant retrial queue with a Poisson arrival process and exponential service and retrial times. This system has not waiting space, so the customers that find the server busy are forced to abandon the system, but they can leave their contact details. Hence, after a service completion, the server seeks for a customer among those that have unsuccessfully applied for service but left their contact details, at a constant retrial rate. We assume that the arriving customers that find the server busy decide whether to leave their contact details or to balk based on a natural reward‐cost structure, which incorporates their desire for service as well as their unwillingness to wait. We examine the customers' behavior, and we identify the Nash equilibrium joining strategies. We also study the corresponding social and profit maximization problems. We consider separately the observable case where the customers get informed about the number of customers waiting for service and the unobservable case where they do not receive this information. Several extensions of the model are also discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

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。