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Five hundred financial executives from North American companies were surveyed by means of a mailed questionnaire to gain a view from outside the operations functions of the basis on which aggregate inventory decisions are taken. The response indicated that more functions than might have been expected were involved in the process of determining inventory levels and, partly because of this, policy tended to be of a shorter rather than longer term nature.

In estimating desired inventory holdings business organizations must use some estimate of their cost of funds. While conceptually the overall or weighted average cost of capital would seem to be the appropriate measure, survey of senior U.S. and Canadian financial executives at large firms revealed that most of the responding firms used their cost of borrowed funds. As is demonstrated in the paper, use of the cost of borrowed funds rather than the overall cost of funds can cause inventory positions to be excessive during certain periods and deficient during other periods.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

In the decade since Tillery, Rutledge and Inman reviewed the treatment of quality management in leading US production and operations management (P/OM) textbooks, attention to quality, once the watchword and driving force in world business, has faded in both the practitioner and popular press. The ultimate purpose of the present research was to establish the progress, current status, and relevancy of the treatment of quality in current US P/OM textbooks, which remain the principal source of quality information in the undergraduate P/OM core course, preparing most future US managers as well as many international managers of tomorrow. Results of the present study indicate that over the last decade US P/OM textbooks have begun to reflect a more proactive and less reactive approach to quality management. However, results also indicate that current US P/OM textbooks lack relevancy of their quality content to practitioner needs, treat TQM and other holistic approaches to quality management superficially, and have little consistency concerning quality emphases.

The purpose of this experimental study is to examine the effects of climate change corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social advocacy (CSA) messages on public perceptions of companies and collective action intentions.

This study employs a 2 (message type: CSA vs CSR) × 2 (environmental issue: single-use plastics vs renewable energy) × 2 (company: Target vs Walmart) plus control online experimental design.

There were no main effects of message type on outcomes; however, green consumer identity moderated the relationship between message type and green purchase intention as well as negative word-of-mouth.

This study responds to calls by scholars to empirically compare the effects of CSR and CSA messages. Additionally, we consider group-level processes, like ingroup identity, in influencing strategic communication outcomes.

Location decisions are among the most costly decisions that organizations make. This research aims to examine location decisions from a macro perspective and to utilize findings for the development of a typology.

County level source information from the US Census Bureau, the United States (US) Department of Commerce: Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), National Association of Counties (NACO), and Fedstats is used in this analysis. Discriminant analysis as a profile analysis is utilized as an objective assessment of differences between the cluster concentrations.

The resulting typology of clusters concentrations is based on four constructs identified in the literature: innovation, specialization, complementariness and transfer of knowledge. This typology can serve as an aid in making these critical location decisions for practitioners as well as identifying future research topics for academia.

The research is an exploratory study and limited by its nature; therefore cause and effect cannot be definitively stated. Variables such as politics, environment, geography and cultural differences could have confounding effects on the study. The generalizability of the study could be affected because of the geographic location in relationship to national differences based on these and other variables.

This typology of cluster concentrations can be used as a tool for managers when making crucial location decisions.

The research is original in that it takes a more holistic approach to developing a typology of cluster concentrations. Rather than looking at specific industries and focusing on industry clusters, the research focuses on concentrations of industry clusters.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

To provide decision makers (DMs) an option for addressing problems involving finite alternative sets and multiple criteria, where criterion weighting is difficult or impossible.

The multicriteria decision problem is described, and a typically descriptive (rather than prescriptive) tool, data envelopment analysis (DEA), is summarized, along with a hypothetical but typical example of a multicriteria decision (vendor selection). The DEA approach is modified to incorporate weight constraints and is used to rank the available vendors. Results are compared with those from the use of a popular multicriteria decision tool (SMART) and a naïve averaging approach.

The modified DEA approach yields results very similar to those produced using SMART; these results are quite satisfactory in spite of the fact that DEA requires less involvement on the part of the DM. In addition, non‐dominant optima (a possible anomaly with DEA) are avoided, and often a single alternative, rather than a non‐dominated set, will result, thus providing a unique optimum.

Results are based on the analysis of a single data set. Future investigation should examine the performance of the DEA approach when other data sets involving more like as well as more unlike alternatives are involved.

With DEA the burden on the DM is reduced, as the need for eliciting criterion weights is obviated. DEA should thus provide an acceptable alternative to prescriptive modeling tools when multiple DMs are involved and/or criterion weight determination is unfeasible.

This paper demonstrates how DEA, a tool used more typically in post hoc evaluations, can be used also, with some modifications, as a prescriptive decision support tool.