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Emphasizing the importance of product cost deviation; the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the new product development (NPD) literature and research on decision making by discussing: How are decisions related to product cost deviations made during a product development project?

An in-depth single case study approach studying the decision-making process of Volvo Cars Cooperation during a car development project is applied.

The paper suggests that factors influencing how decisions related to cost deviations are made during a NPD are not limited to the classic trade-offs among time, cost and scope, but include managers’ complex cause-and-effect analysis under the influence of values, behaviors and norms. Furthermore, the context is not limited to NPD projects; rather the frame for the decisions and its influencers is at least as wide as the corporate context.

The common limitations of a single case study apply.

The study emphasizes the importance of clearly defined targets during a NPD project that need to well communicated, acknowledged and understood by all involved to serve as true business levers. A poor target is likely better than no target. Furthermore, lack of overview or responsibility for the success of the projects, increase the risk for sub-optimization and silo thinking.

The study is pioneering by highlighting the importance of and explaining the implications of decision making related to cost deviations during a NPD project.

What change in the distribution of a population’s health preserves the level of inequality? The answer to this analogous question in the context of income inequality lies somewhere between a uniform and a proportional change. These polar positions represent the absolute and relative inequality equivalence criterion (IEC), respectively. A bounded health variable may be presented in terms of both health attainments and shortfalls. As a distributional change cannot simultaneously be proportional to attainments and to shortfalls, relative inequality measures may rank populations differently from the two perspectives. In contrast to the literature that stresses the importance of measuring inequality in attainments and shortfalls consistently using an absolute IEC, this chapter formalizes a new compromise concept for a bounded variable by explicitly considering the two relative IECs, defined with respect to attainments and shortfalls, to represent the polar cases of defensible positions.

We use a surplus-sharing approach to provide new insights on commonly used inequality indices by evaluating the underpinning IECs in terms of how infinitesimal surpluses of health must be successively distributed to preserve the level of inequality. We derive a one-parameter IEC that, unlike those implicit in commonly used indices, assigns constant weights to the polar cases independent of the health distribution.

This paper is focused on the elaboration of a comprehensive model for the analysis and understanding of strategic networks/alliances, by using the classic: structure‐conduct‐performance‐paradigm. The intention in developing such a comprehensive model is to identify factors and/or elements, which may be considered more relevant than other factors, in the creation and maintenance of strategic networks/alliances. With the model it should be possible to describe that the performance of the joint actions, such as general success of the network cooperation, the profits achieved by individual companies, or the appreciation perceived by the individual, are functions of conduct, such as interaction, exchange of knowledge and adaptation. These factors are in turn governed by structural phenomena, which are discussed in the paper. Different dimensions, levels of aggregation as well as sequences of cause and effects in the process of creating and managing strategic networks/alliances, is included and discussed in the paper.

As summarized in our introductory Chapter 1, the trend toward ever-healthier elderly seems to have been broken (Figures 8 and 9). The share of young and middle-aged Swedish men and women, reporting very good or good health status to the Survey of Living Conditions, started to decline already in the 1980s. As a consequence, as the cohorts are graying, the share of elderly people, reporting very good or good health status, has also begun to decline. Increasing health problems among Swedish oldest old have also been reported from the SWEOLD (SWEdish panel of living conditions of oldest OLD) study (Parker et al., 2004). Similar trends have been reported for the United States and for the entire EU-15. Part of the explanation appears to be the growth at young ages in allergy, asthma, diabetes, other long-standing illness, and health problems associated with obesity. In the time perspective of our simulations, these trends in long-standing health problems might have less impact on the health of the elderly (and their demand for healthcare and old-age care or their life expectancy) than on the health of people in their middle ages but still be important. In this section, we will present some additional information on the development of health status during the last 20 years or so for the Swedish population.

In order to examine the value family caregivers attach to the benefits associated with nursing home services, this contingent survey was designed to investigate the willingness of family caregivers of dementia victims to pay for nursing home care. A total of 136 members of families of dementia patients from the department of neurology and psychiatry of four medical centers in Taiwan were interviewed by phone. These family members provided in‐home care for dementia victims and had expressed the need for nursing home placement. These family caregivers were asked to explicitly state the maximum amount of family income per month they are able to give up to receive nursing home services. The willingness to pay (WTP) for nursing home care ranged from US$185 to $2,407 per month, and 37.5 percent of the family caregivers interviewed indicated a willingness to pay at least 50 percent of the monthly family income for nursing home placement. The amount of monthly family income was strongly associated with the WTP for nursing home care in dollars. Age and education of the caregiver, and accessibility of nursing home care were significantly associated with WTP in both cost range and percentage of monthly family income. Interviewees who were older than 65 years (odds ratio is 3.52), and educated equal to or above senior high school (odds ratio is 5.57) were inclined to pay at least 50 percent of monthly family income for nursing home placement. As other variables were adjusted, respondents older than 65 years were willing to pay US$208.4 per month more than those younger than 65 years for nursing home placement; and the educated equal to or above senior high school were inclined to pay US$171.9 per month more than those with less than a senior high school education. The easier it was to find nursing home agencies near the residence, the more willing the family was to pay at least 50 percent of their monthly family income for nursing home services; with an odds ratio of 16.51. The families with the higher accessibility to nursing home agencies were willing to pay US$174.3 per month more than caregivers with lower accessibility. Family caregivers, who were older than 65 years, educated above the senior high school level, with a higher family income, and easier accessibility to nursing home services, were likely to attach higher economic values to nursing home placement.

The challenge of an ageing population is a major concern to policymakers and researchers all over the world. As evident in Figure 1, the percentage of people aged 60 and above will increase substantially between 2000 and 2050 in all parts of the world. Europe has the highest proportion; only Japan has a similar age structure. The already high proportion of older people in Europe is expected to rise to an even higher level by 2050, from currently 19 percent to an estimated 34 percent.