2015 Informs Annual Meeting

MC39

INFORMS Philadelphia – 2015

3 - Dynamic Credit-collections Optimization Naveed Chehrazi, Assistant Professor, McCombs School of Business, 2110 Speedway Stop B6500, Austin, TX, 78705, United States of America, naveed.chehrazi@mccombs.utexas.edu, Peter Glynn, Thomas Weber We develop a dynamic model of consumer repayment behavior on delinquent credit-card loans using a marked point process. The intensity of this point process can be influenced by costly treatment actions. Both the type and the timing of the account-treatment actions are subject to optimization, leading to an optimal impulse control problem. Using the HJB equation, we obtain a quasi-closed form solution for this control problem. 4 - Complexity Estimates for Policy and Value Iteration Algorithms for Total-cost and Average Cost MDPS Jefferson Huang, Stony Brook University, Dept. Applied Mathematics & Statistics, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-3600, United States of America, jefferson.huang@stonybrook.edu, Eugene Feinberg We present two groups of results: an example showing that the value iteration algorithm and its modifications are not strongly polynomial for discounted MDPs, and reductions of certain total-cost and average-cost MDPs to discounted ones. Combining the latter with Yinyu Ye’s result on the strong polynomiality of the simplex method and policy iterations for discounted MDPs allows us to design strongly polynomial algorithms for important classes of total-cost and average- cost MDPs. Chair: Kathy Stecke, UT Dallas, SM30 JSOM, 800 W Campbell Rd, Richardson, TX, 75080, United States of America, kstecke@utdallas.edu 1 - Consumer Taste Uncertainty in the Context of Store Brand and National Brand Competition Saibal Ray, Professor, McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Canada, saibal.ray@mcgill.ca, Tamer Boyaci, Arcan Nalca We focus on the uncertainty in consumer taste and study how a retailer can benefit from acquiring that taste information in the presence of competition between its store brand and a national brand. We also identify the optimal information sharing strategy of the retailer as well as the equilibrium product positioning and pricing of the brands. We generate insights as to when it is most valuable for the retailer to acquire taste information as well its value for the manufacturer. 2 - Retail Assortment and Price Competition when Consumers are Uncertain about Product Tastes Steve Gilbert, Professor, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, B6500, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, United States of America, Steve.Gilbert@mccombs.utexas.edu, Haoying Sun For many products, at least some consumers may need to physically experience them in order to assess their valuations. For such products, we provide conditions under there will be an equilibrium between two symmetric retailers in which one carries both products and the other carries only one. In addition, we find that the pricing strategy that should be adopted by each retailer differs substantially depending upon his rival’s assortment. 3 - Demand Shaping through Bundling and Configuration: A Dynamic Multiproduct Inventory-pricing Model Zhengliang Xue, IBM Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, United States of America, zxue@us.ibm.com, Jeannette Song Motivated by the industrial practice of using product bundling to shape demand, we present a dynamic model to analyze the optimal joint inventory, pricing, and bundling decisions for a firm selling vertically differentiated bundles over a finite horizon. We study the factors driving the bundling strategy, and provide insights into when to change the bundling strategies. Such strategies have a broad application in practice such as pricing the configuration of server and accessories. MC39 39-Room 100, CC Branding and Bundling Cluster: Operations/Marketing Interface Invited Session

4 - Should a Retailer Consider Adding a Social Network Enabled Channel? Gulver Karamemis, University of Florida, 355A STZ, Gainesville, FL, 32611, United States of America, gulver.karamemis@warrington.ufl.edu, Narendra Agrawal, Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Asoo Vakharia Social networks are one of the most exciting recent developments that have influenced the relationships between individuals and between individuals and organizations. However, due to its relative infancy as well as the myriad data and security related concerns of consumers, retailers have been slow to dive into social networks as a sales channel. Our research sheds light on the question of when retailers should consider adding a social network channel to their existing channel architecture. MC40 40- Room 101, CC Micro-Underpinnings of Mobility, Knowledge, and Performance in Groups and Organizations Sponsor: Organization Science Sponsored Session Chair: Aimee Kane, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, kanea@duq.edu Co-Chair: Gina Dokko, University of California, Davis, CA 1 - Managing Talent across Organizations: the Portability of Individual Performance Gina Dokko, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, Winnie Jiang As individuals’ careers increasingly unfold in diverse ways, the question of what they carry with them as they cross organizational or institutional boundaries becomes increasingly important. In this essay, we review findings on the portability of individual performance and develop a framework for thinking about talent management in organizations that accounts for the movement of individuals in and out of organizations and the complexity of modern careers. 2 - Using What You Know: Inventor Mobility to Young Firms Erin Fahrenkopf, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, efahrenkopf@gmail.com The research addresses the conditions under which individuals at entrepreneurial firms exploit knowledge from prior organizational experiences. In particular, I examine the effect of engaging in collaborative work and organizational roles on individuals’ knowledge use at young firms. I study a sample of inventor movements, both founders and employees, in the US laser industry and provide implications for the study of entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer by employee movements. 3 - Overcoming Barriers to Team Receptivity to Newcomers Aimee Kane, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, kanea@duq.edu, Floor Rink Newcomers bring with them unique perspectives drawn from prior experience, but, due to social psychological barriers, there is a pervasive tendency for teams to push newcomers to assimilate to the team rather than utilize their valuable knowledge. This contribution draws on evidence from small group experiments and vignette studies to suggest ways of replacing this resistance with receptivity to newcomer’s unique knowledge, which are also amendable to managerial, team, and newcomer intervention. 4 - Shady Characters: How Illicit Roles Contribute to Team Performance Colleen Stuart, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, cstuart@jhu.edu, Celia Moore In this paper we theorize about illicit roles, roles that specialize in activity that contravenes rules or regulations to support group goals. We use data on professional hockey teams to examine how team performance is disrupted when the enforcer, a player who specializes in the prohibited activity of fighting, is injured. We discuss how our understanding of illicit roles can be used to build theory about informal organizational roles and the implications of these roles for mobility in teams.

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