DECISION SCIENCES最新文献

{"title":"How a dedicated postdischarge unit can reduce hospital congestion and costs","authors":"Maryam Khatami,&nbsp;Jon M. Stauffer,&nbsp;Mark A. Lawley","doi":"10.1111/deci.12624","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12624","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Depending on the patient's condition, up to 60% of inpatients are discharged to post–acute care facilities (PACFs). These patients may experience several days of nonmedical inpatient stay until the hospital finds a facility that fits their needs, contributing to overcrowding in upstream units. This article studies the feasibility of creating a “postdischarge unit” (PDU) for medically ready-for-discharge patients who experience transfer delays, to improve access to inpatient beds. We use a multistage stochastic program, solved with a dual dynamic programming algorithm, to address the PDU size and capacity question. The random variable is the number of bed requests from upstream units (e.g., emergency department). Our numerical analysis, using data from a large hospital, shows that a PDU can reduce costs and significantly reduce the number of patients waiting for transfer to PACFs that are occupying inpatient beds, as long as the percentage of these patients in the hospital is more than 4%. Compared to current practice in our partner hospital, a PDU could increase access to inpatient beds by up to 13% and result in 2%–21% cost savings. Results show that PDU capacity in hospitals with a larger number of patients waiting for transfer is more sensitive to variation in PDU renovation and operational costs. In addition to using fewer medical staff, a PDU can improve discharge transitions to lower levels of care and more efficiently utilize social workers and physical therapists assisting these patients.</p>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"56 1","pages":"93-115"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139760155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Coordination schemes for resource reallocation and patient transfer in hospital alliance models","authors":"Zhong-Ping Li,&nbsp;Jasmine Chang,&nbsp;Jim Shi,&nbsp;Jian-Jun Wang","doi":"10.1111/deci.12622","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12622","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In many countries, healthcare systems encounter the issue of imbalance between supply and demand in a hierarchical structure. The comprehensive hospitals, which possess more high-quality resources, are often overwhelmed, while their counterparts, community hospitals, are often idle. To address this imbalance issue, certain payment schemes are generally considered effective in motivating comprehensive hospitals to divert patients downstream via resource transfer. In addition to two particular payment schemes, namely, patient payment (PP) and fee-for-capacity (FFC), this study also considers two hospital alliance models, the government-led (GL-type) and the hospital-forged (HF-type) alliance, for effectively overcoming the imbalance issue. Compared to the HF-type alliance, in which each community hospital determines the price paid to the comprehensive hospital for transferring resources, the GL-type alliance requires the payment price to be set by the regulator. Methodologically, this study devises a <i>three-stage sequential game</i> to characterize the dynamics among the various entities, such as the regulator, the comprehensive hospital, the community hospitals, and the patients. Equilibrium results, in terms of the capacity sinking rate and patient transfer rate, are derived, and scheme and alliance performances are evaluated using various measurements, such as patient utility, and hospital and social welfare. We find that a direct payment scheme (FFC) under a centralized alliance model (GL-type alliance) is more effective for both making decisions (about the patient transfer rate, capacity sinking rate, and payment price) and the performances (of each hospital's welfare, patient welfare, the waiting time per patient, and social welfare). Furthermore, our study examines the impacts of the alliance scale and finds that social welfare is first decreasing and then increasing with alliance scale. Therefore, it is suggested to establish either a one-to-one hospital alliance (consisting of a comprehensive and a community hospital) or a large-scale (e.g., a comprehensive and 10 community hospitals) hospital alliance.</p>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"56 1","pages":"71-92"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139677670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Zoning strategies for human–robot collaborative picking","authors":"Kaveh Azadeh,&nbsp;Debjit Roy,&nbsp;René de Koster,&nbsp;Seyyed Mahdi Ghorashi Khalilabadi","doi":"10.1111/deci.12620","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12620","url":null,"abstract":"<p>During the last decade, several retailers have started to combine traditional store deliveries with the fulfillment of online sales to consumers from omni-channel warehouses, which are increasingly being automated. A popular option is to use autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in collaboration with human pickers. In this approach, the pickers' unproductive walking time can be reduced even further by zoning the storage system, where the pickers stay within their zone periphery and robots transport order totes between the zones. However, the robotic systems' optimal zoning strategy is unclear: few zones are particularly good for large store orders, while many zones are particularly good for small online orders. We study the effect of no zoning (NZ) and progressive zoning strategies on throughput capacity for balanced zone configurations with both fixed and dynamic order profiles. We first develop queuing network models to estimate pick throughput capacity that correspond to a given number of AMRs and picking with a fixed number of zones. We demonstrate that the throughput capacity is dependent on the chosen zoning strategy. However, the magnitude of the gains achieved is influenced by the size of the orders being processed. We also show that using a dynamic switching strategy has little effect on throughput performance. In contrast, a fixed switching strategy benefiting from changes in the order profile has the potential to increase throughput performance by 17% compared to the NZ strategy, albeit at a higher robot cost.</p>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"56 1","pages":"50-70"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/deci.12620","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139029093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The role of generative design and additive manufacturing capabilities in developing human–AI symbiosis: Evidence from multiple case studies","authors":"Elliot Bendoly,&nbsp;Aravind Chandrasekaran,&nbsp;Mateus do Rego Ferreira Lima,&nbsp;Robert Handfield,&nbsp;Siavash H. Khajavi,&nbsp;Samuel Roscoe","doi":"10.1111/deci.12619","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12619","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The benefits of additive manufacturing (AM) extend beyond the attributes of physical products and production processes they enable. Experience with AM can augment the way design is approached and can increase opportunities to pivot toward less familiar design tasks. We begin this qualitative study with a natural experiment made possible by an exogenous shock: the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a three-stage case study approach using a grounded theory-building method, we contrast AM usage among a set of firms, half of which pivoted their resources away from their traditional production and toward a response to this shock. We engage in an abductive reasoning approach to consider common threads in AM capabilities that facilitated this pivoting. Our analyses suggest that the advanced use of generative design (GD), a category of computational technologies enabling novel and optimized design, is a critical attribute of these firms that ended up pivoting to make COVID-related products. Specifically, firms with experience applying this capability demonstrated a unique ability to pivot during this shock and emphasized their valuation of AM-enabled agility. We revisited these firms 2 years after initial contact and found that GD was associated with higher levels of innovation and was largely viewed by designers as a mechanism driving double-loop learning. Overall, our study provides insights into the symbiosis between human and artificially intelligent GD, and the role of such symbiosis in advancing AM capabilities.</p>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"55 4","pages":"325-345"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/deci.12619","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136232909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leveraging gamification technology to motivate environmentally responsible behavior: An empirical examination of Ant Forest","authors":"Qingyu Zhang,&nbsp;Muhammad Azfar Anwar","doi":"10.1111/deci.12618","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12618","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Realizing the role of their consumers in mitigating environmental problems, companies have started leveraging gamification technology with persuasive interventions to induce consumers’ behavioral changes. Ant Forest—a gamified initiative launched by a prominent Chinese fintech company—empowers users to manage their ecological footprint and promote ethical behavior. However, the research community has primarily focused on Ant Forest's adoption and continuation intention, paying limited attention to how gamification promotes users’ environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) in the postadoption stage. This study contributes to this domain by developing a model based on persuasion and motivation theories and the “affordances–psychological outcomes–behavioral outcomes” framework. This model highlights the impact of gamification on consumers' ERB through psychological need satisfaction and belief or attitude persuasion. A total of 1869 survey responses regarding the use of Ant Forest were collected from nine cities in China. The results demonstrate that, from gamification experiences with Ant Forest, users perceive psychological need satisfaction (i.e., perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness), which significantly explains their green beliefs and attitudes (i.e., green task performance, green belief confirmation, and green self-identity), leading to increased ERB. Additionally, users with a higher green absorptive capacity demonstrate a stronger link between green beliefs or attitudes and ERB. This research shifts the focus from adoption and continuation intention to postadoption behavioral modification and offers insights into creating effective gamification systems for fostering ethical behavior and addressing environmental concerns.</p>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"56 1","pages":"25-49"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135405478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sales manipulation strategies of competitive firms on an e-commerce platform: Beneficial or harmful?","authors":"Qing Zhang,&nbsp;Juan Li,&nbsp;Tiaojun Xiao","doi":"10.1111/deci.12616","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12616","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Consumers are affected by the relative sizes of products’ sales volumes, which is regarded as consumers’ sales comparison behavior when purchasing online. Therefore, some firms manipulate their sales volumes to attract consumers. To shed light on firms’ sales manipulation, we develop game theoretical models to investigate sales manipulation strategies for a high-quality firm and a low-quality firm on a platform. We identify conditions for firms’ sales manipulation and investigate its impact on the platform. We find the following: (1) A small amount of sales manipulation volumes may harm each firm. (2) When only the high-quality (low-quality) firm manipulates its sales volume, the total market share shrinks (expands), and the profit of the low-quality (high-quality) firm is damaged. In this case, the platform can only benefit from the high-quality firm's sales manipulation. When both firms manipulate sales volumes, each firm aims to claim a higher sales volume than its competitor. (3) At equilibrium, when the unit sales manipulation cost is intermediate, only the high-quality firm manipulates its sales volume. When the unit sales manipulation cost is low, both firms manipulate sales volumes and consequently get trapped in a Prisoner's Dilemma. In this case, the platform's profit cannot be improved. This study then incorporates considerations of consumers’ sales comparison behavior, nonlinear cost structures for sales manipulation, firms’ long-term vision, and sales manipulation strategy in competitive supply chains to reveal that most aforementioned results are qualitatively robust.</p>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"55 5","pages":"491-509"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135251602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Influenza vaccine contracts in developing nations—Coordination, flexibility, and vaccine coverage","authors":"Raunak Joshi,&nbsp;Sumanta Basu,&nbsp;Claudia Rosales,&nbsp;Arnab Adhikari","doi":"10.1111/deci.12615","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12615","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We study different contract mechanisms between a vaccine manufacturer (VM) and a vaccine procurement agency (VPA) to coordinate the two-peak influenza vaccine supply chain. Motivated by the prevalent industry contracts, we study two hybrid contracts under budget constraints, which allow flexibility in deciding the contractual parameters between the VM and the VPA. We consider the case of both private (for-profit) and public (not-for-profit) VPA and the impact of different objectives, such as profit and vaccine coverage, on contract choice. We show that for public VPAs or for private VPAs with low available budget, both hybrid contracts are equally preferred by VM and VPA. However, under high budget, the preferences of VPA and VM will differ. We then extend our models to consider the case of both private and public VPA coexisting in the market under both budget and vaccine availability constraints. Contrary to intuition, we find that the vaccine coverage provided by the public VPA is not always higher than the vaccine coverage provided by the private VPA, with the private VPA providing greater vaccine coverage under conditions of low budget and low vaccine availability. Our findings have important policy implications for governments of emerging economies with limited budget for mass vaccination programs.</p>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"55 5","pages":"436-455"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135817275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: decision science research opportunities","authors":"Christopher S. Tang","doi":"10.1111/deci.12614","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12614","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>As of July 2022, all Fortune 100 companies have made public announcements about their commitments to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). At the same time, more universities are offering DEI certificates or degree programs. Despite this recent social movement, DEI research in decision science remains nascent. DEI can be a politically sensitive topic, but its economic and social impact on organizations and employees deserves careful examination. This article intends to engender a discussion of various DEI research opportunities for decision science researchers to explore.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"55 1","pages":"7-16"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43633255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When investors meet consumers: The roles and interactions of different backers in the crowdfunding market","authors":"Feiqiong Wei,&nbsp;Yinliang (Ricky) Tan,&nbsp;Haibing Gao,&nbsp;Huazhong Zhao","doi":"10.1111/deci.12612","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12612","url":null,"abstract":"<p>By harnessing the power of the crowd, crowdfunding has changed the way startup ventures, innovation-minded entrepreneurs, and private individuals raise capital. Reward-based crowdfunding is an established and attractive fundraising option for entrepreneurs with creative projects, while investment-based crowdfunding has also gained popularity thanks to the progress of related regulations. Both types of crowdfunding are drawing a growing number of startups that seek funding opportunities, although backers on different types of crowdfunding platforms exhibit distinct motivations. Understanding the behavior and interaction of different types of backers is thus critical for a startup to launch a successful crowdfunding campaign across distinct platforms.</p><p>To address this issue, we conduct a field study on a popular crowdfunding platform, where each campaign offered both reward- and investment-based funding. Interestingly, we find a positive relationship between investor contributions in the early stage of the campaign and the likelihood of the campaign's success. Our empirical analysis reveals that investor–consumer interaction mediates the main effect of early investor contributions. Moreover, the positive main effect is stronger when a larger amount of project-relevant information is released and when a higher level of customization (using price discrimination or product differentiation) is offered in reward-based funding options. These results are consistent with several robustness checks. Our findings provide relevant managerial implications for entrepreneurs and valuable insights regarding platform design.</p>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"55 5","pages":"474-490"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44006487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of transportation capacity in pre-positioning humanitarian supplies","authors":"Alexander Rothkopf,&nbsp;Jason Acimovic,&nbsp;Jarrod Goentzel","doi":"10.1111/deci.12610","DOIUrl":"10.1111/deci.12610","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Humanitarian action saves lives by delivering supplies following a disaster. To effectively prepare, large humanitarian organizations solve optimization models to allocate inventory minimizing expected time-to-respond. However, these organizations also rely on transportation carriers to deliver this inventory, a feature often omitted from such models. Part of the reason is that capacity data on third-party carriers are scant. Nevertheless, there is value in humanitarian organizations asking themselves the following: how should such data be incorporated into a model; how important is it to incorporate transportation capacities; where is it worth increasing transportation capacity? Building on previous inventory optimization models, we partner with the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to answer these questions by incorporating transportation market capacity. Using public and proprietary data sets, we first approximate the trucking capacity near FEMA's warehouses. We develop intuitive metrics that guide practitioners to make decisions, understand trade-offs in complex networks, and negotiate contracts. We show that when optimizing inventory, <i>ignoring</i> trucking capacity can lead to up to 18% higher response times. In discussions with FEMA, our research has guided strategic inventory deployment and has been a catalyst in a new initiative for transportation contracting.</p>","PeriodicalId":48256,"journal":{"name":"DECISION SCIENCES","volume":"55 5","pages":"456-473"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/deci.12610","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46839627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}