Corporate tournaments and executive compensation: evidence from the UK

This study tests the implications of tournament theory using data on 100 U.K. stock market companies, covering over 500 individual executives, in the late 1990s. Our results provide some evidence consistent with the operation of tournament mechanisms within the U.K. business context. Firstly, we find a convex relationship between executive pay and organizational level and secondly, that the gap between CEO pay and other board executives (i.e., tournament prize) is positively related to the number of participants in the tournament. However, we also show that the variation in executive team pay has little role in determining company performance.

Improving “last mile” delivery performance to retailers in hub and spoke distribution systems

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the “last mile” delivery link between a hub and spoke distribution system and its customers. The proportion of retail, as opposed to non-retail (trade) customers using this type of distribution system has been growing in the UK. The paper shows the applicability of simulation to demonstrate changes in overall delivery policy to these customers. Design/methodology/approach – A case-based research method was chosen with the aim to provide an exemplar of practice and test the proposition that simulation can be used as a tool to investigate changes in delivery policy. Findings – The results indicate the potential improvement in delivery performance, specifically in meeting timed delivery performance, that could be made by having separate retail and non-retail delivery runs from the spoke terminal to the customer. Research limitations/implications – The simulation study does not attempt to generate a vehicle routing schedule but demonstrates the effects of a change on delivery performance when comparing delivery policies. Practical implications – Scheduling and spreadsheet software are widely used and provide useful assistance in the design of delivery runs and the allocation of staff to those delivery runs. This paper demonstrates to managers the usefulness of investigating the efficacy of current design rules and presents simulation as a suitable tool for this analysis. Originality/value – A simulation model is used in a novel application to test a change in delivery policy in response to a changing delivery profile of increased retail deliveries.

A cost Malmquist productivity index capturing group performance

This paper develops an index for comparing the productivity of groups of operating units in cost terms when input prices are available. In that sense it represents an extension of a similar index available in the literature for comparing groups of units in terms of technical productivity in the absence of input prices. The index is decomposed to reveal the origins of differences in performance of the groups of units both in terms of technical and cost productivity. The index and its decomposition are of value in contexts where the need arises to compare units which perform the same function but they can be grouped by virtue of the fact that they operate in different contexts as might for example arise in comparisons of water or gas transmission companies operating in different countries.