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Since 2016, organized retailers in Colombia have struggled against a new retail format: Hard-discount stores. This sales channel fulfills essential shopping basket products with consistent low prices. To be competitive and preserve their market position, organized retailers must improve their processes and their pricing decisions. Promotions and discounts have been considered as an effective alternative to compete. This study analyzes the impact of joint prices decisions over the individual and global financial key performance indicators when a collaborative strategy is adopted. Our case study comprises a supermarket chain Colombian retailer and a consumer packaged-goods manufacturer to analyze its supply chain performance. The analysis considers different product categories (food, personal care, and cosmetics) and country regions. The results highlight that benefits are unequally distributed along different echelons and supply chain performance is affected when pricing decisions are made independently.

Uneven distribution and mistarget beneficiaries are among problems encountered during post-disaster relief operations in 2010 Mount Merapi eruption. The purpose of this paper is to develop an empirically founded agent-based simulation model addressing the evacuation dynamics and to explore coordination mechanism and other promising strategies during last-mile relief delivery.

An agent-based model which was specified and parameterized by empirical research (interviews and survey) was developed to understand the mechanism of individual decision making underlying the evacuation dynamics. A set of model testing was conducted to evaluate confidence level of the model in representing the evacuation dynamics during post-disaster of 2010 Mount Merapi eruption. Three scenarios of last-mile relief delivery at both strategic and operational levels were examined to evaluate quantitatively the effectiveness of the coordination mechanism and to explore other promising strategies.

Results indicate that the empirically founded agent-based modeling was able to reproduce the general pattern of observable Internal Displaced Persons based on government records, both at micro and macro levels, with a statistically non-significant difference. Low hazard perception and leader-following behavior which refuses to evacuate are the two factors responsible for late evacuation. Unsurprisingly, coordination through information sharing results in better performance than without coordination. To deal with both uneven distribution and long-term demand fulfillment, coordination among volunteers during aid distribution (at downstream operation) is not sufficient. The downstream coordination should also be accompanied with coordination between aid centers at the upstream operation. Furthermore, the coordination which is combined with other operational strategies, such as clustering strategy, using small-sized trucks and pre-positioning strategy, seems to be promising. It appears that the combined strategy of coordination and clustering strategy performs best among other combined strategies.

The significant role of early evacuation and self-evacuation behavior toward efficient evacuation indicates that human factor (i.e. hazard perception and cultural factor) should be considered in designing evacuation plan. Early warning system through both technology and community empowerment is necessary to support early evacuation. The early warning system should also be accompanied with at least 69 percent of the population performing self-evacuation behavior for the effective evacuation. As information sharing through coordination is necessary to avoid redundant efforts, uneven distribution and eventually to reduce unmet demand, the government can act as a coordinating actor to authorize the operation and mobilize the resources. The combination of coordination and another strategy reducing lead time such as clustering analysis, thus increasing responsiveness, is seemly strategy for efficient and effective last-mile relief distribution.

Literature on coordination is dominated by qualitative approach, which is difficult to evaluate its effectiveness quantitatively. Providing realistic setting of the evacuation dynamics in the course of the 2010 Mount Merapi eruption, the empirically founded agent-based model can be used to understand the factors influencing the evacuation dynamics and subsequently to quantitatively examine coordination mechanisms and other potential strategies toward efficient and effective last-mile relief distribution.

Our prior work has identified a trade-off that new entrants face in obtaining favorable market reception, whereby initial entrants suffer from a deficit of legitimacy whereas later entrants suffer from a deficit of authenticity. This research has also proposed that a single mechanism is responsible for this trade-off: the tendency for customers and other stakeholders to assess the entrant's claim to originality based on the visible work that it has done to legitimate the new product or organizational form. This chapter extends and deepens our understanding of such “legitimation work” by showing how it can illuminate cases that seem in the first instance to defy this trade-off. In particular, we focus on two “off-diagonal” cases: (a) when, as in the case of “patent trolls” and fraudulent innovators, early entrants are viewed as inauthentic despite having a credible claim to originality; (b) when late entrants, as in the case of Dell Computers, mechanical watches and baseball ballparks, are viewed as authentic despite obviously not being the originators. We clarify how each off-diagonal case represents an ‘exception that proves the rule’ whereby audiences attribute authenticity on the basis of legitimation work rather than on the order of entry per se. The last case also leads to an opportunity to clarify why “cultural appropriation” can sometimes project authenticity and sometimes inauthenticity, why audiences bother to make inferences about a producer's authenticity on the basis of visible legitimation work, and why legitimacy is a universal goal of early movers whereas authenticity varies in its importance.

It has long been known that family firms have a high mortality rate and that increasing these firms' survival rate is one of the most difficult challenges faced by both public policies and scholars. While most policies and researchers have focused on the business side, in recent years, more attention has been paid to the family sphere. This chapter goes one step further by not focusing on one side or another of this binomial, but on the relationship between both. In particular, we analyze the paradoxes emerging between the different inter- and intragenerational dyads that coexist in family firms (mother-daughter, father-son, mother-son, father-daughter, brother-sister, wife-husband, etc.) to open new lines of debate and propose new basis for the establishment of family firms-targeted public politics. We propose policies that will help family decision-makers to manage unique paradoxes that characterize family businesses.

The objective of this study focuses on the characterization of the Latin American entrepreneurial profile from a psychological perspective. In order to do this, a journey through time was carried out in the study of the entrepreneurial subject, from the great classics to the contemporary era, the era of knowledge, innovation, technology, and revolution. In the Latin American context, the role of the entrepreneur is limited due to vulnerable institutions, corruption, populism, and socioeconomic inequity. However, the new information and communication technologies constitute an ideal route for growth in the region. The fundamental element is the psychological profile of the entrepreneur, which is made up of a set of personal characteristics, among which innovation, achievement motivation, self-efficacy, moderate propensity for risk, creativity, perseverance, proactivity, flexibility, locus of control stand out, internal, adaptability, responsibility, ability to recognize opportunities, autonomy, commitment, handling problems and managerial skills. Finally, case studies from countries such as Mexico, Peru, and Chile are presented. It is a documentary study which reflects that Latin American entrepreneurs share the same psychological attributes as those who live in developed countries. However, obstacles arising from the lack of environment and public policies are imposed on entrepreneurial activity. The culture of a country and the formative role of education can become limiting or enhancing factors; therefore, it is necessary to bet on beliefs and convictions attached to innovation, which strengthen the psychological attributes of the entrepreneurial spirit.

The purpose of this paper is to set out a methodology for characterising the complexity of air traffic control (ATC) sectors based on individual operations. This machine learning methodology also learns from the data on which the model is based.

The methodology comprises three steps. Firstly, a statistical analysis of individual operations is carried out using elementary or initial variables, and these are combined using machine learning. Secondly, based on the initial statistical analysis and using machine learning techniques, the impact of air traffic flows on an ATC sector are determined. The last step is to calculate the complexity of the ATC sector based on the impact of its air traffic flows.

The results obtained are logical from an operational point of view and are easy to interpret. The classification of ATC sectors based on complexity is quite accurate.

The methodology is in its preliminary phase and has been tested with very little data. Further refinement is required.

The methodology can be of significant value to ATC in that when applied to real cases, ATC will be able to anticipate the complexity of the airspace and optimise its resources accordingly.

Air traffic controllers (ATCOs) play a fundamental role in the safe, orderly and efficient management of air traffic. In the interests of improving safety, it would be beneficial to know what the workload thresholds are that permit ATCOs to carry out their functions safely and efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a simulation platform to be able to validate an affective-cognitive performance methodology based on neurophysiological factors applied to ATCOs, to define the said thresholds.

The process followed in setting up the simulation platform is explained, with particular emphasis on the design of the program of exercises. The tools designed to obtain additional information on the actions of ATCOs and how their workload will be evaluated are also explained.

To establish the desired methodology, a series of exercises has been designed to be simulated. This paper describes the project development framework and validates it, taking preliminary results as a reference. The validation of the framework justifies further study to extend the preliminary results.

This paper describes the first part of the project only, i.e. the definition of the problem and a proposed methodology to arrive at a workable solution. Further work will concentrate on carrying out a program of simulations and subsequent detailed analysis of the data obtained, based on the conclusions drawn from the preliminary results presented.

The methodology will be an important tool from the point of view of safety and the work carried out by ATCOs. This first phase is crucial as it provides a solid foundation for later stages.

With the increasing urbanization rates in emerging countries such as the ones in Latin America and the Caribbean, urban logistics solutions and initiatives are widely needed. Urban planners often consider only passenger transportation and leave freight transportation unattended, thus increasing externalities and degrading the transportation of goods. This chapter presents three urban logistics solutions, which intend to tackle problems related to urbanization and last mile delivery operations challenges by evaluating location models for loading and unloading bays, urban transfer centers location models, and freight trip generation models. The presented solutions were proposed by several researchers of the Institute of Innovation in Productivity and Logistics CATENA-USFQ over the last four years and remain theoretical at the moment. However, we present estimated results of potential implementations in three districts of Quito: Historic Center, Entertainment District, and Corporate District. This chapter not only presents the mentioned urban logistics solutions in Quito but also gives an overview of the followed methodology, which can be replicated in countries and cities of similar characteristics of the region.