This paper assesses the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their impact on the economic performance of small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) of three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Findings of the paper suggest that the diffusion of ICT among...

This paper examines the nature of virtual teams and their place in the networked economy. It presents a framework for categorising virtual teams and argues that fundamental changes have taken place in the business environment which force people and organisations to operate in 'two spaces'...

After a characterization of the cost-oriented assembly line balancing problem it will be shown that by loading the stations maximally the cost-oriented optimum can be missed. Instead of loading the stations maximally the criterion two-stations-rule a has to be used. For generating optimal...

This paper is focused on the solution quality and computing time requirements of heuristic methods for cost-oriented assembly line balancing. It is based on a recent paper (Amen, International Journal of Production Economics 68 (2000), which describes in detail the solution process of existent...

This paper is concerned with cost-oriented assembly line balancing. This problem occurs especially in the final assembly of automotives, consumer durables or personal computers, where production is still very labour- intensive, and where the wage rates depend on the requirements and...

The present paper develops a basic framework for evaluating and optimizing profits in a business operation. In developing a business we are often faced with an infinity of choices ranging from what products or services to sell and what customers to target to how to structure and manage the...

This paper addresses the choice between different exit routes of venture capitalists for a project yielding a quality-improving product innovation. We explicitly introduce product market characteristics into the analysis with the aim to identify their effects on the optimal exit strategy and on...

This paper describes work carried out at the University of York; its contents do not represent the views or opinions of BT. It provides an example of how insights into the field of IS can be gained by looking at it from the perspective of other academic disciplines. Based on the idea that...

We use store-level data to document the exact process of changing prices and to directly measure menu costs at five multi-store supermarket chains. We show that changing prices in these establishments is a complex process, requiring dozens of steps and a nontrivial amount of resources. The menu...

We combine two data sets to study price rigidity. The first consists of weekly time series of retail, wholesale, and spot prices for twelve products. These time series contain two exogenous cost shocks. We find that prices exhibit more rigidity in response to the second shock than the first. The...