According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

/pdf/the-theory-of-industrial-organization-19bejph0ej.pdf

The Theory of Industrial Organization

Resource-based theories of competitive advantage: A ten-year retrospective on the resource-based view

Typologies are an important way of organizing the complex cause-effect relationships that are key building blocks of the strategy and organization literatures. Here, I develop a novel theoretical perspective on causal core and periphery, which is based on how elements of a configuration are connected to outcomes. Using data on hightechnology firms, I empirically investigate configurations based on the Miles and Snow typology using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). My findings show how the theoretical perspective developed here allows for a detailed analysis of causal core, periphery, and asymmetry, shifting the focus to midrange theories of causal processes.

/pdf/building-better-causal-theories-a-fuzzy-set-approach-to-5esgthzjgt.pdf

Building Better Causal Theories: A Fuzzy Set Approach to Typologies in Organization Research

Mixed methods research offers powerful tools for investigating complex processes and systems in health and health care. This article describes integration principles and practices at three levels in mixed methods research and provides illustrative examples. Integration at the study design level occurs through three basic mixed method designs—exploratory sequential, explanatory sequential, and convergent—and through four advanced frameworks—multistage, intervention, case study, and participatory. Integration at the methods level occurs through four approaches. In connecting, one database links to the other through sampling. With building, one database informs the data collection approach of the other. When merging, the two databases are brought together for analysis. With embedding, data collection and analysis link at multiple points. Integration at the interpretation and reporting level occurs through narrative, data transformation, and joint display. The fit of integration describes the extent the qualitative and quantitative findings cohere. Understanding these principles and practices of integration can help health services researchers leverage the strengths of mixed methods.

/pdf/achieving-integration-in-mixed-methods-designs-principles-36zfo3ajv4.pdf

Achieving Integration in Mixed Methods Designs—Principles and Practices

In this Paper, we empirically test for network effects and preannouncement effects in the DVD market. We do this by measuring the effect of potential (incompatible) competition on a network undergoing growth. We find that there are network effects. The data is generally consistent with the hypothesis that the preannouncement of DIVX temporarily slowed down the adoption of DVD technology.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/DP3634.pdf?abstractid=361041&mirid=1

The DVD Versus DIVX Standard War: Empirical Evidence of Network Effects and Preannouncement Effects

We call markets in which intermediaries sell networks of suppliers to consumers who are uncertain about their needs "option demand markets." In these markets, suppliers may grant the intermediaries discounts in order to be admitted to their networks. We derive a measure of each supplier's market power within the network; the measure is based on the additional ex ante expected utility consumers obtain from the supplier's inclusion. We empirically validate the WTP measure by considering managed care purchases of hospital services in the San Diego market. Finally, we present three applications, including an analysis of hospital mergers in San Diego.

/pdf/competition-and-market-power-in-option-demand-markets-5b35j63qfq.pdf

Competition and market power in option demand markets.

Pricing by non-profit institutions: The case of hospital cost-shifting

Consider the symmetric equilibrium of a monopolistically competitive industry in which manufacturers select price and quality to maximize expected profit and consumers maximize utility by conducting costly search among sellers using an optimal sequential search rule. Consumers search among sellers because (i) each consumer idiosyncratically evaluates each seller's quality and (ii) a retailing sector generates variation in the prices consumers pay. Consumers are handicapped in their search because their observations of firms' price and quality levels are noisy. An improvement in price information is represented by an increase in the precision with which consumers observe sellers' prices. Similarly, an improvement in quality information is represented by an increase in precision with which consumers observe sellers' quality levels. An improvement of either type of information may increase or decrease welfare. The perverse case in which improved price information decreases welfare occurs when price competition among firms becomes so intense relative to quality competition that firms select severely suboptimal levels of quality. * A consumer searching among monopolistically competitive sellers may have difficulty accurately observing the price and quality of each seller's product. He must infer from his prior beliefs and noisy observations the true values of the product's price and quality attributes. We show that increasing the precision with which consumers observe an attribute of a product makes the inference problem easier and causes the demand the seller faces with respect to that attribute to become more elastic. The equilibrium level of that attribute changes accordingly, and since the equilibrium levels of price and quality interact, the equilibrium level of the other attribute changes as well. These equilibrium effects can be perverse in two ways. First, if the precision of quality observation is fixed, then improvement in the precision of price observation can reduce welfare. The chain of causation is this: Increasing the precision of price observation causes price to fall. The resulting, smaller price-cost margin induces sellers to reduce quality. De

David Dranove

Papers

The DVD Versus DIVX Standard War: Empirical Evidence of Network Effects and Preannouncement Effects

Competition and market power in option demand markets.

Pricing by non-profit institutions: The case of hospital cost-shifting

Monopolistic competition when price and quality are imperfectly observable

Hospital consolidation and costs: another look at the evidence