Ayako Kawai

This research demonstrates the effects of learner's homophily and diversity in groups on active speech in PBL (problem-based learning), which is one of the concepts in active learning. The date is questionnaires of the supply chain management game for business people. The multivariate analysis reveals that a higher homogeneity of the field in which the learner is interested and greater diversity of work experience, lead to an increase in the learner's active speech. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are in suggestions for team formation among businesspeople, for the promotion of active speech in learners based on organizational learning theory.

This study demonstrates the influence of a strategy for maintaining proper inventory and rethinking strategy with inter-organizational learning on the bullwhip effect in a supply chain (SC). The bullwhip effect is essentially a phenomenon of demand variability amplification along an SC. We use game data from the latest online supply chain management (SCM) game by businessmen and researchers for analysis. The result of the random-effects model shows that even if there is no strategy, the dialogue in the supply chain has an influence on reducing the bullwhip effect. We also demonstrate the importance of dialogue with strategy for reducing inventory cost. This research proposes the importance of inter-organizational learning for the optimization of SC.

The network structures of supply chains (SC) are extremely complicated to understand in their entirety. However, complicated social challenges involving a chain of decision making might be realized through gaming simulations. This study uses a supply chain management (SCM) game to define effective strategies for decision making in a SC. The game rules and system architecture should be simple but should capture the true SCM nature. For this purpose, our developed SCM game applies an unbalanced social networking service system platform. In contrast to previous business games, the game is accessible through mobile devices such as smart phones. The new SCM game was tested at two universities, and most of the students spontaneously grasped the bullwhip effect and the importance of knowledge sharing between SC organizations. Furthermore, their realization of various difficulties in a SC exceeded our expectations. In addition to offering educational benefits, our game could become an important tool in future SC research.

E-marketplaces had brought innovative impact in supply chain in industries. This paper focused on two successful business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplaces in Japan, and has analysed and characterized to show their respective key enablers. We have found that a B2B e-marketplace needs to be a platform for customers so that it becomes a fundamental part of customers 'business processes. Further, we developed a methodology, called soft innovation architecture (soft IA), for formulation of service innovation strategy. This builds a concrete representation of strategy of each e-marketplace. In soft IA, we represent a birds-eye view to analyse the strategy, and then conclude their strategic superiority from the resource-based view. In the future, we will expand soft IA to investigate dynamic capability of the e-marketplace in order to clarify the nature of appropriate change of their strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a fundamental concept of the Service ProductivitySimulator. In Japanese service industries, some high-performance organizations already have practicedthe Service Target Costing (Fig. 3), which is a new Japanese management accounting practicefor design and development of successful services. However, they need CAD for services and a newtechnology for scientific simulation about the future service performances such as productivity andprofitability. In this paper, we try to argue a fundamental concept of the simulator with resource-usageview (Figs. 1 & 2), through building a conceptual model of typical service unit (Fig. 4).

There are many considerable issues for new-created service to success in the market. It should be considered individual situation in each business firstly, and then, aspects of implementation such as functionality of the service, consistency of activities, feasibility and so on. In this research, we suggest a methodology of SSM-IA which visualize and analyze service innovation system from the viewpoint of holistically consistency. With this methodology as a communication tool, one's services are visualized and the working factors are expressed. Furthermore, the success factors, improvements and developing new services can be discussed.

After introducing the innovation architecture for service, this paper shows how business process engineering is used with the architecture. In particular, dynamic properties of a business process will be specified in relation to information systems in the process. The dynamic properties of the process are inventory level, throughput and cycle time that are known as the Little's law. The concept of business transaction systems is used, which is a discrete-event model of a business process with information system. In this sense, business process engineering can be viewed as discipline that mediates service innovation and service-oriented architecture.