【Time】14:00-15:00, August 10th, 2017, Thursday
【Venue】Room 510, Shunde Building
【Speaker】Dr. Pascale Crama
【Host】Dr. Wanshan Zhu
【Title】 When (and How) to Encourage Cooperation across Projects
【Abstract】Companies struggle with timely project execution despite employing sophisticated management methods. Although cooperation across projects is critical for time performance, it has not been explicitly incorporated into project management (PM) systems. We model a PM system, based on an innovative real-life practice, that both incorporates and shapes project managers' cooperative behavior. A help process is at the core of this system, in which project managers may ask for and provide help while top management facilitates such exchanges. We find that companies should take a nuanced approach when designing help exchange and time-based incentives in tandem. A company that faces high rewards for project recovery and high complementarity of help can benefit from inducing help because doing so enables the pursuit of projects it might abandon if delayed or even at the outset. One profitable approach is asymmetric project engagement, whereby a firm uses the help process to induce varying levels of engagement in otherwise symmetric projects. A help process also allows the company to “tune” the timing of engagement by front-loading or back-loading project work. Yet implementing a help system is not always recommended because a no-help system may perform better, especially when there are low rewards for project recovery and low opportunity costs for project capacity.
【Bio Note】Pascale Crama holds a PhD in Decision Science from London Business School and is currently an Associate Professor in Operations Management at Lee Kong Chian School of Business (SMU, Singapore). Pascale’s research interests are in project management, new product development, R&D licensing, as well as revenue management in advertising. Her papers have been published in Management Science, Operations Research, and Manufacturing and Service Operations Management as well as other journals. Pascale has also written award-winning case studies and is a Lee Kong Chian Fellow at SMU. She is currently serving on the board of the TIMES Society of INFORMS.
All interested are welcome!