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Dedicated algorithm and modeling improvements continue to advance the state of the art with respect to vehicle routing problems (VRPs). Despite these academic achievements, solving large VRP instances sufficiently fast for real-life applicability remains challenging. By exploiting VRP solution characteristics in an effective manner, this paper arrives at a powerful and fast optimization heuristic. Its primary contributions are threefold: a ruin method, a recreate method, and a fleet minimization procedure. The ruin method functions via adjacent string removal, introducing with it a novel property regarding vehicle routing problems that we term spatial slack , whereas the recreate method is categorized as greedy insertion with blinks. Combining these results in slack induction by string removals (SISRs), a powerful ruin and recreate approach. The fleet minimization procedure, meanwhile, introduces an absences-based acceptance criterion that serves as a complementary optimization component for when minimizing the number of vehicles constitutes the primary VRP objective. Together these three elements provide a suite of simple, powerful, and easily reproducible algorithmic methods that are successfully applied not only to the capacitated VRP but also to a wide range of related problems such as pickup and delivery problems and others that include time windows. SISRs serves to strip back the layers of complexity and specialization synonymous with the trend of algorithmic development throughout recent decades. Moreover, such simplicity and reproducibility are shown to not necessarily come at the expense of solution quality, with SISRs consistently outperforming alternative general approaches as well as dedicated single-purpose methods. Finally, aside from performance-related criteria, SISRs also serves to showcase a fresh perspective with respect to VRPs more generally, introducing a range of new terminology and procedures that, it is hoped, will invigorate further research and innovation.

This study investigates how organizational slack affects corporate social performance (CSP). Based on a sample of 1,299 Chinese listed firms, our results show that only unabsorbed slack contributes to CSP and the positive relationship between unabsorbed slack and CSP is consistent with the relationship between unabsorbed slack and corporate financial performance (CFP). Our results also show that absorbed slack generates a negative impact on CSP. Furthermore, our findings indicate that state ownership has a negative impact on the relationship between unabsorbed slack and CSP. This finding illustrates that state ownership weakens unabsorbed slack’s contribution to CSP.

COVID-19 has caused tremendous damage to global economies, and similar health crises are expected to happen again. This study tests whether slack resources would enable companies to prepare for such uncertainties. Specifically, we explored the influence of the COVID-19 patient occurrence on corporate financial performance and the buffering effect of financial slacks using Chinese listed companies’ data during 2021. We also examined whether this effect differs across firms’ financial health and industry. Test results are as follows. First, consistent with the recent studies on pandemics, the degree of COVID-19 prevalence had a negative impact on the Chinese company’s financial performance, and slack resources offset this adverse effect. Second, slack’s buffering effects appeared mostly in financially constrained companies. Third, such effects mostly appeared in industries vulnerable to the COVID-19 shock. In the business environment of 2021, adapted to COVID-19, our main test result seems to mainly come from companies with a greater need for slack. Our tests imply that, despite differences in the degree of accessibility to resources, excess resources help companies overcome the COVID-19 crisis, which means that firms can more efficiently respond to economic shocks such as COVID-19 if they reserve past profits as free resources. This study contributes to the literature in that there is limited research on the slack resources’ buffering effect on the COVID-19 shock and that this study works as a robustness test as it uses data from one of the East Asian regions at a time when the control of COVID-19 was relatively consistent and successful, which can limit the effect of COVID-19 and slacks.

This paper presents an online trajectory optimization method for a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) based on second-order cone programming (SOCP) with lossless convexification. By improving the formulation and parameterization of the control variables, issues associated with large control oscillations and poor convergence are effectively mitigated. First, the original non-convex problem is transformed into a sequence of convex subproblems through linearization, lossless convexification, and discretization. Control constraints, integral penalty terms, and slack variables are then incorporated to enhance numerical stability and solution accuracy. Finally, a trust-region updating strategy is employed to guarantee convergence. Simulation results under complex operational constraints demonstrate that the proposed method achieves faster computation and requires fewer iterations than conventional approaches, while maintaining strong convergence properties and robustness.

Research summary: Prior literature drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm has not considered how resource constraints impact the direction of organizational change in response to performance shortfalls relative to aspirations. We argue that decreasing financial resources resulting from substantial performance shortfalls and the absence or availability of slack resources together affect the emphasis on different types of organizational change in response to performance shortfalls. Using data on the acquisition and divestment behavior of 530 companies in the information and communications technology sector from 1992 to 2014, we find that the frequency of resource-consuming acquisitions and of resource-freeing divestments are affected differently by performance below aspirations and that these relationships are moderated by the level of financial slack. Managerial summary: This paper examines whether firms respond to performance shortfalls with acquisitions or divestments. We argue and show that the closer the firm is to the aspired level of performance, the more likely it is to respond with resource-consuming acquisitions to close the performance gap, whereas the further it is from aspired performance, the more likely the firm is to respond with divestments to free resources. Financial slack weakens these relationships between performance relative to aspirations and acquisitions or divestments such that it increases the likelihood of a response through acquisitions while it reduces the likelihood of a response through divestments.

Research summary: Integrating the behavioral and institutional perspectives, we propose that a country's formal institutions, particularly its legal frameworks, affect managers' deployment of slack resources. Specifically, we explore the moderating effects of creditor and employee rights on the performance effects of slack. Using longitudinal data from 162,633 European private firms in 26 countries, we find that financial slack enhances firm performance at diminishing rates, whereas human resource (HR) slack lowers performance at diminishing rates. However, financial slack has a more positive effect on firm performance in countries with weaker creditor rights, whereas HR slack has a more negative effect on performance in countries with stronger employee rights. The results provide a richer view of the relationship between slack and firm performance than currently assumed in the literature. Managerial summary: A key dilemma managers often encounter is whether, on the one hand, they should build in excess resources to buffer their firms from internal and external shocks and to pursue new opportunities or whether, on the other hand, they should develop \"lean\" firms. Our study suggests that excess cash resources—which are usually viewed as easy to redeploy—benefit firm performance, especially when firms operate in countries with weaker creditor rights. However, excess human resources—which are usually viewed as more difficult to redeploy—hamper firm performance, particularly when firms operate in countries with stronger labor protection laws. Thus, the management of slack resources critically depends on the characteristics of these resources (e.g., redeployability) and the institutional context in which managers operate.

For the constrained missile trajectory optimization, this paper presents a pseudospectral model predictive convex programming (PMPCP) method using the augmented convex-concave decomposition (ACCD). First, the Legendre-Gauss (LG) PMPCP is utilized to construct the linear sensitivity equation between state increments and control corrections, which discretizes the nonconvex dynamics at a small scale. Second, based on the ACCD, the nonlinear equality constraint on constant acceleration is relaxed to two inequalities, which can be convexified easily by using two slack variables. Thus, the convex programming problem related to the constrained trajectory optimization is established. Third, the ACCD-based PMPCP is defined to solve the convexified missile trajectory optimization problem considering final impact angle constraints. Numerical simulations show that the ACCD-based PMPCP has significant advantages in numerical accuracy and convergence efficiency.

This paper examines whether a firm's financial performance (FP) is associated with superior environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores in emerging markets of multinationals in Latin America. The study addresses the current research gap on this issue; it develops hypotheses and tests them by applying linear regressions with a data panel drawn from the Thomson Reuters Eikon™ database to analyse data on 104 multinationals from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru between 2011 and 2015. The results suggest that the relationship between the ESG score and FP is significantly statistically negative. Furthermore, in examining environmental, social and governance separately to accurately determine each variable's relationship to multilatinas' FP, the results reveal a negative relationship. Finally, the empirical analysis provides evidence for a moderating effect of financial slack and geographic international diversification on the relationship between ESG dimensions and firms' FP. This study furthers understanding of the relationship between ESG dimensions and FP for the Latin American business context.

PurposePlanning is a perennially popular management tool with an ambiguous relationship to learning and performance. The purpose of this study attempts to resolve this ambiguity. The authors suggest that the critical question is not whether firms need learning for planning to influence performance, but when different firms experience different performance outcomes. The authors propose firms will benefit from strategic planning only when they learn from planning and have the resources to act on their learning.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected data from a survey of 293 individuals from 191 publicly listed US firms.FindingsOrganizational learning mediates the relations between strategic planning and organizational performance. This mediated relationship is positively moderated by high levels of human resource slack and moderate to high levels of financial slack.Research limitations/implicationsThe study provides evidence for previous theoretical arguments on the planning–learning relationship while extending this research by finding a complicated moderating effect of slack. The study also adds to the existing debate on optimal slack levels by suggesting that having bundles of slack resources may matter more than having uniformly high or low levels of slack. A cross-sectional study means the authors cannot infer causation.Practical implicationsWhile strategic planning is a common practice, companies may vary in their planning methodologies, influencing the outcomes of planning. Firms seeking to benefit from planning need to have both the mechanisms to learn from planning and slack to deploy these mechanisms.Originality/valueThese findings clarify the planning–learning–performance relationship while challenging the assumption of an average effect of planning on performance across firms.

PurposeOrganisational slack has been widely considered in strategic management, but there is a gap in understanding the process of accumulation and application of slack resources. From a dynamic perspective and over an extended period of time, this paper analyses the management of slack resources and evaluates whether the different behaviours, in relation to the accumulation and consumption of slack resources, have any effect on performance.Design/methodology/approachThe resource-based view and the dynamic extension of this theory, i.e. resource management and resource orchestration, were analysed in order to evaluate how slack resources can be managed and generate value. Assuming a configurational approach, the analysis was structured into two stages to answer the proposed hypothesis. The first stage studied whether there were different patterns of management of slack resources over time using the DistatisR package. The second stage evaluated which behaviours had the greatest impact in terms of profitability by using a dynamic panel data regression.FindingsThree different types of slack resource management were found in companies: efficient, effective and erratic. Different types do not have the same impact on performance.Originality/valueThe dynamic management of slack resources has scarcely been considered, even during periods of crisis and economic expansion. This research advances the understanding of how firms transform slack resources into performance from a dynamic perspective.