IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orserv/v5y2013i3p249-262.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unfair Consequence of Fair Competition in Service Systems—An Agent-Based and Queueing Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Wai Kin (Victor) Chan

    (Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180)

  • Baojun Gao

    (School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei Province 430072, People's Republic of China)

Abstract

This paper considers the competition of service centers within a service system. Each service center is modeled as a multiple-server queue. Service centers compete with each other in a fair manner and adjust their service resources (number of servers) to accommodate the demand obtained from the competition. An agent-based approach is used to model the competition and adjustment processes. Our objective is to study the size distribution of service centers under a fair competition, i.e., to answer the question, will the size distribution be uniform, normal, or skewed? It turns out that a skewed distribution (e.g., power law distribution) is obtained. Two data sets of hospital sizes are analyzed and are found to have a skewed distribution. An analytical argument is provided to explain how a fair competition could give rise to a skewed (i.e., unfair) size distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Wai Kin (Victor) Chan & Baojun Gao, 2013. "Unfair Consequence of Fair Competition in Service Systems—An Agent-Based and Queueing Approach," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(3), pages 249-262, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orserv:v:5:y:2013:i:3:p:249-262
    DOI: 10.1287/serv.2013.0050
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/serv.2013.0050
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/serv.2013.0050?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orserv:v:5:y:2013:i:3:p:249-262. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.