Using Intelligent Agents to Understand Management Practices and Retail Productivity

TL;DR

This paper explores using intelligent agent-based modeling to understand how management practices influence retail productivity, presenting initial case study data and a prototype retail simulation.

Contribution

It introduces an agent-based simulation approach to analyze management practices and retail productivity, a novel application in this domain.

Findings

Case study data collected from a UK department store

First version of a retail branch simulator developed and tested

Potential for intelligent agents to support sustainable organizational capabilities

Abstract

Intelligent agents offer a new and exciting way of understanding the world of work. In this paper we apply agent-based modeling and simulation to investigate a set of problems in a retail context. Specifically, we are working to understand the relationship between human resource management practices and retail productivity. Despite the fact we are working within a relatively novel and complex domain, it is clear that intelligent agents could offer potential for fostering sustainable organizational capabilities in the future. The project is still at an early stage. So far we have conducted a case study in a UK department store to collect data and capture impressions about operations and actors within departments. Furthermore, based on our case study we have built and tested our first version of a retail branch simulator which we will present in this paper.