The decision-making dimension of the systems approach to management

Theoretically, a system is anything that is made up of various parts. Theses parts are known as subsystems. At every point in time, these parts should work in harmony so that objectives could be achieved successfully. A system could be inanimate or animate item. Examples of inanimate systems include vehicles, households, computer and institution. Examples of animate systems are human being, animal and insect. Both inanimate and animate systems are made up of various subsystems. Such subsystems are required to co-operate, collaborate and work together so that set objectives could be achieved successfully. From practical managerial point of view, business organizations are equally systems that are made up of subsystems which may take the form of departments, sections and/or units. It is supposed to be collaborations among the managers and other members in these departments, sections and/or units so that organizational objectives could be achieved. All the managers in various departments, sections and/or units are required to work together as a team to make the system coherent and closely-knit to make disintegration impossible. Closely related to the systems approach to management is managerial decision-making. Decision-making is a very important function of every manager＇s job. The success and failure stories of many organizations are the result of the quality of decisions made. Many organizations have survived turbulent conditions. Others have also collapsed in spite of favourable conditions. These varying conditions are the result of the quality of decisions made by managers at positions of authority and responsibility. Therefore the systems approach to management enjoins top managers in particular to be very circumspect and cautious in certain decision-making activities. This is because, the quality of decision a manager makes can go a long way to determine the success or failure story of an organization as exemplified in the case study in this paper.     

Discussion on the business performance of life insurance industries in Taiwan and Mainland China Application of Metafrontier model

When using the Data Development Analysis method for analyzing the efficiency of different firms, it is common to put all similar DMU together for measurement in order to figure out the efficiency values of various DMU. However, such an analysis may easily neglect the source property of an individual DMU, meaning that the differences among various DMUs derive from different environmental backgrounds, e.g. environment variables such as economic civilization, laws and regulations, and political backgrounds. Applying the Metafrontier model can overcome the barriers resulting from the environment variables, and it can analyze and measure the differences among various DMUs which have different source properties. It can also be used for measuring the difference between each group of DMU and all DMUs. Therefore, this study adopts the DEA method, assuming variable returns to scale to evaluate and comparatively analyze the business performance of life insurance industries in Taiwan and Mainland China based on ＂BBC input orientation＂. When evaluating the business performance, the operating management echelon is affected by uncontrollable external environment variables. Thus, this study applies the Four-Stage Data Envelopment Analysis to discuss the impact of environment variables on business performance and re-measures the business efficiency of life insurance industries in Taiwan and Mainland China after adjusting the input variables. The demonstration period adopted by this study is from 2003 to 2005, and the research subject comprises 43 companies in Taiwan and Mainland China, among which, there are 19 companies in Taiwan and 24 companies in Mainland China, and there are 129 sets of sample data. It is assumed that the discount rate is ？ （）, is set as 3% in this paper）, and figured out the change of each life insurance company in technical efficiency in the inter-period accumulative years from 2003 to 2005.     

The Victims of Patriarchal Society —The Analysis of James Joyce's Eveline from the Perspective of Feminism

Eveline is of one of the stories ofDubliners by James Joyce. This paper attempts to analyze the cause of the miserable life of the heroine and her mother, and concludes that they are the victims of patriarchal society whom are depicted by Joyce to raise women's feminism consciousness.     

The difficulties of ＂polluter pays＂ policy in agricultural pollution in UK and methods to improve it

Agricultural wastes poll,tion became serious after great improvement in technology and the encouragement of production for the government since the end of the World Wai Ⅱ. Economists and environmental scholars suggested that ＂polluter pays＂ policy be employed in agricultural pollution control. However, it was hard to implement ＂polluter pays ＂ policy alone in agricultural wastes pollution.In practice, there were two social faCtors which contrih,ted to the improvement of water quality in the southwest of United Kingdom. One method is to communicate with farmers and then give farmers some advice or exhortation on facilities and management. The other method is to set up a telephone hotline for public to report water quality and probable pollution. Therefore, the consideration and combination of social factors in the control of agricultural wastes pollution are necessary, and important. Edueation of basic natural sciences relevant to agricultural pollution, system management of agricultural pollutants and laws relevant to agricultural pollution is suggested to be the third .social factor that British government can consider.     

Managers in making The Zen management way

In the 21st century every manager in making requires a unique balance in personal, professional, family and social life so that he/she can enjoy and motivate himself to make others happy around him or her. The ego plays a major role in our life. Practicing Zen in management takes the manager to a level of egolessness. Zen finds its source in the experience of Shakyamuni Buddha, who in the process of enlightenment came across the elements of mindfulness and concentration--The noble eightfold path. These are key elements of success for the ＂managers in making＂. The purpose of this paper consists in rethinking today＇s management systems in order to look for ways of management which are better adapted to human life. It is assumed that a management practice which takes into consideration of the characteristics of human life must be accepted by a large number of people and would be effective and sustainable. This paper highlights the eight elements of＂The noble eightfold path＂ and its effective implications in management for the ＂managers in making＂ process--A guide towards success.     

Identity in a World of Scarcity： The Book of Eli

This paper examines the construction of identity in Hugue＇s brothers movie, The Book of Eli setting in an America post-apocalyptic world destroyed by nuclear war and environmental disasters. Economic relations in this world without time or history and without production of goods and commodities, are based on ancient practices such as barter. The goods are exchanged for goods according to the need and the currency lost its meaning before the supreme usefulness. Essential items to human life like water now have a very high value due to its complete scarcity. Eli （played by Denzel Washington） toured the United States for 30 years westward circling the wasteland leading the only existing copy of the King James version of the Bible. Then he reaches the town, which is under the control of Carnegie, the villain, whose ambition is to have the holy Bible in order to exercise power. In this world full of shortages, power belongs to the old that has the memory of the past. Texts of Giddens, Beck, Lash, Benveniste, and Marx compose the theoretical apparatus that allow understanding how to reconstruct the identity in a world in crisis, and no shortage of complete story without memory card with the movement of goods excluding currency.     

The music industry ＆ its consumers： A potential divorce through technology and shifting market linkages？

A large market exists of online users who desire online video and music content. However, recent developments have shown that some industries, such as music and videos are not fully utilising the market benefits that disruptive technologies can bring to organisations despite the change of value drivers. According to Christensen et al （2004）, and based on RPV theory, organisations may decide not to pursue disruptive innovative ideas for a variety of reasons, such as their values are set in another direction, processes do not support the new technology and resources may become under-utilised or even obsolete. Trying to pursue partly aggressive strategies, partly defence or avoidance strategies, it is suggested that the music industry has missed to reengineer its business so far. At the same time, music consumers have found various peer-to-peer models to execute their own avoidance strategies, i.e., avoiding to buy music but to share it. Various consumption platforms for music, such as, pandora, hulu or spotify, emerged, which themselves show significant innovative power. As scholars＇ research tested, innovation has two beams, technology and market linkages. While the technological part is inevitably developing further, the music industry erects legal barriers to bloc those sites by applying the presently unclear DRM, since the new ways of music consumption threaten their established ways of content distribution. At the same time, barriers are placed that those consumers being online specialists find ways to circumvent them. The proposition is that by the salient marketing concept of CRM such behaviour increases the pressure on incumbents since risking market linkages with their customers. This paper will contrast technology and market linkages, discussing how online innovations may alter the status quo of the music industry, especially its record business. Research provides evidence that technological implications are supporting a sustainable shift of consumers＇ behaviour and the ways, by which consumers are able to overcome the legal and technological barriers for accessing P2P sites despite industrial prevention. It is suggested that there is further significance this paper addresses, since what affects the music industry today, will likely have an impact on the movie, games, software and other industries in the near future： Disruption of existing resources, processes and values and threatening market linkages by redefined ways of content distribution.     

Rebuilding water rights system from the perspective of usufruct

As the source of life,water is indispensable to human beings.Being aware of the water stress imposed by population growth,climate change,rapid urbanization,pollution,many scholars and decision makers argue that the establishment of water rights and their system is the primary measure to tackle the water crisis problem.However,no consensus has been reached regarding the definition,nature and content of water rights both practically and academically.By examining the existing theories regarding water rights,this article tries to redefine the entitlements from the aspect of civil law.Meanwhile,it provides a system which classifies various rights by the four functions of usufruct.     

The Research on the Life Cycle of Merger ＆ Acquisition

Over the years much has been written about the industry life cycle and corporate life cycle, yet there has been remarkably little attention given to the relation between them and M＆A, or why this relationship exists. Based on reviewing the industry life cycle and the corporate life cycle, we find the relationship between M＆A and these life cycles, and then propose the life cycle of M＆A. At last, we use the M＆A life cycle to explain the characters of the merger waves over last 100 years.     

Review on Chlorobenzoic Acids Biodegradation and Their Environmental Impacts

Chlorobenzoic Acids are toxic organic compounds largely distributed in soils and sediments. They can be degraded to various products by microorgans. This paper is a review of the literature on biodegradability of the chlorobenzoic acids. The degradation pathways, degradation genes, role of transposable elements, and construction of strains are discussed. A brief introduction is given on the environmental impacts and the pollution control.     

Location choice under trade and environmental policies

In this paper, we use a game theoretic model to analyze the trade-off between the attractiveness of FDI and the environmental damage caused by production under asymmetric information. In the first stage, the domestic developing country reveals the level of import tariff and pollution tax under information uncertainty about the environmental damage that the foreign firm can cause. The foreign firm from a developed country decides where to locate afterwards with complete information about its own damage. Results show that the developing country can be better off encouraging FDI if and only if the marginal damage of pollution is sufficiently low. The optimal level of pollution taxes attracting FDI is higher than the marginal damage of pollution. However, the optimal pollution tax without FDI can be lower than the marginal damage of pollution with sufficiently high demand in the developing country.     

Regulating chemical emissions with risk-based environmental taxation

This paper develops a policy of risk-based environmental taxation for chemical emissions. A scoring index of chemical risk values for target pollutants first takes into account potential human health risk and ecological risk. A common tax base called the risk unit, which reflects the risk values from the scoring index, is then identified for individual pollutants. By determining the number of risk units for target emissions and levying a single tax rate on one risk unit, the risk-based tax system assigns a different pollution price to each chemical release. The policy sets rates according to marginal damage and provides target industry with permanent incentive for pollution abatement. By narrowing the gap between the marginal private cost and constrained marginal social cost of the chemical emission externality, the environmental tax system creates efficiency gains.     

Regulation and Coordination of International Environmental Externalities with Incomplete Information and Costly Public Funds

In this article, we study cross-border externalities in a game played by two principal-agent pairs with adverse selection. Each firm/agent is located in one country and generates pollution by producing complementary or substitute goods, sold on a common market. A fraction of pollution is transferred from one country to another. Each regulator/principal is imperfectly informed about the marginal cost of his domestic firm and accordingly uses secret incentive contracts with costly public funds. We show the necessity of cooperation between competing regulators to effectively internalize all the damages caused to the environment, while reaching the first best. If the level of uncertainty is sufficiently low, we obtain an infinity of noncooperative Bayesian differentiable equilibria, which may necessitate competing regulators to coordinate on an equilibrium. Such coordination constitutes an incentive for competing regulators to cooperate. Our major result states that under some circumstances asymmetric information relaxes the transborder externality problem. Indeed, we show that, when there is a major transfer of pollution and firms' marginal costs are sufficiently high, competing regulators are better off under uncertainty. Therefore, asymmetry of information can have the very consequence of generating regulation that is too strict from the domestic viewpoint but that improves social efficiency when the benefits to both countries are taken into account.     

环境技术转移的最优社会福利选择——以发展中国家为视角

本文以发展中国家为视角,构建一个基本的双寡头Cournot模型,来分析环境技术从发达国家转移至发展中国家,对发展中国家商品生产和社会福利产生的影响.本文认为环境技术从发达国家无偿转移至发展中国家,对发展中国家社会福利的影响具有不确定性.通过引入福利函数并求解最优的社会福利,发现对发展中国家而言,最优的社会福利选择是:当国内企业生产成本等于国外企业生产成本与环境技术的产量溢出之差时,环境技术的完全转移才是发展中国家的最优社会福利选择.并据此推导出社会福利最优的环境技术转移路径.     

Foreign competition and social efficiency of entry

We consider social efficiency of firm-entry in the presence of foreign competition. If the labour markets are competitive, entry is insufficient for the domestic country if the transportation cost is low and the marginal costs of the domestic firms are sufficiently higher than the marginal cost of the foreign firm. In the presence of a domestic labour union, entry is always socially insufficient for the domestic country. Hence, the anti-competitive entry-regulation policy may not be justified in an industry facing foreign competition, and it may depend on the transportation cost, the marginal cost difference between the firms and the domestic labour market structure.     

Rethinking the optimal level of environmental quality: justifications for strict environmental policy

Traditional environmental theory suggests that the optimal level of a pollution emission occurs when the marginal damage created by the emissions is equal to the marginal cost of reducing the emissions. We argue that the benefits from reducing pollution should be much more broadly defined to include at least three other sources of benefits. First, we develop a game-theoretic model in which firms may under-invest in cost-saving ‘green technologies’. Second, we demonstrate that consideration of future damages and abatement costs leads to a lower current optimal pollution level than that obtained in traditional models. Finally, we show that ecological complexity creates indirect pathways by which greater pollution increases the likelihood of generating irreversible environmental damage. This broader definition of the benefits of pollution abatement yields an optimal level of pollution that may actually be less than the level at which conventionally-measured marginal damages are equal to marginal abatement costs. Thus, environmental policy should be stricter.     

The difficulties of "polluter pays" policy in agricultural pollution in UK and methods to improve it

Agricultural wastes pollution became serious after great improvement in technology and the encouragement of production for the government since the end of the World War Ⅱ. Economists and environmental scholars suggested that "polluter pays" policy be employed in agricultural pollution control. However, it was hard to implement "'polluter pays " policy alone in agricultural wastes pollution. In practice, there were two social factors which contributed to the improvement of water quality in the southwest of United Kingdom. One method is to communicate with farmers and then give farmers some advice or exhortation on facilities and management. The other method is to get up a telephone hotline for public to report water quality and probable pollution. Therefore, the consideration and combination of social factors in the control of agricultural wastes pollution are necessary and important. Education of basic natural sciences relevant to agricultural pollution, system management of agricultural pollutants and laws relevant to agricultural pollution is suggested to be the third social factor that British government can consider.     

Corrective Taxes under Oligopoly with Inter-Firm Externalities

Pollution externalities between polluters should be taken into account in the design of corrective taxes. When the externalities are substantial and/or the number of polluters is large, the effluent levies on these firms do not necessarily result in a deadweight loss. Consequently, the second-best tax exceeds the marginal social cost of pollution. A more general rule is that the tax rate should be greater than the marginal social cost of pollution if and only if a marginal increase in the tax rate results in opposite effects on the changes of equilibrium emission level and output.     

以产业结构调整为目标的产业环境评估

提高地区经济发展质量的路径之一在于合理的产业结构调整,而合理评估区域产业情况,是确定区域产业发展政策、开展产业结构调整的先决步骤。研究提出了产业的资源环境综合成本概念,并应用于指导区域内的产业结构调整。资源环境综合成本包括了各行业的资源损耗成本、环境污染成本和附加环境成本。应用资源环境综合成本概念。可以横向地、综合地评估区域内各产业对区域的生态环境造成的压力,并可作为环境方面的评估信息,与其他信息一并供决策者参考。研究以沙湾河流域的产业结构调整研究为例,介绍资源环境综合成本概念的应用。结果显示,产业发展而带来的附加环境成本所占比重较大,这表明产业带来的人口生活污染影响,在评估区域产业结构时值得关注。     

Study on the construction and operation for management system of municipal domestic wastes

In recent years, the quantity of our country＇s municipal damestic wustes increase rapidly, but the waste disposal still has problems, such as the simple way of processing, wasting the resources, the serious environmental pollution and so on. By holding waste minimization as the center, the developed countries have formed perfect waste management system, Based on analyzing the status quo and problems of processing in our country, on the principle of benefit, scale, waste minimization, reclamation and hazard-free treatment, according to the recycling model of processing, the article has constructed ant country＇s domestic wastes management system, proposed the meusures of promoting the operation of system. It has realized the traasformatian of waste management system from terminal disposal to source reduction. ewhieved the goals, including domestic wastes categorizing and reclaiming, industrialization and non-pollution processing, and finally brought sustainable development for resources, environment, economy and society.