Ninety-four ways to ignore Brandt

In March 1980, a Commission of 18 senior statesmen, headed by former West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, published a report, North-South - A Programme for Survival, which recommended 94 ways in which the countries of the North could help the South out of hunger and poverty and help itself in the bargain. Although the report was much discussed, the commissioners admitted in late 1982 that virtually none of its recommendations had been implemented. But during the last three years, the economies of most countries in both North and South have deteriorated, whilst hunger is more prevalent than ever. In response to this common crisis, the Brandt commissioners have now produced a second report.¹.If this is also ignored, then prospects for substantially reducing hunger and ending world recession are grim.     

Agribusiness and FAO: A critical view

The author seeks to redress the balance of views expressed about the role of industry in the UN system. He does this through a redefinition of the links in the Industry Cooperative Programme of FAO and its perceived role and a critique of the article by Kimberley Albright et al in the February 1977 issue of Food Policy.     

Tracing feeding programme drop-outs

Supplementary feeding programmes have been used as one outlet for the food aid which is sent to developing nations. In the November 1978 issue of Food Policy, Simon Maxwell analyzed the costs and benefits of supplementary feeding projects, in terms of both nutritional and non nutritional results.¹ In considering the importance of such results, trie rate and health status of programme drop-outs can significantly affect conclusions. An exercise demonstrating the differences in results, depending on assumptions about dropouts, is presented here for a World Food Programme (WFP) feeding project in Mexico.     

European mediamatics policies: Coping with convergence and globalization

Growing convergence and globalization in the communications sector towards a changed societal communications system, which can be described as mediamatics¹ (media, telematics), poses far-reaching challenges to policy makers worldwide. This article provides an overview of convergence strategies in Europe, puts it in the context of related initiatives, and highlights the partially hidden power politics of convergence, which, alongside arguments on the functional level, forms a crucial factor in national and supranational developments.     

Scheduling multiple robots in a no-wait re-entrant robotic flowshop

No-wait re-entrant robotic flowshops are widely used in the electronic industry, such as PCB and semiconductor manufacturing. In such an industry, cyclic production policy is often used due to large lot size and simplicity of implementation. This paper addresses cyclic scheduling of a no-wait re-entrant robotic flowshop with multiple robots for material handling. We formulate the problem and propose a polynomial algorithm to find the minimum number of robots for all feasible cycle times. Consequently, the minimum cycle time for any given number of robots can be obtained with the proposed algorithm. The algorithm runs in O(N⁵) time in the worst case, where N is the number of machines in the robotic flowshop.     

SAM — a baby with many faces

In the last issue of Food Policy, two articles appeared on the subject of the Mexican Food System, or the Sistema Alimenticio Mexicano (SAM). The first article by Frank Meissner¹ reviewed the background to SAM, the proposed strategies, intended targets, its funding and put forward a strong case for considering SAM as a constructive policy for alleviating Mexico's food and nutrition problems. However, Michael Redclift commented in his article that:² ‘There are three principal points to be made of Dr Meissner's article: its interpretation of Mexico's recent agrarian development is questionable; it does not distinguish between the analysis provided in the SAM documents and the policy measures to which they give rise; and, it glosses over serious problems of implementation, giving too little weight to the participatory element without which SAM is doomed to failure’. This rejoinder is Frank Meissner's response to Michael Redclift's comments.     

A path model of factors affecting secondary school students’ technological literacy

Technological literacy defines a competitive vision for technology education. Working together with competitive supremacy, technological literacy shapes the actions of technology educators. Rationalised by the dictates of industry, technological literacy was constructed as a product of the marketplace. There are many models that visualise different dimensions of technological literacy, but clear empirical evidence on how these interact is still lacking. A measurement method that comprehensively evaluates technological literacy is missing. Insights into the stem structure and interaction of technological literacy dimensions could be useful for technology education curriculum design and its implementation. In this study, the multifaceted nature of technological literacy was measured using a new assessment method, and dimensions of secondary school students’ technological literacy were empirically investigated. A total of 403 students participated in the quasi-experimental research design. The treatment group consisted of 121 students taught optional subjects relating to technology education. The control group consisted of 282 students. Results from variance analysis showed that optional technology subjects enhance technological literacy, especially students’ technological capacity where a large effect size (η ²  = 0.14) was noted. Results from a path analysis revealed critical thinking and decision-making as the most important dimensions of technological literacy while the predictor of active participation in out-of-school technical activities and technology homework was a key independent influencing factor. A large effect size (R ²  = 0.4) for career path orientation predictors was detected. Technological capacity was revealed as a decisive predictor for a career path in vocational education and technical high school.     

Embargoes and corporate goals

A recent article in Food Policy, ‘US-Soviet grain embargoes: regulating the MNCs’, by Erik Lindell,¹ broached the problem of controlling and regulating multinational corporations (MNCs) during recent US-Soviet grain embargoes. While agreeing with Lindell's analysis as far as it goes, Peter Okaiyeto provides a conceptual framework to improve our understanding of why MNCs behave as they do, demonstrating that MNCs will undermine those global interests of their national governments that run counter to their own interests.     

Cash transfers and high food prices: Explaining outcomes on Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme

An ongoing and highly politicised debate concerns the relative efficacy of cash transfers versus food aid. This paper aims to shed light on this debate, drawing on new empirical evidence from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). Our data derive from a two-wave panel survey conducted in 2006 and 2008. Ethiopia has experienced unprecedented rates of inflation since 2007, which have reduced the real purchasing power of PSNP cash payments. Our regression findings confirm that food transfers or ‘cash plus food’ packages are superior to cash transfers alone – they enable higher levels of income growth, livestock accumulation and self-reported food security. These results raise questions of fundamental importance to global humanitarian response and social protection policy. We draw out some implications for the design of social transfer programmes and describe some steps that could be taken to enable ‘predictable transfers to meet predictable needs’.     

A unified solution approach for the due date assignment problem with tardy jobs

We analyze a number of due date assignment problems with the weighted number of tardy jobs objective and show that these problems can be solved in O(n²) time by dynamic programming. We show that the effects of learning or the effects of past-sequence-dependent setup times can be incorporated into the problem formulation at no additional computational cost. We also show that some single-machine due date assignment problems can be extended to an identical parallel machine setting. Finally, we improve the complexity of the solution algorithms for two other due date assignment problems.     

An integrated product planning model for pricing and bundle selection using Markov decision processes and data envelope analysis

When bundling products during the product planning stage, there are a number of possible combinations that can be offered to customers. Consider a firm that offers N distinctive products, then there are 2^N−(N+1) possible bundling combinations. Now, if we wish to make pricing and bundle selection decisions, keeping in my mind limited inventory and a finite time horizon, then the size of the state space could be very large and finding an optimal solution could be impossible. To tackle this issue, we formulate an integrated model that utilizes a Markov decision process and data envelope analysis. Bundle selections are made using data envelope analysis in each decision epoch. Once the efficient bundles are selected they are priced by solving a Markov decision process using dynamic programming. Numerical examples are solved to exhibit the model's potential in solving real-world problems.     

Food,peace — and the pursuit of arms

‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed from those who are cold and are not clothed.’ So said President Eisenhower 20 years ago. ¹ Today the world spends over $350 000 million a year on military and armaments — money lost to world development     

Aid for developmentally disabled

The Institute for the Future is engaged in a project to explore effective and affordable uses of telecommunications systems to benefit developmentally disabled children and adults. The two-year study, funded by the Rehabilitation Services Administration of the US Department of Helath, Education and Welfare, began on 1 October 1978 under the overall leadership of the Alternate Media Center at New York Univerity. The Pediatric Service of Roosevelt Hospital in New York City and the American Association of University Affiliated Programs¹ in Washington DC make up the rest of the project team.     

Telecommunications policy: The medium is the message

Reflecting on his involvement with Telecommunications Policy, since 1979, this article by one of its first editors Colin Blackman, contributes to the 40^th anniversary issue. It describes the launch of the journal, the unique nature of its publisher, IPC Science & Technology Press, the way in which the field has changed over the past four decades, and makes some personal observations about the changing nature of the world of journal publishing.     

Technological literacy for students aged 6–18: a new method for holistic measuring of knowledge,capabilities, critical thinking and decision-making

Technological literacy is identified as a vital achievement of technology- and engineering-intensive education. It guides the design of technology and technical components of educational systems and defines competitive employment in technological society. Existing methods for measuring technological literacy are incomplete or complicated, unreliable, unstable and imprecise, time-consuming, and require large expenditures on resources. This paper presents a new method for valid and reliable measuring of technological literacy. The method encompasses three main components—knowledge, capabilities, and critical thinking and decision-making. It is centred on the standards for technological literacy issued by the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association. It has three key features. (1) A construct-measure-result front-ended approach, where a construct consists of an object, attribute, and entity; which causes reduction of measure-induced distortion and error. (2) A broad test range definition that provides stable and accurate measuring of technological literacy for 6–18-year-old students. (3) A genuine design approach including a multiple choice test item form determination consisting of content, criterion and construct validity, item discrimination, difficulty index, and an intraclass correlation measure for time stability and scooping its heterogeneous nature. Only the method is described herein and its pilot test results are presented. It is moderately reliable over time (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.68, p < 0.05), has high criterion-related validity (r _xy  < 0.4) and construct validity (h ² > 0.7). High content validity evidence was ensured through a two-stage validation method, while test item discrimination coefficient values are acceptable (r _pbis  > 0.1). The method is time-efficient (measuring lasts 45 min), valid, stable, and enables holistic investigation of large sample sizes.     

An applied theory for marketing industrial services

When the area of industrial marketing is discussed in the literature on marketing and marketing management, only the marketing of goods to industrial buyers are considered. However, a vast amount of services are also marketed in the industrial sector. There is some, although very limited, literature on professional or consultancy services, but the area is usually not thought of as a part of industrial marketing [1–3]. Recently, a few papers have been published where these services are treated as an integral part of industrial marketing [4, 5]. The purpose of this article is to suggest some frameworks concerning the marketing of industrial services.     

Impact of frequency of alignment of physical and information system inventories on out of stocks: A simulation study

Inaccuracy in the information system inventory as compared to the physical inventory may lead to out of stocks. Inaccuracy may occur for many reasons, a principal one being random losses such as theft. One way to reduce this inaccuracy is to adjust the inventory information in the systems at some regular frequency. Such alignments are quite expensive in practice. Thus how often to align the two inventories is the focus of this research. A simulation model is employed to investigate the effect of such loss defined by the stock loss parameter (λ) and the frequent alignment of physical and information system inventories on the stockout (S_out) and average inventory (I). A term to be called the effective value of stock loss parameter is introduced to signify the effect of frequency of alignment (f) on S_out. The results derived in this study provide a powerful tool in the hands of an inventory manager. It has been noted that, so far as stockout is concerned, by selecting a moderate value of alignment frequency (f), the effective value of stock loss parameter (λ_e) can be reduced to∼ λ/f. The accuracy of S_out and I values across a number of runs in the simulation studies, sensitivity of S_out and I on various parameters and the nature of stochastic demand distribution, and application of these results with or without deployment of RFID to reduce the loss due to stockout are also discussed. The results, verified under various scenarios, indicate that there is a significant reduction in stockout loss when the alignment is done monthly vs. annually, but it does not add much value beyond a monthly check.     

Manufacturer-supplier guanxi strategy: An examination of contingent environmental factors

While guanxi is a cultural norm in China, the development and maintenance of guanxi can also be viewed as a business relationship management strategy that is leveraged by organizations in response to environmental conditions. The current research proposes that participation in guanxi is not equal to actively pursuing guanxi as a business strategy. Rather, firms respond to external environmental factors through guanxi management. Drawing on contingency theory and based on the perspectives of a China-based manufacturer respondent sample, a conceptual model of environmental factors that influence manufacturer-supplier guanxi is proposed and tested. The results indicate that supply and demand market uncertainties and legal environment complexity significantly affect levels of manufacturer-supplier guanxi, and that guanxi influences the use of non-coercive power by manufacturers. Contrary to expectations, manufacturer dependence on a major supplier did not influence levels of guanxi. The study findings and their implications extend current knowledge of inter-organizational guanxi and its influence on business-to-business relationships.