Increasing the usability and accessibility of geodynamic modelling tools to the geoscience community: UnderworldGUI

Geoscientists are faced with a number of complexities that represent obstacles to the development of realistic simulation of deep earth processes. Realistic 4D thermo-mechanical simulation using software packages like Underworld and Gale, when combined appropriately with geoscientific expertise, can lead to novel insights into the deformation of geological structures at a wide range of time and spatial scales. The challenge for end-user geoscientists lies in applying their knowledge within the framework of the software’s input specification, including initial, internal, and boundary conditions and output visualization parameters. We have built a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to remove many of the difficulties related to editing the Extensible Markup Language (XML) encoded input files of Underworld/Gale geomodels and therefore, to greatly broaden the user base of these software packages. By helping Underworld/Gale to meet a large audience, we provide a tool to the geoscience community that helps to move from untested conceptual models to physically valid, properly scaled modelling. Furthermore, the UnderworldGUI offers a mechanism for storing and retrieving experimental models in a centralised database, thus providing the geoscience community with a means to share the outcomes of its experimental research. Further details of the UnderworldGUI are available at the web site http://www.wiki.vislab.usyd.edu.au/moinwiki/UnderworldGUI.     

Rethinking Institutions and Organizations

In this Point–Counterpoint article we argue that institutional scholarship has become overly concerned with explaining institutions and institutional processes, notably at the level of the organization field, rather than with using them to explain and understand organizations. Especially missing is an attempt to gain a coherent, holistic account of how organizations are structured and managed. We also argue that when institutional theory does give attention to organizations it inappropriately treats them as though they are the same, or at least as though any differences are irrelevant for purposes of theory. We propose a return to the study of organizations with an emphasis upon comparative analysis, and suggest the institutional logics perspective as an appropriate means for doing so.     

Methodological Issues in Negotiation Research: A State-of-the-Art-Review

This study provides insight into the dominant methodological practices that have shaped the field of negotiation over the past four decades and sheds light on possible gaps and trade-offs. We content analyzed 941 peer-reviewed negotiation articles (published between 1965 and 2004) and identified the most important methodological trends over time. The results reveal significant changes in reliability, validity, and triangulation issues. In addition, the rise of multivariate statistics and multiple data sources displays positive evolution towards more sophisticated methodologies. Despite these positive evolutions, we want to encourage current and future researchers to conduct more longitudinal and qualitative research to further advance our knowledge on negotiation.     

By the teeth: A critical examination of James Scott's The moral economy of the peasant

Peasant households in Southeast Asia and elsewhere live on the margin of subsistence. Their survival strategies make them technological conservatives and weavers of reciprocal webs of social obligation and dependence. James C. Scott has argued that the fabric of this “moral economy” both guarantees subsistence for the peasants and forms the touchstone on which their judgements of social justice are tested. When those who should offer succor withdraw it, peasants are outraged and from their anger springs peasant rebellion. Two South Asian peasant rebellions of the 1940s (Telengana and Tebhaga) fail to support Scott's account and raise major questions about his historical method. Two others case studies focused on the early years of colonial contact (the Padri Wars and the capitalist transformation of the Kaveri delta) lead the authors to question sharply the existence of a “moral economy of the peasant” and to suggest that Scott has inadvertently presented a landlord's view of peasant society.     

Stability and instability in oligopoly

For regular oligopolies (both homogeneous and heterogeneous) the (local) Cournot-Nash equilibria are the (non-degenerate) critical points of a Morse-Smale vector field, defined on the feasible region of non-negative prices and outputs. When at the boundary of this feasible region this vector field points inwards, it follows from the Morse inequalities that there is at least one stable equilibrium. When there is a unique, non-stable, interior equilibrium, necessarily the vector field points outwards somewhere along the boundary of the feasible region. This raises to a stable boundary equilibrium.     

Grocers' window displays: The eclipse of a British tradition

By reference to period retailing narratives, this paper examines the changed significance of shop window displays for British grocers with the transition from counter‐based to self‐service from the late 1940s to the 1960s. The ‘well‐dressed’ window showing a selection of goods and price offers became an early casualty of changed retail practices. Opportunities presented by self‐service for comprehensive stock displays and in‐store promotion proved a decisive challenge to the art of the grocer's window display. These displays had been ubiquitous; large and small shops alike tried to impress passers‐by with examples of their stock range. Self‐service shops had different internal space requirements and soon it was more important that potential customers could see the well‐stocked aisles and activity within.     

Union organizing in Britain: a survey of policy and practice

Analysis of the reasons for trade union decline in developed economies has pointed to their failure to invest in effective methods of recruitment as a contributory factor. This article presents survey and case research to examine the extent to which union failure in recruitment and organizing has been rectified in the United Kingdom. The evidence indicates a varied but nevertheless substantial re-direction of union effort towards recruitment since the mid-1990s and is used to identify the characteristics of 'recruiting unions' which have invested more heavily and adopted more ambitious recruitment targets. Recruiting unions are found to be those which are receptive to learning new approaches to recruitment from overseas and which have relatively advanced arrangements for the representation of women and minorities in their internal systems of government.     

CRM analytics: The fuel for the engine

How often are there articles about customer relations (CRM) in the press today? Almost as many as there were about Year 2000 last year! How many companies state that the customer is king but can do or are doing anything about this? Few really attempt to improve or build relationships with customers or increase their product holdings; treating a customer as an individual and not just another record is still rare. The opinion in many companies seems to be that they can buy a system to deliver what is needed, which is true, but the system is only as good as the rules that drive it, hence the emergence of CRM analytics. This paper aims to illustrate to the reader how a company can start to apply CRM from an analytical rather than from a purely technological angle.