Influences on technology strategy in the uk oil- and gas-related industry network

In the course of the last 25 years the UK has seen the emergence of a new, technologically advanced network of organisations underpinning the technical needs of the oil and gas extraction industry.The euolution of this industy network has taken place within a public policy framework which has had too central objectives: to maximize UK industrial involvement in the industry and to maximize. North Sea oil and gas extraction. The extent to which this framework has encouraged the development of new, technology-based firms has not been systematical stuided. This study examines the extent of indigenous incoltlement in the network and the influence of the currrent pressures of economic and policy changes on the performance and strategic planning of these compnies.     

Nurse shortage or nursing shortage: have we missed the real problem?

Many strategies have been used to solve the nurse shortage. The shortage of nurses has in many ways alerted us to the need to provide safe and efficient care using the latest technology. Nursing needs to adopt, refine, and use this technology so the impact of the nursing shortage is just another statistic and not a disruptive and costly threat to the public.     

Vertical and financial ownership: Competition policy and the evolution of the UK pub market

Abstract

Traditionally the UK brewing industry was vertically integrated with brewers owning and controlling pubs. This came to an abrupt end in the forced divestment of a large proportion of the major brewers' pub estates in the 1989 ‘Beer Orders’. The divested pubs spawned the independent pub companies. This study of regulatory policy and financial services interest in the UK brewing industry poses the question of whether the original industrial structure was preferable to what has emerged subsequently. The contribution of the article is in highlighting the risks and rewards of regulatory intervention in deeply-embedded organisation and the sustainability of alternative business models that emerge.     

Influences on technology strategy in the uk oil- and gas-related industry network

In the course of the last 25 years the UK has seen the emergence of a new, technologically advanced network of organisations underpinning the technical needs of the oil and gas extraction industry.The euolution of this industy network has taken place within a public policy framework which has had too central objectives: to maximize UK industrial involvement in the industry and to maximize. North Sea oil and gas extraction. The extent to which this framework has encouraged the development of new, technology-based firms has not been systematical stuided. This study examines the extent of indigenous incoltlement in the network and the influence of the currrent pressures of economic and policy changes on the performance and strategic planning of these compnies.     

Of lessees,lessors, and discount rates and whether pigs have wings

Recent articles on leasing suggest five principles that should aid analysts to understand this durable, much misunderstood financial instrument. The principles are 1) the lessor must be happy too, 2) the operating inflows have nothing to do with the case, 3) financial, like physical, matter tends to be preserved, 4) debt is a function of after-tax flows, and 5) inability to use tax shelters cuts two ways. In this paper we illustrate these principles and use illustrations to demonstrate that each of these principles has merit. We argue as well that the impression, often left by the principles, that leasing seldom benefits all parties to the transaction is incorrect.     

New Product Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Pooling Network Resources

Pharmaceutical innovation increasingly involves some pooling of resources of finance, equity, technology, information, and intellectual property between pharmaceutical companies and other organizations. The organizations and their exchanges constitute a network which can be regarded as a growing store of these varied resources preferentially accessible to network members. D. Jane Bower examines some network effects in management decision making in Ciba-Geigy (Switzerland) and Elan Corporation (Ireland). She concludes that participation in a common network has enabled these firms to access a pool of resources of knowledge, experience, and finance. This pool has been generated by past exchanges among network members, including providers of finance, and has increased the network's collective reservoir of knowledge.     

Testing the effectiveness of online assignments in theory of finance

The authors investigated the effectiveness of online versus paper assignments using final examination scores in three cohorts of theory of finance. In particular, two cohorts were exposed to online assignments while another cohort was exposed to traditional assignments. The central result is that exposure to online assignments robustly leads to higher final exam scores, all else being equal. The authors also found a lower level of engagement as shown by low assignment completion rates for students exposed to online assignments.     

The importance of origin as a quality attribute for beef: results from a Scottish consumer survey

Perception of country of origin and purchasing habits for beef were examined for urban and rural Scottish consumers. Origin was identified as being as important as intrinsic quality cues of colour and leanness, with rural consumers giving more weight to origin than urban ones. Most consumers interpreted ‘Scotch Beef’ and ‘British Meat’ label logos as evidence that the beef animals were ‘born, raised and slaughtered in Scotland or Britain’ respectively. The logos were taken as indicators of quality and safety. Both urban and rural respondents had higher agreement levels with Scotch beef as a safer, higher quality and more expensive commodity than British meat. Rural consumers made more use of butcher shops for purchase, but both groups sought butcher beef for quality reasons and supermarket sources because of convenience.     

Planning knowledge for phased rollout projects

This paper explores how projects that can be considered as repeatable and replicable in a sequence of deliverables over a period of time can be planned and executed (rolled out) in a way that maximizes knowledge transfer and production from one execution to the next. A variety of management disciplines were reviewed to understand the way that project and program rollouts are treated in IT, product development, organizational learning, and manufacturing literature. These reviews enabled the development of a conceptual model to describe how planning and implementing the rollout of a product or service can be more knowledge‐focused and an accompanying capability maturity model. Several examples from real life, including one experienced by one of the authors, were used to illustrate and test the conceptual model. The model integrates knowledge management, change control, and planning in a way that can develop organizational learning and the authors assert that this can improve productivity and both tangible and intangible returns to those that follow the model. An accompanying capability maturity model is also presented. The conceptual model, while initially tested against several real‐life cases, needs to be tested against a new set of projects as an action learning research project in order to more fully develop knowledge of the dynamics of learning and improvement in rollout projects. The implication is that when project managers undervalue important learning aspects of phased rollouts, they may miss important organizational learning opportunities.     

The capital structure puzzle revisited

Corporate finance researchers have long been puzzled by lowcorporate debt ratios given debt's corporate tax advantage.This article recognizes that firm value typically reflects agrowing stream of earnings, while current debt reflects a nongrowingstream of interest payments. Debt to value is therefore a distortedmeasure of corporate tax shielding. Even with very small debt-relatedcosts, this may explain the observed magnitude and cross-sectionalvariation of debt ratios. Since this variation may be independentof tax shielding, debt ratios provide an inappropriate frameworkfor empirically examining the trade-off theory of capital structure.