Human, technological and organizational aspects influencing the production scheduling process

This study of scheduling work in practice addresses how the production-scheduling processes in four companies are influenced by human, technological, and organizational aspects. A conclusion is that the outcome of the scheduling process is influenced by the scheduler adding human capabilities that cannot be automated, by technical constraints in the scheduled production system and by the available scheduling software tools. Furthermore, the outcome is influenced not only by how the scheduling process is formally organized, but also by the scheduler's informal authority and the role taken to interconnect activities between different organizational groups. The findings from the study support a number of previous studies done on scheduling in practice whilst giving new insights into their interpretation.     

Marketing extends beyond humans

This comment seeks to answer the following question. Is marketing - as most marketing textbooks define the term - something that is limited to humans, or do other non-human species also engage in marketing? To answer this question this comment reviews literature on animal behavior which suggests that at least some non-human animals do engage in exchange processes in order to mutually satisfy needs and wants. This comment therefore concludes that marketing is an activity that extends beyond humans to other members of the animal kingdom.     

Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) statement

Abstract

Economic evaluations of health interventions pose a particular challenge for reporting. There is also a need to consolidate and update existing guidelines and promote their use in a user-friendly manner. The Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) statement is an attempt to consolidate and update previous health economic evaluation guidelines efforts into one current, useful reporting guidance. The primary audiences for the CHEERS statement are researchers reporting economic evaluations and the editors and peer reviewers assessing them for publication.

?The need for new reporting guidance was identified by a survey of medical editors. A list of possible items based on a systematic review was created. A two round, modified Delphi panel consisting of representatives from academia, clinical practice, industry, government, and the editorial community was conducted. Out of 44 candidate items, 24 items and accompanying recommendations were developed. The recommendations are contained in a user-friendly, 24-item checklist. A copy of the statement, accompanying checklist, and this report can be found on the ISPOR Health Economic Evaluations Publication Guidelines Task Force website (www.ispor.org/TaskForces/EconomicPubGuidelines.asp).

?The hope is that CHEERS will lead to better reporting and, ultimately, better health decisions. To facilitate dissemination and uptake, the CHEERS statement is being co-published across 10 health economics and medical journals. Other journals and groups are encouraged to endorse CHEERS. The author team plans to review the checklist for an update in 5 years.     

Hunting humans: A future for tourism in 2200

This paper offers a future scenario to expose the potential engagement of tourism in the year 2200. Taking a socio-constructionist approach to research and through the analysis of secondary data, it explores current issues and debates concerned with the environment, disasters and depletion of natural resources; social context including movies and entertainment, the media and technology, the evolution of the theme park and cultural transmission; and economical realities, covering poverty vs. world elite and global culture, all of which are seen as drivers of the potential future tourism market. In so doing, it presents a narrative (scenario), provoking the notion that in the year 2200 death and hunting humans will form part of the tourism entertainment industry and a practice carried out by the wealthy-elite, a view backed with substance. It argues, that as a result of past and current engagements with murder, death and human atrocities, and significantly our relationship with death, humans will gradually become more accustomed to death as a form of spectacle, influenced by current entertainment, movies and the media. Death as entertainment by form of detachment (emotionally and physically) will further influence the future fun aspect of hunting humans. Significantly, changes in our natural environment will lead to great challenges, lack of water, depleted food resources and greater disparity between the wealthy and impoverished; all of which will drive the change in our humanly existence. This papers aims to provide a provocative account of the ‘potential future meaning of tourism’, through the application of current knowledge, and significantly, it is our relationship with death and violence that are central, death and violence are becoming diluted and thus, will be a source of future entertainment and a tourism activity – in less humans can reach a level of transcendence that has never been present, to transcend the culture they have created, one that has always witnessed violence as a means to survival. If violence can be detached then we will be presented with a ‘wild card’, a future that is truly out of this world.     

Recounting counting and accounting: From political arithmetic to measuring intangibles and back

Humans have, for centuries, measured and quantified their world and themselves in various ways. This ‘quantifying impulse’ reached an early peak in Europe in the era of political arithmetic, from the late seventeenth through the eighteenth centuries. The overall purpose of this paper is to examine contemporary attempts to measure intangible qualities and to compare them to similar attempts from the political arithmetic era. The discussion is structured using three themes; the idea of balance, the search for correlations and the conception of human nature. The findings of the paper indicates that the era of political arithmetic is not so distant at it might seems.