The impact of purchasing strategy-structure (mis)fit on purchasing cost and innovation performance

The organizational design literature strongly supports the notion of “structure follows strategy”, and suggests that a misfit between the two has a negative effect on performance. Building on this line of argument, we examine to what extent the (mis)fit between purchasing strategy and purchasing structure impacts purchasing performance. We focus on cost and innovation purchase category strategies, and examine how the deviation from an ideal purchasing structure defined along three dimensions (centralization, formalization, and cross-functionality) impacts purchasing performance. Analysing data collected from 469 firms in ten countries, we demonstrate that a strategy-structure misfit negatively impacts purchasing performance in both cost and innovation strategies. We also find that purchasing proficiency is a mediator in this relationship between misfit and performance. Our findings aid managerial decision making by empirically validating the necessity of having the right purchasing structure for successfully executing different purchasing strategies.     

Geodemographic and socioeconomic characterization of the retail attraction of leading hypermarket chains in Spain

This paper aims at examining the impact on demand of the competitive positioning strategies developed by the leading hypermarket chains in Spain. Specifically, the purpose is to carry out a geodemographic and socieconomic characterization of the potential consumers of each chain. As retail attraction has traditionally been divided into three components, distance, mass and image, a gravitational model is proposed which distinguishes them and facilitates the evaluation of existing differences across any a priori segmentation base. The empirical test identifies significant geodemographic differences in the retail attraction of hypermarket chains. Chains seem to target the whole market by developing an image balanced against the advantages and disadvantages derived from the spatial coverage strategy. Social class is not as good an indicator of hypermarket choice as expected, although some interesting patterns have been detected.     

Moldflow在盒盖翘曲变形优化设计中的应用

本文以盒盖为例,借助模流分析软件Moldflow,对盒盖进行翘曲变形分析,得出产生翘曲变形主要是由取向不均和收缩不均引起的,通过对不同方案浇口位置和数量的比较,优化浇口位置,改善材料熔体的流动方向取向,调整保压曲线,有效地减少翘曲变形,达到了预期地变形目标值,为模具开发提供了依据。     

The Dynamics of a Racialized,Gendered, Ethnicized,and Economically Stratified Society: Understanding the Socio-Economic Status of Women in Zimbabwe

Feminist literature attempting to understand the status of women in Zimbabwe has seldom considered patterns of social exclusion and the dynamics of a racialized society that institutionalized racial supremacy as an ideology for organizing social life. Even now, too often we believe, feminist theorists analyze the status of women with the assumption that patriarchy is the single source of the oppression of women. Using the notion of a racialized society we account for the workings of gender oppression within the historical context of Zimbabwe. We show how in a racialized society, gender, race, ethnicity, and class operate intricately together to relegate African women to the lowest socio-economic status. Even with policies to redress earlier imbalances, women endure all forms of injustices. We focus on the informal sector as illustrative of one sector where these injustices continue.     

Measuring Socio-Economic GENDER Inequality: Toward an Alternative to the UNDP Gender-Related Development Index

This paper assesses the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Gender-Related Development Index (GDI). Although the GDI has increased attention on gender equality in human development, it suffers from several limitations. A major problem is that it conflates relative gender equality with absolute levels of human development and thus gives no information on comparative gender inequality among countries. Using the same indicators as the GDI, the paper constructs a Relative Status of Women (RSW) index, which demonstrates how using a measure of gender equality that abstracts from levels of development results in very different country rankings. However, the RSW is not an ideal measure of gender inequality. The GDI indicators are not the most appropriate ones for measuring gender inequality and hence both the RSW and the GDI have limited validity. The paper concludes by offering a conceptual framework that provides the basis for an alternative measure of gender inequality.     

Vocational skills in the accounting professional profile: the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) employers' opinion

The increasingly dynamic environment in which accountants work has necessitated a reorientation of accounting education. In some countries this issue has raised great interest amongst accounting educators and practitioners. The ongoing debate has already resulted in the publication of several statements and research papers that have raised the question of the relevance of the role of vocational skills in accounting education. Examples of these vocational skills are communication skills, interpersonal skills, and problem-solving skills. This paper reports on the importance that the employers of management accountants gave to a specified set of vocational skills and capabilities and the level of ability of these skills exhibited by students. In order to prioritize future developments an integrated analysis of the two attributes, importance and exhibited level, is enabled by the use of strategic mapping. The results of this study suggest that the employers perceive deficiencies in several capabilities that they have identified as being quite important. These deficiencies exist, in the employers' opinion, both prior to recruitment and on professional qualification. The research also indicates that, in the opinion of these employers, the development of these skills should be a central concern for universities and professional bodies. The employers also indicated that vocational skills should be attained in an integrated way.     

Influence measures on profile analysis with elliptical data through Frèchet’s metric

In this paper, from Frèchet’s metric, diagnostic tools are constructed for the detection of influential observations in Profile Analysis with elliptically distributed random errors . This distributional hypothesis allows the application of the proposed diagnostics to a wide variety of random experiences, not only for data from a multivariate normal distribution but also from other symmetric distributions, commonly used in studies of several sciences. The diagnostics are based on Frèchet’s distance between the distributions of the basic statistics in Profile Analysis, in the postulated model and in the perturbed model obtained by deleting an observation from the sample data. This metric is highly useful since it enables the analysis of the influence on the point estimation and the estimation error. Applications on two data sets are provided.     

A detailed behavioral analysis on consumer and customer changing behavior with respect to social networking sites

The main purpose of the study is to analyze the changing behavior of the customers on various products by conducting a customer review. The analysis is performed in three major steps such as, calculating customer review quality, calculating behavior quality of customer and review comparison. Behavioral analysis is a kind of science which helps to study and understand the behavior of human beings. It studies the factors that influence the behavior of living beings and non-living beings on a larger aspect. A special emphasis is placed on understanding, describing, predicting and changing behavior. Understanding the behavior of individuals is a tedious job to be performed and hence to evaluate the final result, the study used Chi-Square Method. As a tool, the paper employs customer reviews to gather primary and secondary data. These reviews inform, educate and explain the benefits of using customer reviews in gathering data. It is one of the best and easiest methods to formulate the score of comparison between customer's profile and their review. Findings of the study proved that depending on the customer's profile, the quality of the product varied. Furthermore, high rates of efficiency and accuracy is observed in gathering information on the products via customer's profile and review. Study authenticates an inclusive approach to explain factors manipulating consumer awareness, observation and sensitivity on product value. A depth analysis was carried out to identify the purchase decision, brand behavior, price influence the buying behavior and opinion of the customers. However, the factors such as high quality, social media networking sites and customer's profiles had a greater impact on buying behavior of the customers.     

Identifying College Students Likely to Participate in a Travel Abroad Volunteer Project

Foreign travel provides excellent opportunities for college students to broaden their global mindset. While empirical research focusing on variables that influence student participation in study abroad programs are available, there is a paucity of research that focuses on travel abroad programs relating to participating in volunteer projects. Using a sample of 193 undergraduate business students, this study attempts to develop profiles of students that are “not likely,” “maybe,” and “most likely” to participate in a travel abroad volunteer project. Those who were “mostly likely” to participate had traveled abroad before, demonstrated high levels of self-congruity and diversity seeking, and stated financial costs to be less of a constraint in participating in such a project. Discussion of findings and direction for future research is also provided.     

Statistical inference of partially linear varying coefficient spatial autoregressive models

This paper proposes a semiparametric partially linear varying coefficient spatial autoregressive model, which is a generalization of standard spatial autoregressive model and partially linear spatial autoregressive model. To estimate the unknown spatial lag parameter, constant coefficients and coefficient functions, a profile quasi-maximum likelihood approach based on the local-linear method is introduced. To test the existence of the spatial effects, a generalized likelihood ratio test statistic is proposed, and a residual-based bootstrap procedure is used to derive the p-value of the test. Some simulations are conducted to examine the performance of our proposed procedures and the results are satisfactory. Furthermore, a real-world example is given to demonstrate the application of the proposed procedures.