The generation of doctorates and their feedback into higher education

The dynamic effects of alternative manpower policies and programs can be “pretested” in a computer based simulation. It is generally recognized that the production of Doctorates depends to a large degree on the Doctorate-holding faculty. Because the doctorate holders are in great demand by the other sectors of the economy, a circular or a “feedback” situation exists. The problem is further complicated by the availability of developed student talent and by various socioeconomic conditions existing at different periods of time within two or three decades prior to the time a study is made.

This paper attempts to develop a conceptual and a mathematical model to study the production of Doctorates, Masters' and Baccalaureate degrees and their feedback into higher education. The model consisting of over 200 non-linear difference equations is programmed for computer simulation and validation against historical data. Currently simulation is used to describe what has happened in the past. Once this phase is accomplished, the model can be used to prescribe what will happen in the future with a fair level of confidence.     

Redistricting reformulated: A maximum interaction/minimum separation objective

Alternative objective functions to the population centroid type commonly employed in computerized political districting algorithms are suggested and discussed. Districtings based on maximum overlap of individuals' “action spaces” or on minimum aggregate length of interpersonal separations better represent the spatio-political notion of “compactness” than do those based on centroid measures. The traditional analogy between the warehouse location problem and the optimal districting problem may thus be an inappropriate one. The proposed reformulated optimal districting problem with a spatial interaction or interpersonal separation objective may be formally stated as a quadratic integer program. The solution to the program is seen, however, to be only one of several possible “optimal” political partitionings. Regardless of the specific compactness measure chosen, separate “mean” and “modal” districtings may exist.     

Social indicators and social accounts

This paper defines “social indicators” as statistics which have two denning characteristics. They are, first, measures of direct normative interest; that is, what the economist would call measures of “welfare” and “illfare”. Most existing government statistics are not of this type, because a large proportion of existing statistics are measures of government or other institutional activity, produced as a by-product of accounting or administrative routine. The second defining characteristic of a social indicator is that it should fit into a systematic scheme of classification or aggregation which would make possible a balanced assessment of socio-economic progress or retrogression in some broad area, as well as disaggregated and detailed study of particular problems.

The work in government on social indicators was designed in part to meet the needs of Toward a Social Report, a preliminary study of the condition of American society issued by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (Superintendent of Documents, Wash. D.C. 20402; 1969). Social indicators can also fit, with other statistics, into a set of “policy accounts” or scheme of social accounting, which would relate social expenditures to the social indicator they were designed to affect. This would encourage broadened cost-benefit analysis and rational public decision-making.     

Demand for education, and its estimation

Since education produces major externalities and has important merit want characteristics, the estimation of a demand schedule is extremely difficult. Demand estimation for higher education is made somewhat easier because of the great importance of the associated costs and the relevant private substitutes, i.e. private colleges and universities. Therefore higher education is a good candidate for the application of the individual (economic) preference approach, which is based on the assumption that individuals are aware of their need for education about as they are aware of their needs for products provided by the open market.

The estimation of demand for primary and secondary education can rely only to a minor extent on the individual (economic) preference approach. The voter's behavior approach analysis is likely to be more directly applicable. Study of the behavior of voters and the behavior of legislators and members of school boards can shed light on the demand for education. Analytic insight can be gained also by the “voting with one's feet”, and the “calculus of consent” methods.

Finally, benefit-cost analysis can be applied in situations where education gives an extremely weak demand signal. In education we often are less interested in overall benefit-cost estimates than in the benefit-cost positions in which different important interest groups find themselves with regard to education. Such analysis requires the identification of significant interest groups, bargaining strategies, and bargaining patterns, as well as of ways in which education decision makers respond to group pressures.     

The position of agriculture in kibbutz economy—an attempt at quantitative projection

The Israeli Kibbutz Movement adopted the ideology of the “Return to Nature” and aspired to especially develop agricultural labour. But in the past decade there has been a process of “internal migration” of workers from agriculture to industrial occupations, which was compared to the “Industrial Revolution”. The ratio of agricultural workdays to other productive branches workdays decline from 62% in 1967 to 46.5% in 1974. Kibbutz' management has many reasons to evaluate its future direction, (investment in land, in education, etc.). We shall try to describe the expected developments, using the Markov chain. We shall also try to analyse the yearly interchanges and transfer from agriculture to industry and vice versa. We shall attempt to show that the process of decreasing agricultural manpower has almost ceased, and it will become stable on a fixed level of about 43%.     

Developing breakthrough products: challenges and options for market assessment

Competitive pressures and market forces are augmenting the importance of product innovation as a source of competitive advantage. Key drivers underpinning market success have the capacity to develop the “right” products for the “right” customers, using the “right” channels, with a shorter development cycle than competitors. But when breakthrough products (BTPs) are involved, how do we sort out what is “right”? How do we identify customers' future requirements when the technology platforms are still unfolding, products are still in development and customers lack experience with the product? Traditional product development market research techniques are problematic since they assume the customer has historical experience with products similar to those being created. The objective of this paper is to raise the awareness of the OM community with the strengths and weaknesses of existing methodologies for developing and introducing innovative products to market. Further, it suggests promising future directions for both practice and research when BTPs are involved. This is important because of the central role OM plays in managing the success of the BTP development process.     

Mathematical analysis applied to school attendance areas

The objective of this paper is to develop a generalized mathematical model of pupil assignment within school districts. This model can then be used to examine various policies of student integration. Proposed bussing schemes, school location policies, educational parks, attendance boundaries, etc., can be tested for cost, travel time or other measures of efficiency. Extension to other areas of educational planning is feasible.

Mathematical programming techniques are used to assign resources (say school children) to facilities (say schools) subject to restrictions on facilities (say capacity limits) and resources (say a maximum travel time or a desirable range of school “mixtures”) so that a measure of performance, the “objective function” (say total cost or total time of travel) is optimized. The model is intended to allow examination of a wide range of objective functions and system constraints.     

Information theoretic approach to migration analysis

Information theory is employed to look at certain aspects of migration. It is suggested that the dividedness of a population into “movers” and “stayers” is better assessed by migration entropy. The notion of “migration inequality” is introduced and the principle of minimum entropy suggested as a criterion for fitting migrations models. Canadian census data are utilized for illustration purposes.     

Use transnational teams to globalize your company

The authors report on their two-year study of successful transnational teams, in which they examined how such teams are designed and managed to help their firms pursue global business strategies. Based on this study, they present a comprehensive model of team effectiveness that includes the key characteristics differentiating a transnational team from other types of work teams. The model shows how transnational teams operate—how they are staffed and led, communicate across great distances, and cope with cross-cultural issues. In closing, they describe how a company's human resources department can help an “international” or “multinational” team become a “transnational” team—one that has successfully transcended the cultural, geographic, and managerial barriers to team effectiveness.     

INSTITUTIONALISED JUSTIFICATION OF CORPORATE ACTION: INTERNATIONALISATION AND THE EU IN CORPORATE REPORTS

This paper provides an institutional analysis of the way a set of Finnish firms have used the concept of internationalisation and the EU in justifying major strategic decisions. They have used internationalisation, and in particular the then new possibility of Finland joining the EU, as an argument in support of radical change. An analysis of their annual reports reveals a number of institutional arguments which are strong because they are generally accepted, a priori, as being important not only to firms but indeed to Finland as a whole. In using institutional arguments firms are aligning their own interests with those of the country, and in so doing are able to justify radical changes in most parts of their own organisations. We are not claiming that Finnish firms should not react to the challenges which EU represents. Rather, we suggest that by using institutional arguments they are borrowing legitimacy from a wider public. The arguments used are typically very broad, invoking very general visions of the role of Finland in the EU. We call these arguments “easy rides” because, even if they are only partially explicated, it is generally assumed that they will become accepted without questioning by public and employees alike. Certain specific patterns of “easy rides” can be distinguished: i) The mobilisation of a “national mission”, ii) “Sacrifice now, reap the benefit later”, and iii) “Bigger is better”. The paper concludes with a methodological discussion about the difficulty of distinguishing between the technical/functional and the institutional arguments.     

An extremal and information-theoretic characterization of some interzonal transfer models

The paper develops a method of deriving gravity models from extremal principles. The prototype result yields the most popular gravity flow model characterized by an extremal principle. This principle is also for the first time elucidated as an information-theoretic one of choosing the distribution of interzonal transfers which gives least “information” (in the technical sense) for discrimination against a distribution reflecting the “facility” (reciprocal of the “difficulty”) of travel between zones.     

Can we model the educational process?

Operational analysis has not yet made a contribution to the improvement of the educational process. There are several reasons for this. First, relative to the magnitude of the job of teaching our youth, financial support for educational research and analysis has been much smaller than for other problem areas, e.g., health.

The second difficulty is in the relationship between operational analysis and theory. The more complete the theory, the better the system designs resulting from analysis. For education there is no theory. Worse, there are few efforts to develop such theory. It must be recognized, however, that the phenomenon called learning is very complex.

The lack of theory means that the system design proceeds with more uncertainty. Large “safety factors” must be built in. This means that educational systems have to be expensive.

Large, continuing financial support is required; first, to build up present school systems, so that they perform well under existing, changing circumstances; and, second, to support research that will provide theories and models which in turn will lead to more effective learning systems.     

An application of a spatially distributed queuing model to an ambulance system

An application of a spatially distributed queuing model to an ambulance system is presented. The purpose of this research was to assess the usefulness of a variation of the “hypercube” queuing model developed specifically for modeling an ambulance system. The model was applied to the emergency medical system of Greenville County, South Carolina using historical data. Results indicate that the model provides reasonably accurate estimates of system performance measures when the input parameters can be accurately specified.     

The cultural significance of accounting in Japan

We have had a spate of works on “Japanese Management” in the world, but very few on “Japanese Accounting”. In this article it is made clear that the functioning of accounting is contingent on the culture in which the accounting systems are incorporated, and that in order to discuss this intermingling of accounting and culture a perspective elaborated in Scandinavia can be relevant despite the uniqueness of Japanese culture. For only non-rationalistic or “naturalistic” perspectives can provide a basis for understanding the cultural dynamics of Japanese organizations and Japanese society. Thus the roles of accounting in Japan go far beyond what has been discussed in accounting textbooks.     

Expert systems in production management: An assessment

Over the last several years expert systems (ES) have gained almost sensational interest. Within business administration, production management might be one of the most fruitful application areas for ES. There already exist a number of interesting pilot systems, and reports of research projects are beginning to appear in the literature.The main goal of this study is to identify systematically those areas in production management where an ES approach might be most promising. This is important to both researchers and practitioners because it helps pinpoint where research and development resources would be best allocated.In this article the authors provide a taxonomy for production management activities. They then combine this taxonomy with a well-known list of eight “expert tasks” to provide what they call an “applications map” to guide the discussion.After discussing existing research efforts and potential production management applications of expert systems, the authors employ a Likert scoring procedure to quantify their subjective ratings as to problem importance, potential for improved solution, and ease of development, for expert systems development efforts in a given production management decision situation.One conclusion here is that the applicability of expert systems to production management appears to be broadly based. This is particularly true for what the authors have labeled as “technological” activities. An interesting finding is the apparent lack of applicability of expert systems to inventory management. The authors found no existing system or research proposals applying expert systems to inventory management. Finally, systems that combine technological with logistical knowledge seem to be a fertile (but difficult) application area for ES.     

Zip codes and spatial analysis: Problems and prospects

The use of zip codes for spatial, demographic, and socio-economic analysis is growing. As of August 2005, 193 articles were indexed by “zip code” in the Social Sciences Citation Index, while 386 were indexed in PubMed. All of these articles were published since 1989. While the treatment of zip codes as units of analysis varies widely in epidemiology, marketing, geography, and the socio-economic planning sciences, there are a number of common “errors” that could be avoided if analysts retained a better understanding of zip code characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to outline the problems and prospects of utilizing zip codes for spatial analysis. Issues associated with spatial contiguity, data aggregation, and boundary definitions are addressed. Results suggest that, although zip codes are not the most robust spatial units of analysis available, they retain a modest degree of utility for specialized applications. Recommendations for future research regarding zip codes and their use in socio-economic applications are offered.     

The air diffusion model as an urban planning tool

The air above a city is scarce and thus should be considered an urban resource. As a resource, air affects the urban population in several ways. First, the quality of this resource is important, it provides amenities to the urban dweller and enters into his site selection process. Second, because this mass is constantly in motion, it provides a diffusion mechanism through which externalities, or economic “bads”, are exchanged throughout the city.

In this article, we will develop a statistical air diffusion model that explicitly defines this exchange process. The model is then employed to examine two opposing theories of zoning justification—the property value theory and the planning theory. In examining the latter, the importance of air quality and its movement to the design and implementation of the comprehensive urban plan is emphasized.

“This urban system is no longer composed of separate, autonomous places with country in between but is a complete eco-system. A new urban ecology is in the making. Man is no longer able to step temporarily out of the framework of his own structuring or to move on elsewhere to escape the unforeseen consequences of his ingenuity, ruthless energy or folly”     

A note extending Grosskopf, Hayes, Taylor and Weber, “Anticipating the consequences of school reform: A new use of DEA”

The article cited in the current paper's title shows how to extend Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to evaluate future, as well as past and present, performance. This is accomplished by relaxing some of the constraints that reflect the presence of imposed regulations, and then re-computing the evaluations under these alternate conditions. We here extend this approach to account for “long-run” and “short-run” behaviors, and the related bodies of theory that play prominent roles in microeconomics.     

Linear learning in changing environments

The decision maker receives signals imperfectly correlated with an unobservable state variable and must take actions whose payoffs depend on the state. The state randomly changes over time. In this environment, we examine the performance of simple linear updating rules relative to Bayesian learning. We show that a range of parameters exists for which linear learning results in exactly the same decisions as Bayesian learning, although not in the same beliefs. Outside this parameter range, we use simulations to demonstrate that the consumption level attainable under the optimal linear rule is virtually indistinguishable from the one attainable under Bayes’ rule, although the respective decisions will not always be identical. These results suggest that simple rules of thumb can have an advantage over Bayesian updating when more complex calculations are more costly to perform than less complex ones. We demonstrate the implications of such an advantage in an evolutionary model where agents “learn to learn.”     

OR vice: Forecasting and classification techniques for narcotics interdiction

Counternarcotics interdiction efforts have traditionally relied on historically determined sorting criteria or “best guess” to find and classify suspected smuggling traffic. We present a more quantitative approach which incorporates customized database applications, graphics software and statistical modeling techniques to develop forecasting and classification models. Preliminary results show that statistical methodology can improve interdiction rates and reduce forecast error. The idea of predictive modeling is thus gaining support in the counterdrug community. The problem is divided into sea, air and land forecasting, only part of which will be addressed here. The maritime problem is solved using multiple regression in lieu of multivariate time series. This model predicts illegal boat counts by behavior and geographic region. We developed support software to present the forecasts and to automate the process of performing periodic model updates. During the period, the model was in use at. Coast Guard Headquarters. Because of deterrence provided by improved intervention, the vessel seizure rate declined from 1 every 36 hours to 1 every 6 months. Due in part to the success of the sea model, the maritime movement of marijuana has ceased to be a major threat. The air problem is more complex, and required us to locally design data collection and display software. Intelligence analysts are using a customized relational database application with a map overlay to perform visual pattern recognition of smuggling routes. We are solving the modeling portion of the air problem using multiple regression for regional forecasts of traffic density, and discriminant analysis to develop tactical models that classify “good guys” and “bad guys”. The air models are still under development, but we discuss some modeling considerations and preliminary results. The land problem is even more difficult, and data collection is still in progress.