Pyrrho's lemma,or have it your way

A simple lemma is derived to support the claim that regression models can be manipulated to a very large extent: by simply adding one regressor one can obtain essentially every set of desired regression coefficients and predictions as well ast-values and standard errors. Consequently, if the product of a specification search is not shown to be generalizable, a sceptical attitude towards its validity is well-founded.     

If I could do it all over again

Real life experiences were used to put together this list of steps to be followed during the planning and implementation of a formal MRP II planning and control system. Project management and organizational skills are critical to the success of the project. The implementation plan is carried out by a project team and subcommittees with the support of top management. Cost/benefit analysis and performance measurements need to be monitored to ensure that business objectives continue to be met.     

The Ethics and Mechanics of Social Democracy or Having it Both Ways

Why is the West in‘becalmed stagnaion’— unable to overcome the obstacles to economic liberalisation? Has the social democratic dream turned sour? The electoral success of social democratic policies can be explained in its offer to let taxpayers have their cake and eat it, argues Anthony de Jasay, a former Oxford don and author of The State. He examines the potential domage to individual thrift, ambition and responsibility that such mistaken doctrines can induce.     

The IMF crisis and how to solve it

The IMF is approaching its 70th birthday and the Greek programme has been a candidate for one of the most credibility‐sapping in its history. Here I trace the IMF's role in programme from its stormy launch; its misfiring implementation; the Fund's half‐hearted apology; and its early (and ongoing) attempts to draw lessons and revise its sovereign debt restructuring framework, which appear destined to deliver insufficient meaningful change. A transparency revolution is both necessary and feasible. It worked for central banks in the 1990s. Why not the Fund?     

Is it tax competition or tax exporting?

This paper extends the basic tax-competition model to a framework in which jurisdictions have market power over the price of the output produced within their borders. If firms within the jurisdiction are competitive, the jurisdiction can play the role of monopoly-rent collector by using taxes to restrict the level of output. It is shown that the basic tax competition model can be thought of as a special case of this more general framework. In this framework, the opportunity to export the tax burden can partially or fully offset the well-known effects identified by the tax competition model.     

浅析习惯性违章及应对措施

巷道底板锚网支护是目前一种先进的科学支护方法,随着我国社会的大力发展,矿井开拓工程逐步向煤田的深部发展,采用传统的技术来解决巷道底板,不仅是其工作量大,资金投入太高,支护作用达到的效果比较差。目前最有效的方法就是锚网支护新技术,它能够弥补目前存在的不足,并且能够充分发挥煤矿自身所能够承受的压力的作用,做到对巷道底板的加固,是一种新型的科学技术。     

战区装备保障点选址决策分析

科学合理的装备保障点选址决策可以使战区装备保障能力得到最大发挥。在分析战区装备保障点选址问题特点和选址决策影响因素的基础上,给出了战区装备保障点选址的基本原则;详细分析设计了战区装备保障点选址问题的流程和步骤;并研究了战区装备保障点选址的一般方法。研究对于提高战区装备保障能力,有着重要的理论和现实意义。     

Don't force change--facilitate it

Many projects are planned well but seem to fail in the implementation stage. We've all been in that situation to one degree or another, so we know that planning, in and of itself, does not dictate success. What is the link between planning and success that is missed so often? While a project with no plan is doomed to failure, a well-planned project can fail just as easily if you can't execute the plan. The ability to keep your team motivated and the project moving forward is critical, and most project leaders don't recognize some fundamentals that are prerequisites for success.     

“Whatever it takes” may not be enough

• ▀ Concerns over risks to the global economy from actual and perceived limits to fiscal and monetary policy are well-founded. A decade on from the global financial crisis, evidence highlights chronic demand deficiency, related weakness in supply and a prolonged period of underperformance among the most policy-constrained advanced economies. All lie within the eurozone.
• ▀ To gauge the risks from such policy constraints, we model a broadening of the eurozone slowdown. Despite the ECB's commitment to mitigate adverse cyclical developments, we find that - in the absence of significant accompanying fiscal support - a period of protracted eurozone weakness would ensue.
• ▀ The implications are far-reaching. Our analysis suggests that such a protracted eurozone slowdown would spill over globally, taking 0.4ppts off average global growth over the next five years.

     

How do suppliers strategise in relation to a customer’s supply network initiative?

The purpose of this article is twofold: firstly, to conceptualise and discuss how suppliers strategise in relation to supply network initiatives taken by their customers in the construction industry, and secondly, to discuss the buying firm’s view on the strategies pursued by their suppliers. Based on the analysis and discussion, we suggest that suppliers can strategise in relation to a focal supply network initiative by using six different connecting modes: (A) start-up relationships and processes, which can support the focal initiative; (B) intensify relationships and processes, which already give some support to the focal initiative; (C) continue with relationships and processes, which support the focal initiative; (D) weaken relationships and processes, which do not support the focal initiative; (E) end relationships and processes, which do not support the focal initiative and (F) continue with relationships and processes, which preserve non-supporting elements of the focal initiative. Furthermore, the suppliers can choose different strategising profiles. Based on the six modes, we can draw profiles, which show how much each supplier would emphasise each respective mode. In addition, we suggest that the buying firm identify the different strategising profiles of its suppliers, and handle the individual profiles of the suppliers, as well as the mix of profiles in the supply network.     

The trade-off between the net present cost of a project and the probability to complete it on schedule

In this article we consider the probability of not completing a project on schedule (or the risk of delays) and its effect on the net present cost of the project. We propose an efficient frontier that points out to management the trade-off between low risk, early start schedules and high risk, late start schedules. Early start schedules minimize the risk of delays at the cost of early investment in project activities and material. Late start schedules delay capital outlays while increasing the risk of not completing the project on its due date.The methodology developed in this study is aimed at strategic level decision making. At this level, decisions are based on incomplete information that calls for stochastic analysis and the introduction of uncertainty. Uncertainty in project management is introduced through stochastic activity duration and stochastic lead times of resources required for the project. The commonly used CPM analysis ignores those aspects of uncertainty. PERT analysis does consider the stochastic nature of activity durations but computes only the probability to complete the project on a given date for a single schedule.A crucial decision at the strategic level of project management is when to schedule activities with high value-added. The decision makers have to trade-off the advantages of delaying such activities, thus reducing the net present cost of the project, with the disadvantages associated with increasing the probability of not completing the project on time.The number of feasible schedules in a real project is typically large and exact analysis of all possible schedules is difficult to perform, if not impossible. This article presents a heuristic procedure that generates an efficient frontier representing the risk of delays versus the net present cost of the project. The efficient frontier is a decision aid for the manager who has to choose the appropriate schedule for the project.Most computer packages for project management are based on CPM (especially packages for personal computers). Our heuristic procedure is designed to be used as an extension to CPM analysis. The procedure starts with the early start schedule developed by CPM and, using the computed slacks, tries to delay activities with high value-added one at a time. At each iteration a Monte-Carlo-type simulation is used to approximate the probability of not completing the project on time. This probability is stored along with the net present cost of the project. The result of the analysis is a set of points on the plane representing the probability of not completing the project on time versus the net present cost of the project. Each point corresponds to a specific schedule. Management can choose the most appropriate schedule for implementation based on its attitude towards risk and its financial policy.A simple example is used to illustrate the heuristic procedure. In the example, a project with six activities and two types of resources is analyzed. Five schedules are generated with net present cost ranging from $45,000 to $8,191,000 and the probability of not completing the project on time ranging from 0.0001 to 0.75. Our experience with a real project of 400 activities is reported as well.The heuristic procedure can be implemented easily on advanced “Fourth Generation” packages for project management such as IBM's Application System (AS) or Metier's Artemis system. The heuristic procedure can also be implemented on personal computers by processing the output of any CPM package by the special subroutine that is developed in this study.     

Public thinking about poverty: why it matters and how to measure it

• Meeting the Millennium Development Goals partly depends on not‐profit organizations raising more funds, which in turn depends on having reliable and valid assessments of where donor and recipient perceptions are out‐of‐line. Across samples from a developed economy Australia (n = 754), and a developing economy Mala?i (n = 387), we explored the factor structure of the ‘Causes of Third‐World Poverty Questionnaire’ (CTWPQ, D. Harper and colleagues, 1990 ). In addition to four core factors suggested through an original (N = 89) sample from the UK (Blame [1] the Poor, [2] Nature, [3] Third World governments, and [4] International Exploitation), combined Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) differentiate a possible fifth factor germane to the social marketing of aid, blame [5] Conflict. Australians and Mala?ians differed significantly on all five factors, with Mala?ians blaming poverty more on situations and less on the poor themselves, compared to Australian counterparts. Our findings are tentative because the CTWPQ item pool requires expanding to represent underlying constructs more fully. Nonetheless, instruments like the CTWPQ can in future be used to identify and monitor in‐context psychosocial barriers to donation, enabling not‐profit marketing organizations to raise funds more efficiently and effectively.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Doing it for themselves? Performance appraisal in project‐based organisations,the role of employees,and challenges to theory

We explore performance appraisal in project‐based organisations and provide novel insights into appraisal processes in this context. These include the central role of employees in orchestrating the appraisal process, the multiple actors that have input to appraisal including project managers, the distance between employees and their official line managers, and the weak coordinating role of human resource specialists in these systems. We draw attention to the drawbacks of current theorising on appraisal to predict and explain outcomes from appraisal systems that are not premised on stable line manager/employee dyads. Theorising based primarily on social exchange theories needs to be reconsidered in this context and new theories developed. We also question how human resource specialists can better support employees, and managers of all kinds, in their implementation roles in polyadic human resource management systems to ensure transparency, equity, and fairness of appraisal processes in a project‐based organisational context.     

大悬臂盖梁无落地支架力学验算分析

我国大城市交通发展方向多为架设高架桥,城市交通已然趋于饱和状态,高架桥施工势必会对原有道路交通影响较大,高架桥施工如何最大程度地减少对城市交通的影响,是我们今后思考的方向。无落地支架作为城市跨线桥盖梁施工的一种常用支撑体系,能充分发挥其力学传导作用,同时也能最大程度地保证下方辅路车辆通行,因其具备施工便捷、成本较低、支撑效果较好、支架拆除便利等优点被广泛使用。     

城市的脆弱性及其规避措施

在城市安全问题上引入"脆弱性"这一概念,初步构建城市脆弱性的研究框架:概念界定、影响因素和评价方法。城市规模、密度和形态,经济社会发展和基础设施水平以及应急管理水平,是影响城市脆弱性的结构性因素。突发事件是城市脆弱性产生的主要胁迫因素。城市规划和建设应以安全为基点,将城市脆弱性分析作为新依据,建立城市规模、密度和形态三位一体的关系,做好城市安全基础设施规划和建设,增强城市突发事件的综合应对能力。     

Corporate identity: What does it mean for museums?

In the commercial sector it is recognised that corporate identity is highly significant not only in differentiating an organisation, but also for its long-term survival. However, no substantial research has previously been undertaken investigating corporate identity in the nonprofit sector. This paper outlines an investigation into the current practice of corporate identity management in museums. A number of distinct elements are identified, which are not adequately addressed by the commercially orientated corporate identity literature. The implications of these issues are considered, and some suggestions made for future corporate identity management activities in the nonprofit sector.     

基于创新文化背景下的企业核心竞争力构建

企业创新文化是未来的经济,没有创新文化的支持,企业的核心竞争力不会长久。创新文化构成企业在创新环境下的核心竞争力,是企业的一种资源,其精神层则是企业创新文化的核心和本源力量。企业必须在创新文化和核心竞争力的互动中,建立激发创新人才的企业创新文化氛围,才能使创新文化内化为企业的核心竞争力,并最终使创新文化支持的企业核心创新竞争力成为企业的创新竞争优势。     

装备维修器材分配供应方法研究

装备维修器材的分配供应是实现对部队维修器材保障的关键一环，本文通过分析其分配供应的具体过程，对每一环节建立了切合实际、方便操作使用的数学模型，可为装备维修器材保障业务人员提供科学的决策依据，从而达到军事效益和经济效益的双赢的目的。     

建筑工程施工中深基坑支护的施工技术管理研究

基坑工程是施工过程中重要的环节之一,随着现代化建筑的不断发展基坑工程出现了变化,其深度、范围以及附近环境复杂性均有所提升.深基坑支护工程是保证工程建设安全性的关键因素,通过合理的支护措施能够保证工程稳定性,从而为后续施工活动的开展打下良好基础.基于此,本文分析了建筑工程施工中深基坑支护的施工技术管理策略,以此来提高施工...