Strategic information revelation when experts compete to influence

We consider a persuasion game between a decision‐maker and a set of experts. Each expert is identified by two parameters: (i) “quality” or his likelihood of observing the state (i.e., learning what the best decision is) and (ii) “agenda” or the preferred decision that is independent of the state. An informed expert may feign ignorance but cannot misreport. We offer a general characterization of the equilibrium. From the decision‐maker's standpoint, (a) higher quality is not necessarily better, (b) extreme agendas are always preferred, and (c) the optimal panel may involve experts with identical (rather than conflicting) agendas.     

How global brands compete

It's time to rethink global branding. More than two decades ago, Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt argued that corporations should grow by selling standardized products all over the world. But consumers in most countries had trouble relating to generic products, so executives instead strove for global scale on backstage activities such as production while customizing product features and selling techniques to local tastes. Such "glocal" strategies now rule marketing. Global branding has lost more luster recently because transnational companies have been under siege, with brands like Coca-Cola and Nike becoming lightning rods for antiglobalization protests. The instinctive reaction of most transnational companies has been to try to fly below the radar. But global brands can't escape notice. In fact, most transnational corporations don't realize that because of their power and pervasiveness, people view them differently than they do other firms. In a research project involving 3,300 consumers in 41 countries, the authors found that most people choose one global brand over another because of differences in the brands'global qualities. Ratherthan ignore the global characteristics of their brands, firms must learn to manage those characteristics. That's critical, because future growth for most companies will likely come from foreign markets. Consumers base preferences on three dimensions of global brands--quality (signaled by a company's global stature); the cultural myths that brands author; and firms' efforts to address social problems. The authors also found that it didn't matter to consumers whether the brands they bought were American--a remarkable finding considering that the study was conducted when anti-American sentiment in many nations was on the rise.     

Translation-rule命令在VoIP中的应用

VoIP是近年来快速发展的一种语音技术，此技术在很多领域得到应用，如银行的呼叫中心系统，企业内部的语音通信等。     

利用路由器构建小型VoIP电话网

一个大的企业，如银行、保险公司等，分支机构遍布全国各地，为了维护业务的正常运行，总部和分支机构的科技部门经常需要进行一些交流，而这些交流并不是一分钟、两分钟就能够完成的，所以一年下来，电话通信费用就是一笔不小的开支。如果建立起一个小型的、专用的VoIP电话网络，就可以更加方便、快捷的进行交流而不必担心账单。     

福建省中行VoIP网络电话设计方案

中国银行福建省分行随着业务的迅速发展，各个部门联系日益频繁，话费居高不下。针对该问题，在中国银行福建省分行的既有网络平台上，有效利用带宽，建立了高品质、低成本的VoIP网络电话系统。这不仅大幅降低电话费用成本，更为未来各项网络通信增值服务打造了一个广阔的发展空间，加快了电子商务的步伐。     

使用ISDN PRI信令在PBX与路由器之间实现VoIP

随着网络的深入应用与发展，IP将成为未来信息通信的主导技术。各种业务可由IP包来承载，而IP信息流又可以在各种传输媒体中传送，并以IP网为基础，最终实现数据、话音、图像业务融合和网络融合。采用统一的技术解决方案来构建新一代信息网络，以提供话音、数据和图像等综合服务，将成为人们追求的目标。     

Using Spinoffs to Reduce Capital Mis-Allocations

In this paper, we try to show that mis-allocation of capital in a conglomerate can lead to spinoffs. This mis-allocation arises when internal cash is not allocated efficiently between divisions with differences in growth opportunities. We show that differences in growth opportunities can predict subsequent spinoffs. We also show that differences in growth opportunities are better predictors of spinoffs than either the SIC codes that are used in the corporate focus explanation of spinoffs, or the usual estimates of free cash flow as applied to the conglomerate.     

Using technology to reveal true costs

Healthcare leaders should address three important questions as they prepare to implement new costing systems: Do all providers in their organizations' systems, networks, or partnerships share the same definitions of unit of care and of fixed, variable, incremental, direct, and indirect costs? What are the maintenance processes and protocols for cost center and period matching of revenues and costs? If some providers within a network or partnership are not using costing systems, can an enterprise derive surrogate cost per unit of care?     

Using Organizational Architecture to Lead Change

Effective leadership involves more than developing and communicating the right strategic vision for the company. To encourage employees to carry out the corporate vision, companies must ensure consistency among the following three main components of their organizational architecture: (1) the allocation of decision‐making authority; (2) performance measurement systems; and (3) reward systems. The authors illustrate the application of this framework with the case of Xerox's (eventually) successful attempt to create a customer‐oriented workforce in the 1980s. But a more effective demonstration of the importance of these principles, as the authors go on to suggest, might well be the same company's well‐known failure to harvest the commercial promise of the many inventions by its research group in Palo Alto, one of which became the basis for Steve Jobs' success at Apple. This organizational framework is especially useful for evaluating the likely effects of major corporate initiatives such as “Six Sigma” or the “Balanced Scorecard.” For example, it could be used to help top management determine whether, and under what circumstances, decentralization is likely to improve decision‐making and performance, as well as the changes in the firm's performance management and incentive systems that would be required to make decentralization work. Finally, the authors apply the framework to another important leadership issue: corporate ethics. Since the scandals of the early 2000s and the passage of Sarbanes‐Oxley, many, if not most, U.S. companies have issued formal codes of conduct, appointed ethics officers, and instituted training programs in ethics. But a key question for top management is whether the incentives established by the company's organizational architecture reinforce or undermine the code of conduct. Ensuring consistency in organizational design is an important leadership function—one that is critical to encouraging ethical behavior as well as the pursuit of shareholder value.     

Using neural networks to predict corporate failure

Predicting corporate failure or bankruptcy is one of the most important problems facing business and government. The recent Savings and Loan crisis is one example, where bankruptcies cost the United States billions of dollars and became a national political issue. This paper provides a ‘meta analysis’ of the use of neural networks to predict corporate failure. Fifteen papers are reviewed and compared in order to investigate ‘what works and what doesn’t work’. The studies are compared for their formulations including aspects such as the impact of using different percentages of bankrupt firms, the software they used, the input variables, the nature of the hidden layer used, the number of nodes in the hidden layer, the output variables, training and testing and statistical analysis of results. Then the findings are compared across a number of dimensions, including, similarity of comparative solutions, number of correct classifications, impact of hidden layers, and the impact of the percentage of bankrupt firms. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using Digital Storytelling to Engage Student Learning

No one really knows what the first story ever told in human history was, but storytelling is an art that spans many civilizations and cultures, and continues to be a major part of our modern lives. More recently, storytelling has gone digital with advances in technology and connectivity. Educators have also rediscovered how storytelling can be an effective teaching pedagogy for engaged student learning. A digital story can engage students' visual and auditory senses in a way that the written word alone cannot. This article describes such an effort. The Movie-Door-2-Door.com (MD2D) is a digital story spanning 12 episodes. The story revolves around three young business graduates who started their own business and discovered the role of financial information in managing a business along the way. An independent survey by the University's teaching unit showed that the use of such digital stories can be an appropriate pedagogy to help student contextualize accounting and its role in helping management make decisions. The first four episodes of the MD2D digital story are available for viewing at www.research.smu.edu.sg/faculty/MD2D/.     

Using Household Surveys to Build Analytic Capacity

This article reviews the results of efforts in five countriesto build a national capacity to analyze social policy; theseefforts were undertaken in oconjunction with Living StandardsMeasurement Survey (LSMS) projects. Case studies for Bolivia,Jamaica, the Kyrgyz Republic, South Africa, and Vietnam showthat building such capacity requires explicit planning, significanttime and money, open access to data, and strong support frompolicymakers. Lessons are drawn about four aspects of buildingcapacity—training, technical assistance, research, andrecruitment. The lessons learned from these LSMS projects applyin a more general sense to other kinds of capacity-buildingprojects.      

运用“三种手段”管理信贷资金

要管好用好信贷资金，必须做到行政、经济、法律三种手段综合运用，相互配合，各有侧重；行政手段是基础，经济手段是杠杆，法律手段是武器。     

Using Expectations to Test Asset Pricing Models

Asset pricing models generate predictions relating assets' expected rates of return and their risk attributes. Most tests of these models have employed realized rates of return as a proxy for expected return. We use analysts' expected rates of return to examine the relation between these expectations and firm attributes. By assuming that analysts' expectations are unbiased estimates of market-wide expected rates of return, we can circumvent the use of realized rates of return and provide evidence on the predictions emanating from traditional asset pricing models. We find a positive, robust relation between expected return and market beta and a negative relation between expected return and firm size, consistent with the notion that these are risk factors. We do not find that high book-to-market firms are expected to earn higher returns than low book-to-market firms, inconsistent with the notion that book-to-market is a risk factor.     

Using price distributions to estimate search costs

We show how the equilibrium restrictions implied by standard search models can be used to estimate search‐cost distributions using price data alone. We consider both sequential and non‐sequential search strategies, and develop estimation methodologies that exploit equilibrium restrictions to recover estimates of search‐cost heterogeneity that are theoretically consistent with the search models. We illustrate the method using online prices for several economics and statistics textbooks.     

Using Organizational Architecture to Lead Change*

Effective leadership involves more than developing and communicating the right strategic vision for the company. To encourage employees to carry out the corporate vision, companies must ensure consistency among the following three main components of their “organizational architecture:”

• ? the allocation of decision‐making authority (that is, who in the organization gets to make what decisions);
• ? performance measurement systems (for evaluating the performance of individuals as well as business units); and
• ? reward systems (the rewards for success, both financial and otherwise, and the consequences of failure).

The authors illustrate the application of this framework with the case of Xerox's (eventually) successful attempt to create a customer‐oriented workforce in the 1980s. But a more effective demonstration of the importance of these principles, as the authors go on to suggest, might well be the same company's well‐known failure to realize the commercial promise of the many inventions by its research group in Palo Alto. This organizational framework is especially useful for evaluating the likely effects of major corporate initiatives such as “Six Sigma” or the “Balanced Scorecard.” For example, it could be used to help top management determine whether, and under what circumstances, decentralization is likely to improve decision‐making and performance, as well as the changes in the firm's performance management and incentive systems that would be required to make decentralization work. Finally, the authors apply the framework to another important leadership issue: corporate ethics. In response to the scandals of the past decade and the passage of Sarbanes‐Oxley, many U.S. companies have issued formal codes of conduct, appointed ethics officers, and instituted training programs in ethics. But a key question for top management is whether the incentives established by the firm's organizational architecture reinforce or undermine the code of conduct. In this sense, ensuring consistency in organizational design is an important leadership function—one that is critical to encouraging ethical behavior as well as the pursuit of shareholder value.     

Using scenarios to explore UK upland futures

Uplands around the world are facing significant social, economic and environmental changes, and decision-makers need to better understand what the future may hold if they are to adapt and maintain upland goods and services. This paper draws together all major research comprising eight studies that have used scenarios to describe possible futures for UK uplands. The paper evaluates which scenarios are perceived by stakeholders to be most likely and desirable, and assesses the benefits and drawbacks of the scenario methods used in UK uplands to date. Stakeholders agreed that the most desirable and likely scenario would be a continuation of hill farming (albeit at reduced levels) based on cross-compliance with environmental measures. The least desirable scenario is a withdrawal of government financial support for hill farming. Although this was deemed by stakeholders to be the least likely scenario, the loss of government support warrants close attention due to its potential implications for the local economy. Stakeholders noted that the environmental implications of this scenario are much less clear-cut. As such, there is an urgent need to understand the full implications of this scenario, so that upland stakeholders can adequately prepare, and policy-makers can better evaluate the likely implications of different policy options. The paper concludes that in future, upland scenario research needs to: (1) better integrate in-depth and representative participation from stakeholders during both scenario development and evaluation; and (2) make more effective use of visualisation techniques and simulation models.     

Using Nonfinancial Measures to Assess Fraud Risk

This study examines whether auditors can effectively use nonfinancial measures (NFMs) to assess the reasonableness of financial performance and, thereby, help detect financial statement fraud (hereafter, fraud). If auditors or other interested parties (e.g., directors, lenders, investors, or regulators) can identify NFMs (e.g., facilities growth) that are correlated with financial measures (e.g., revenue growth), inconsistent patterns between the NFMs and financial measures can be used to detect firms with high fraud risk. We find that the  difference  between financial and nonfinancial performance is significantly greater for firms that committed fraud than for their nonfraud competitors. We also find that this difference is a significant fraud indicator when included in a model containing variables that have previously been linked to the likelihood of fraud. Overall, our results provide empirical evidence suggesting that NFMs can be effectively used to assess fraud risk.