Management training in small and medium-sized enterprises: methodological and conceptual issues

The paper examines the impact of management training and development on the organisation and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), via a variety of quantitative and qualitative research techniques and including both crosssectional and longitudinal approaches to analysis. The paper demonstrates the value of management training and development in SMEs and demonstrates a series of one-off and longer lasting effects on their organization and performance. The paper also highlights the conditions under which management development projects are likely to be more successful. Finally, the paper extends the schema developed by Arthur and Hendry (1990) and Hendry et al. (1991), indicating the factors influencing training within businesses, and shows the indirect and complex links between management training and firm performance.     

Open data in Nepal: a webometric network analysis

This study examines the current open data trends in Nepal based on the webometric analysis method by using search engines to trawl through websites and obtain data. The results indicate that various national and international nonprofit organizations, public sector organizations, educational institutions , and a few commercial organizations were the initial actors fostering open data in Nepal. Therefore, these organizations were analyzed in terms of their networking patterns and the extent to which they are exposed internationally in cyberspace by using Webometric Analyst 2.0. Inter-linkage analysis, co-mention analysis, and link impact analyses were conducted to explore the networking behavior in the World Wide Web. The results revealed that international organizations (IOs) were strongly interlinked. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government organizations (GOs), and IOs were interlinked, but weakly. In terms of the co-mention network analysis, IOs with IOs were more significant than NGOs with NGOs, GOs, or business organizations because IOs had been working actively for many years, their web presence was high, and they worked in other fields, including open data. A link impact analysis was also conducted using its indicators of seed sites linked to external websites in terms of the estimated number of top-level domains and country-code top-level domains.     

Exploring necessary conditions in HRM research: Fundamental issues and methodological implications

Although the notion that HRM activities are necessary conditions for achieving certain outcomes is widespread in HRM research, most empirical studies follow an additive sufficiency logic. That is, they analyse whether HRM activities increase an outcome, assuming that they can compensate for one another. However, this does not correspond to the idea of necessity where single HRM activities are required for an outcome to occur and cannot be compensated when absent. We discuss the differences between sufficiency and necessity logics in terms of theory, methodology, and practical relevance. Also, we suggest using a new approach and analysis technique in HRM research: necessary condition analysis. We illustrate the application of the method by analysing data on the relationship between ability‐, motivation‐, and opportunity‐enhancing HRM practices (i.e., high‐performance work practices) and employee performance. This illustrative example highlights that necessary conditions require particular theoretical attention and suitable empirical methods. The paper concludes by showing the value of studying necessary conditions, because such analyses allow straightforward recommendations to be given of high relevance for HRM practice, which differ from and add to recommendations based on additive sufficiency logic and analyses.     

On FDH efficiency analysis: Some methodological issues and applications to retail banking,courts, and urban transit

The methodology of free disposal hull (FDH) measure of productive efficiency is defined and put in perspectivevis-à-vis other nonparametric techniques, in terms of the postulates on which they respectively rest. Computational issues are also considered, in relation to the linear programming techniques used in DEA. The first application bears on a comparison between a private and a public bank, in terms of the relative efficiency of their branches. Important characteristics of the data are revealed by FDH that are not by DEA, due to a better data fit. Next, efficiency estimates of judicial activities are used to evaluate what part of the existing backlog could be reduced by efficiency increases. Finally, with monthly data of an urban transit firm over 12 years, the FDH methodology is extended to a sequential treatment of time series, that supplements efficiency estimation with a measure of technical progress.     

The numbers of Intimate Partner Violence and femicide in Italy: methodological issues in Italian research

Quality & Quantity - The article reviews the research conducted in Italy on the issue of gender-based violence and in particular on femicide, a phenomenon that has become increasingly important...     

Firm performance and ownership structure: Dynamic network data envelopment analysis approach

This paper applies dynamic network slacks-based data envelopment analysis to measure financial performance based on the interrelationship among investment, financing, and dividend decisions. The empirical results show that financial performance is determined simultaneously by the efficiency of decisions, and sample firms have good performance in investment stage, but need to improve their financing and dividend policies. The proposal financial performance measure explains the multicriteria of decision-making rather than the single financial ratios. Besides, the research contributes a novel on the significant relationship between firm's ownership structure in the form of managers, government and foreign shareholders, and the firm's financial performance.     

Interdisciplinary social science: a methodological analysis

Since the 1930's, interdisciplinarity has been advocated in the social sciences for the purpose of achieving more comprehensive explanations of observable social phenomena. However, the realization of this promising perspective has been rather poor. This article argues that two main causes of the failure to create interdisciplinary social science can be distinguished, i.e., methodological and theoretical problems. Methodological problems stem either from taking a reductionist approach towards interdisciplinarity, or by mistaking measurement issues for theoretical topics. Theoretical problems result from the poor state and rate of theory formation within psychology. The implications of these problems are that the validity and reliability of explanations of macro social phenomena, which are provided by disciplines such as sociology and macro economics, are seriously at stake.     

Chaos theory and social science: A methodological analysis

This article investigates the relevance of chaos theory for social science. The application of chaos models in the analysis of social phenomena is accompanied by some important scientific problems. First, whether observations of social phenomena are generated by nonlinear dynamics cannot be ascertained beyond considerable doubt, especially when these observations contain measurement errors; i.e., there is a problem of external validity. Secondly, and more important, as a theory of irregular cyclical social behaviour is lacking, inductive-statistical theoryformation about such behaviour, which is based on fitting a mathematical model of chaos to observations of social phenomena, is impossible unless additional information is used concerning the context and circumstances wherein the social phenomena occur; i.e., the internal validity of any theoretical explanation that is derived from only a fitted mathematical model (of chaos) cannot be assessed. So, research into the suggestion derived from mathematical chaos theory that irregular cycles may be present in the development of social phenomena over time requires theory-formation about irregular cyclical social behaviour on the basis of established theoretical insights and empirical evidence instead of fitting sophisticated mathematical models of chaos to observations of social phenomena.     

Analyzing party competition through the comparative manifesto data: some theoretical and methodological considerations

This paper deals with some of the theoretical and methodological concerns arising from an in-depth analysis of one of the most successful research groups in comparative politics: the Comparative Manifesto Project. The first part of the paper discusses its theoretical background: the dimensionality of the political space, the operationalisation of the saliency theory and whether through election manifestos it is possible to determine the actual party positions. The second part attempts to contribute to the methodological debate by focusing on generally neglected weaknesses of the CMP’s method with regard to both the classification scheme and the coding procedure. In particular, it shows that it is probably impossible to correct the major problems here identified without destroying their comparability across time and space, since they are so deeply rooted in the CMP’s approach.     

Applied linguistics research in three decades: a methodological synthesis of graduate theses in an EFL context

Quality & Quantity - The recent years have witnessed an increasing awareness in methodological issues in the field of applied linguistics, which brought about what Byrnes (Mod Lang J...     

The use of network analysis to handle semantic differential data

The aim of this paper is to propose a method to transform semantic differential data into a network whose graph representation is interpreted as an empirical network of adjectives. The graph is constituted by the adjectives of the semantic differential task. Two adjectives are linked depending on the scoring assigned by a set of respondents. The proposed approach aims at using concepts and methods of Social Network Analysis to explore the network structure and study roles and positions of dominant adjectives. A simulation design has been realized to assess the stability of results under different conditions, i.e. in order to set the optimal threshold in presence of different data generator processes. A case study carried out on real data shows how the emerging network of adjectives can be effectively used to define the concept arising from a semantic differential task.     

Ethical issues in counseling: a trend analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine research about Ethical Issues in Counseling published in selected professional sources and databases between the period of 1986–2017. The data on documents relating ethical issues contained in the Web of Science, EBSCO, Scopus, Taylor & Francis collected were analyzed using content analysis. Ethical issues, Ethical dilemmas and counseling psychology related keywords and phrases were employed together in the analysis of the documents. In total 157 documents were categorized among be relevant to Ethical issues and counseling and they were analyzed. The results reveal that 2010 was the year the most articles on counselling ethics were published. From 2014 to date there has also been a steady increase in articles on ethics in counseling. This is largely because of the increase in articles in counselling psychology as both developing and developed countries employ such research more to solve their social problems, indigenizing psychological research. The study also revealed that America produced more than half of the sampled articles (51.6%).     

网络数据库的连接与远程数据的传输

由于在网络环境中传输和处理各种信息,已成为现代计算机信息管理系统的基本要求,因此如何在计算机局域网中便捷地连接网络中的数据库,以及如何构建经济、可靠、快速、安全的远程数据传输系统,是开发研制现代计算机信息管理系统中一个十分重要的问题.本文以笔者开发研制的计算机建筑物资租赁管理系统中数据传输与处理的成功经验为实例,介绍如何便捷地进行网络数据库的连接,以及构建计算机远程站点数据传输系统的主要技术和方法.     

Decomposing the operational efficiency of major cruise lines: A network data envelopment analysis approach in the presence of shared input and quasi-fixed input

To examine the top cruise lines' operational efficiency in three dimensions, namely, production, marketing, and profitability, this study adopts a network data envelopment analysis approach considering shared and quasi-fixed input factors. The empirical results reveal the following findings. First, the production process tends to outperform marketing and profitability processes. Second, inefficiency of a cruise line mostly stems from overconsumption of the exogenous inputs in each process and the shared input. Third, the relationships between operational efficiency of cruise lines and some categorical factors are examined. Finally, some managerial implications derived from the empirical results are formulated for cruise lines.     

Measurement of technical efficiency in farrow-to-finish swine production using multi-activity network data envelopment analysis: evidence from Taiwan

This study aims to propose a dynamic multi-activity network data development analysis (DMNDEA) model to measure the technical efficiency of farrow-to-finish swine production in Taiwan. Production phases are explicitly divided into two activities; namely, the breed-to-farrow phase and the wean-to-finish phase. By using this model, the problem of shared inputs and dynamic intermediates among activities that characterize pig production are taken into account in an integrated framework, simultaneously with the consideration of non-zero slack, allowing us to examine aspects of production in a more comprehensive and factual manner. For the empirical results based on sample data from 2006 to 2007, it is shown that the overall technical inefficiencies obtained from DMNDEA are not obviously different from those obtained using a traditional one-stage model. However, the DMNDEA results explicitly show us that the sources of inefficiency for each farm are different. Furthermore, second-stage bootstrapping regression results reveal that the determinants of efficiency for each production phase are not the same, indicating the need to identify the influential factors for each production phase separately.     

网络地址翻译技术应用研究

文章阐述了网络地址翻译(NAT)技术的产生背景，主要内容与内部转换机制。详细介绍了网络地址翻译技术的应用领域，以及在此领域中的最新动态。     

网络地址翻译技术应用研究

文章阐述了网络地址翻译(NAT)技术的产生背景,主要内容与内部转换机制。详细介绍了网络地址翻译技术的应用领域,以及在此领域中的最新动态。