The self-assessment process

The entire job or career search can best be illustrated as a ladder. With the bottom rung as the beginning of the job or career search process, the next rung in the self-assessment process is the preparation of an effective resume, and ultimately the top rung of the ladder, or the final objective, is securing the appropriate position. The goal in each step of the process is to understand yourself and to present yourself as positively as possible, to overcome any negative aspects that would inhibit a competitive job offer, and to be ultimately successful in the interview process. All of this must be achieved using the most effective, efficient method in the shortest possible time while still facing serious and aggressive competition. The long road ahead can be made easier and can make you stand out from the crowd if the sometimes difficult and time-consuming groundwork provides your ladder with the foundation necessary to reach that top rung as a winner.     

Deriving utilities using the analytic hierarchy process

The analytic hierarchy process is used to derive the utilities of outcomes in a decision problem. Such utilities may be verifiable or adjusted by the familiar standard gamble procedure. For multiattribute outcomes, the methodology may be easier to employ than scoring rule procedures.     

Importance of status quo when lobbying a coalition government

Lobbying a coalition government is different from lobbying a single-party government, since in the case of a coalition government, the interest group can intervene in the intragovernmental decision process. In the case where the interest group prefers the status quo to the surplus maximizing policy, the interest group influences the policy without any contribution due to its credible threat to block unfavorable proposals. Furthermore, we show that when, say, a leftist coalition government may be replaced by a rightist coalition government, the final policy reflects a rightist interest group’s preferences more heavily due to the interest group’s forward-looking considerations.     

Secession in the European Union

This paper argues the case for the right of secession in Western democracies. I suggest that the winners gain more than the losers may lose. Indeed, the external effects of secession may well be positive. However, the political economy of secession is highly problematic. Ideally, the rules for secession should be set at the international level but international organisations have a vested interest in preventing secession. It is easier to establish the right of secession at the national level. The opinion of the European Union institutions that Catalonia and Scotland, after seceding, would have to reapply for EU membership has no basis in the European treaties. Nor has this question been settled in any UN agreement or Vienna Convention. There are merely practices, and they vary among international institutions. The paper concludes with suggestions on how secessions from EU member states and withdrawals of member states from the EU might be implemented.     

Procurement aspects in a government specialty hospital

In summary, the various aspects involved in the procurement and supply management process of this institute have been outlined. The decisions that are made in the procurement process may vary; however, the goal to provide the users with the item at the time of need never varies in any environment.     

Discovering and developing collaborative leadership using vectors and videos

Leadership development continues to rely on executive and educational programs that focus on enhancing individuals’ skills, knowledge, or experience. But when leadership is collaborative (i.e., socially achieved by multiple people irrespective of status or title), then currently favored development approaches may be inadequate and inefficient because they do not train the correct skills and therefore waste leadership development dollars. In this paper, we describe a six-step process that can be used in organizations for collaborative leadership development. The six-step process used video recordings of two groups who watched themselves in order to notice and describe the emergence (or not) of collaborative leadership. Before watching themselves, we provided a new graphical language that changed the ways in which the group could see and understand their collaborative activity. The new graphical language (called vectors) made it possible for them to focus and comment on their group practice and not on their practice as individuals. This process of video recording a group and giving them graphical tools to reflect on the practices that they see, provides a simple way for participants to discuss their group patterns and the consequences of these for leadership. Their discussion was developmental in that it naturally helped the group to learn about their own practice. The six-step process seems to be particularly potent because it is based on the group identifying what does and does not advance their collaborative leadership experientially rather than just being taught about behaviors that support or detract from collaborative leadership. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our process for those interested in developing collaborative leadership.     

The role of network density and betweenness centrality in diffusing new venture legitimacy: an epidemiological approach

To survive and grow, new ventures must establish initial legitimacy, and subsequently diffuse this legitimacy through a given population. While the notion of initial legitimacy has received substantial attention in the recent literature, diffusion has not. This work endeavors to outline the legitimacy diffusion process via drawing parallels with the field of epidemiology. Ultimately, to effectively diffuse legitimacy (and grow) a firm must gain positive judgments of appropriateness from members of a given network. Importantly, as with diseases, the characteristics of the network are critical to the diffusion process. A relatively dense network is posited to invoke a normative evaluation process by its members, and can be difficult for new ventures to access, but subsequent diffusion of new venture legitimacy can be rapid. A less dense network, on the other hand, is posited to invoke a pragmatic evaluation process by its members, and is likely easier for new ventures to access initially, but may result in lower levels of new venture legitimacy diffusion in the long run. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

基于GoCAD与Surfer平台建立三维地质模型研究

在FLAC 3D软件前处理过程中,建立复杂的三维地质体模型往往是阻挡我们顺利进行的一个大难题。因此,利用GoCAD与Surfer两个软件平台进行过渡,容易实现提取和转换CAD图中的地表以及钻孔揭露的地层信息,能够快速在GoCAD中建立出复杂的三维地质模型并成功对其划分网格,从而较简便地实现FLAC 3D复杂建模的前处理过程。同时结合工程实例,检验了此种方法的准确性和模拟效果。     

Market-oriented product innovation at Høyang Polaris and Jøtul

This report is concerned with an action research project on market oriented product innovation at Høyang Polaris and Jøtul, where a system for assessment of user needs has been planned and implemented. Based on experience from the project, a model has been developed for the introduction of a need assessment system comprising problem analysis, planning, information, training, demonstration, application, and development.The introduction of need assessment methods may be handled as an operational problem or treated as a strategic issue. When handled as an operational problem, systematic need assessment can be introduced as a project or treated as a process integrated with the daily activities of the product innovation staff.The practical operation of a need assessment system in product innovation projects involves definition of a target group, selection of one or several need assessment methods, implementation of the study, and formulation of the need specification.The responsibility for need assessment studies may be assigned to a special staff unit or to the employees participating in the product innovation process.     

Scheduling and resource allocation in a food service system

The scheduling of food production is often accomplished informally based upon approximate time requirements stated in recipes and the judgment and experience of a food production manager, administrative dietician, or cook. Such schedules are seldom optimized to least overall duration and consequently contain periods of non-productive time on the part of personnel and resources. In addition, these schedules often attempt to avoid resource conflicts through the early scheduled completion of work activity; this leads to many of the menu items being completed sufficiently in advance of serving time that undesirable changes in the nutritional, organoleptic and microbiological properties of the food can take place.In this paper, a branch and bound algorithm is presented as a solution procedure for the foodservice scheduling problem. The advantage of branch and bound in comparison to a heuristic based scheduling procedure is that it can produce schedules which are optimized to least overall duration from start to finish. The added computational cost of the branch and bound procedure is justified, because most foodservice systems cycle their menus. Consequently, each of a finite number of schedules is reused numerous times over an extended period resulting in long-term productivity gains.Another advantage of the algorithm is that right-shifted or late start schedules may be produced. This is in keeping with our objective of minimizing the delay time between the completion of the food and its being served to the consumer.The paper describes a method by which the process time for each of the various steps in a recipe may be computed as a function of the number of servings being prepared. Although these are normally considered to be linear relationships, the algorithm can easily be modified to accept other types of relationships as well.Perhaps the most important aspect of the this research is that the branch and bound algorithm has been implemented to perform branching operations over two classes of decisions. The first class of decisions involves the selection of which recipe steps or activities are to be scheduled at a certain time, and the second class of decisions involves the choice of which resource class to assign to the activities in those cases where alternative resources are allowed. This dual branching philosophy provides a great deal of flexibility to the decision maker for handling the type of scheduling problems commonly found in practice. The expense of this added flexibility, however, is a substantial increase in the size of the decision tree which must be developed and explored.In order to demonstrate the performance of the algorithm for practical purposes, the lunch menus of a short term, acute case, 300 bed hospital in Syracuse, New York were used to develop production schedules. These menus included a total of 89 different hot food items whose recipes were placed into a menu file in the computer along with the coefficients needed to develop process time estimates as a function of numbers of servings to be prepared. In total, fourteen lunch menus are cycled at the hospital; the number of items appearing on the menus ranges from 8 to 14 hot food items.In the first series of tests, resources were assumed not to be interchangeable. The branch and bound procedure was successful in producing optimal solutions for eleven of the fourteen schedules. The three menus which were not optimally solved were aborted, because the size of the solutions tree grew beyond that which could be stored in 500K bytes of common memory. In spite of this, however, the upper bound solutions given by the aborted problems were found to be very close to lower bound values and therefore may be considered as very good solutions.In the second series of tests, certain resources were allowed to be interchangeable for some of the activities. Specifically, we assumed two labor classes. The first of these are called special cooks who are more experienced personnel. Normally special cooks prepare entree items, but they may be called upon in some cases to perform any activity normally performed by the second labor class- the less experienced cooks—who normally prepare soups, sauces and vegetables. The cooks, on the other hand, are never allowed to prepare menu items which call for special cooks. These groundrules are identical to those currently in practice at the hospital from which the test problems were obtained. Ten of the fourteen menus were selected for this series of tests. In all of the ten cases, the algorithm successfully developed optimal solutions without exceeding the 500K byte common memory limitation. And, in spite of the vastly increased tree size resulting from the dual decision branches, the computation times for these tests were only modestly greater than those of the first set of tests where alternative resources were not considered. The success of the algorithm in solving the dual decision problems resulted in large part from its ability to develop strong upper bounds very early in solution process. In addition, the characteristics of food production scheduling problems are such that the lower bound pruning is very effective especially in the early stages of tree development.It is important to note that the use of an algorithm such as this in a practical setting affords a very friendly user interface. Once the foodservice system's menu items have been placed into a file, the user may easily select any set of these items to include in a given schedule. Only three lines of data input are required. The first line specifies the number of items as well as the zero-hour or serving time. The second line identifies the item numbers of the hot-food items to be scheduled. And the third line specifies the number of servings for each of those items which must be prepared. Kitchen personnel with limited experience can be trained to input the data in less than 15 minutes of instruction time.     

A critical examination of the ability of ISO 9000 certification to lead to a competitive advantage

The ISO 9000 series of standards has formalized systems for evaluating the ability of any firm to consistently design, produce, and deliver quality products and services. Despite its widespread international acceptance, ISO 9000 is surrounded by controversy and criticism. The literature is clearly divided in its assessment of ISO 9000, which is viewed as either a variant of Total Quality Management (TQM) or a paper-driven process of limited value. The primary objective of this article is to address the competing views of the standard in an attempt to show that ISO 9000 certification can be leveraged into a competitive advantage.     

Monopoly,product diversity and welfare

The more homogeneous its customers the easier it is for a monopolist to extract consumer surplus. Offering a range of product varieties (or spatial locations) sorts consumers into groups with similar preferences. The profit opportunities this yields may result in a monopoly providing more product choice than is socially optimal. Nevertheless, monopoly may be socially preferable to a free entry imperfectly competitive equilibrium.     

Efficient Markets, Fundamentals, and Crashes

A bstract .Economists have struggled to characterize and model the dynamic evolution of economic phenomena throughout this century. For at least eight decades, American economists have faced the persistent choice between structural or formal models of evolving dynamics and those alternative portrayals that focused on historical narratives or qualitative features. In this article we compare the models and methods used by representative authors who have sought to address the swings in stock prices. Our rather terse comparison between the orthodox theorists and those we label heterodox demonstrates the wide divergence between the foci of approaches adopted. Their methods, conclusions, and implications differ markedly. Where the orthodox approaches focus all but exclusively on statistical issues, the heterodox group stresses the importance of incomplete information and markets in an institutional and historical context. Such fundamental differences prohibit any meaningful dialogue between proponents of the two basic approaches. Moreover, substantial deficiencies–technical and otherwise–of contributions within the two groups limit ability to discriminate between rival views within each group. The clearer identification of transparent roles for credit, technology, and institutions in the heterodox approaches, however, makes the awkward translation from theoretical model to social commentary much easier.     

浅析中外住房保障制度

低收入群体的居住问题对任何国家来说都是一个十分重大的社会、经济和建设问题。在我国城市经济建设发展进程中,低收入群体的居住问题已经成为一个日益突出的重大社会问题。保证低收入群体的基本居住要求得以实现,完善我国住房保障制度,对于我国经济稳定、持续发展具有重大意义。本文介绍了其他国家和地区住房保障制度,并对我国现行住房保障制度及其存在的问题进行分析,在借鉴其他国家和地区经验的基础上提出了我国住房保障制度的完善措施。     

A cost evaluation method for dynamic line balancing

A procedure is presented for calculating stochastic costs, which include operator (labor) and inventory costs, associated with dynamic line balancing. Dynamic line balancing, unlike the traditional methods of assembly and production line balancing, assigns operators to one or more operations, where each operation has a predetermined processing time and is defined as a group of identical parallel stations. Operator costs and inventory costs are stochastic because they are functions of the assignment process employed in balancing the line, which may vary throughout the balancing period, and the required flow rate. Earlier studies focused on the calculation of the required number of stations and demonstrated why the initial and final inventories at the different operations are balanced.The cost minimization method developed in the article can be used to evaluate and compare the assignment of operators to stations for various assignment heuristics. Operator costs and inventory costs are the components of the cost function. The operator costs are based on the operations to which operators are assigned and are calculated for the entire work week regardless of whether an operator is given only a partial assignment which results in idle time. It is assumed that there is no variation in station speeds, no learning curve effect for operators' performance times, and no limit on the number of operators available for assignment. The costs associated with work-in-process inventories are computed on a “value added” basis. There is no charge for finished goods inventory after the last operation or raw material before the first operation.The conditions which must be examined before using the cost evaluation method are yield, input requirements, operator requirements, scheduling requirements and output requirements. Yield reflects the output of good units at any operation. The input requirement accounts for units discarded or in need of reworking. The operator requirements define the calculation of operator-hours per hour, set the minimum number of operators at an operation, and require that the work is completed. The scheduling requirements ensure that operators are either working or idle at all times, and that no operator is assigned to more than one operation at any time. The calculation of the output reflects the yield, station speed, and work assignments at the last operation on the line.An application of the cost evaluation method is discussed in the final section of the article. Using a simple heuristic to assign operators, the conditions for yield, inputs, operators, scheduling, and output are satisfied. The costs are then calculated for operators and inventories.In conclusion, the cost evaluation method for dynamic balancing enables a manager to compare the costs of assigning operators to work stations. Using this method to calculate the operator and inventory costs, a number of different heuristics for assigning operators in dynamic balancing can be evaluated and compared for various configurations of the production line. The least cost solution procedure then can be applied to a real manufacturing situation with similar characteristics.     

Limits to global sourcing?: Strategic consequences of dependency on international suppliers: Cluster theory,resource-based view and case studies

This paper argues for the inclusion of an analysis of industry clusters when making decisions about global or local sourcing. Suppliers are viewed as valuable resources that can contribute to a firm's competitive advantage. Two contrasting case studies illustrate that, contrary to common expectations, a high global sourcing quota does not necessarily improve a firm's competitiveness. Rather, there may be limits to global sourcing, if a firm is unable to become a preferred customer of its strategic suppliers. Achieving preferred customer status is easier for firms located in the same regional or national cluster than it is for foreign firms attempting to access a remote supplier. This paper contributes a new and more differentiated approach to global sourcing decisions by integrating the cluster concept. Furthermore, our findings enrich the discourse of strategic management by supporting the view that resources which enable a firm to achieve sustainable competitive advantages can be located beyond its legal boundaries.     

An Empirical Model of Urban Spatial Development

This paper examines land development patterns by using an integrated approach that combines Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial econometric models. It presents evidence that land development sites are affected by each other, and that any attempt to analyze the land development process without consideration of spatial dependence will most likely yield biased parameter estimates, misleading significant levels, and insufficient estimates of the dependent variable. It is found that spatial lagged variables not only improve model performance substantially, but also reveal the presence of clustering land development. This paper demonstrates that incorporation of spatial statistics is made easier with the application of GIS.     

CAI在机械原理教学中的应用研究

计算机辅助教学课件的制作过程一般比较复杂,但是一旦能够把课件精心制作出来,利用课件的多媒体技术可以完成动画仿真,实现课程预习、课上讲述、课后复习、习题的演练、以及随堂测试等一条龙过程。多媒体课件使教师的教学更加丰富多彩、更加形象直观、学生更易于理解。     

Local assimilation of an enterprise system: Situated learning by means of familiarity pockets

Once a new information system is introduced to the workplace, individuals confront it and struggle to make sense of it. Over time, it must be somehow learned and assimilated into everyday work practices. Enterprise systems, because they are complex and integrate work across functions and distance, pose special challenges to learning at the firm's periphery, where local users are distanced from both the centralized system and others elsewhere, and where a community of learning may be thin or lacking. The present study, using direct observations and interviews at a bank in which a new CRM system was introduced across small regional branch offices, explicates the local learning process. Findings suggest that in assimilating the system, bank representatives created familiarity pockets within which they routinely worked with it and outside of which they competently ignored it. Even within familiarity pockets, routine use of the system, while skilled, masked much that was not known by the bank reps. In short, in local assimilation of enterprise systems, knowing in practice may be constituted as much from what can be competently and routinely ignored by users, as from any deep knowledge of the system itself.     

经济转型期多元化经营的风险及对策

多元化还是专业化,这是企业发展过程中常遇到的问题,也是企业最困惑的问题之一。一般地,当宏观经济处于增长期,则行业发展趋好,行业竞争较弱,此时多元化经营比较容易成功;当宏观经济处于成熟期和衰退期,则行业发展趋势变坏,行业竞争加剧,多元化经营则难以成功。经济转型将使传统行业的发展趋势受到不利影响,从而加大多元化经营的风险。