Assessing the organizational fit of a just-in-time manufacturing system: Testing selection, interaction and systems models of contingency theory

The adoption of new manufacturing practices such as just-in-time (JIT) and total quality management (TQC) is only a first step to improving manufacturing performance. Even more critical is the fit between manufacturing practices and organizational design, structure and processes. Using archival and survey data, this paper reports the results of a field study within a Fortune 500 company that tests three operationalizations of contingency theory as discussed by Van de Ven and Drazin (1985) [The Concept of Fit in Contingency Theory, Research in Organizational Behavior, pp. 333–365]. Results show that the misfit between worker empowerment required by JIT/TQC practices and existing authoritarian management partially explain relative workgroup performance as do other conflicts within workgroups and between operators and supervisors.     

Sovereign risk assessment and agency credit ratings

Sovereign ratings are gaining importance as more governments with greater default risk borrow in international bond markets. However, while the ratings have proved useful to governments seeking market access, the difficulty of assessing sovereign risk has led to agency disagreements and public controversy over specific rating assignments. Recognising this difficulty, the financial markets have shown some scepticism toward sovereign ratings when pricing issues.     

The influence of debt management on the term-structure of interest rates

Summary This article focuses onthe influence of debt management on the term-structure of interest rates. Four theories are discussed which try to explain the factors influencing the term-structure. It proved that the four theories could be distinguished according to three aspects which have been investigated by means of analysis of variance and of the estiamtion of two reduced form equations with Dutch data during the period 1950 through 1973. It could be concluded that the liquidity preference theory and to a smaller extent the preferred habitat theory fitted the data relatively well. From this it followed that the influence of debt management on the term-structure of interest rates is rather small. This article is an elaboration of a paper written at the end of the author’s study at Groningen State University. He thanks Dr. S. K. Kuipers, Mr. P. W. Otter and Mr. B. S. Wilpstra, all connected with the Groningen State University, for their advice during the writing of the paper. He also thanks Mr. A. van der Veen, who took care of all the calculation which was necessary for the elaboration. He further thanks Dr. M. M. G. Fase for the comments he made on a previous version of this article. The author works at the Central Bureau of Statistics in The Hague.     

On the use of measure-valued strategies in bond markets

We propose here a theory of cylindrical stochastic integration, recently developed by Mikulevicius and Rozovskii, as mathematical background to the theory of bond markets. In this theory, since there is a continuum of securities, it seems natural to define a portfolio as a measure on maturities. However, it turns out that this set of strategies is not complete, and the theory of cylindrical integration allows one to overcome this difficulty. Our approach generalizes the measure-valued strategies: this explains some known results, such as approximate completeness, but at the same time it also shows that either the optimal strategy is based on a finite number of bonds or it is not necessarily a measure-valued process.Received: November 2002, Mathematics Subject Classification: 60H05, 60G60, 90A09JEL Classification: G10, E43The first author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the CNR Strategic Project Modellizzazione matematica di fenomeni economici. We thank professors A. Bagchi, R. Douady and J. Zabczyk for helpful discussions. A special thanks goes to professors T. Björk, Y. Kabanov and W. Schachermayer for comments and suggestions which contributed to improve the final version of this paper.     

发展劳务经济促进小康建设--提高安徽农村居民收入的思考

农民收入低下是安徽农村小康建设的难点。根据安徽省的资源禀赋和农村剩余劳动力存量大的现状,因势利导发展劳务经济既是提高我省农民收入的现实需要,也必将对加快安徽全面小康的进程起到积极的推动作用。     

Processi stocastici semi-markoviani non-omogenei conservativi

In questo lavoro si introduce il concetto di non-omogeneità nei processi stocastici semi-markoviani conservativi. Si dimostra un teorema di esistenza per la soluzione dell’equazione integrale associata al processo. Si studia infine in un caso particolare il comportamento asintotico di tale soluzione.

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Aim of this paper is to state an existence theorem for the integral equation imbedded with a non-homogenous semi-markov process. If some stochasticity conditions are satisfied, the solution is sole. Finally we study the asymptotic behaviour of this solution in a particular case, that is for a class of birth-and-death linear non-homogenous process.

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Lavoro svolto nell’ambito del GNIM-CNR, Sezione problemi non numerici.     

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