The application of a Markov Chain in educational planning

Mathematical models can assist educators in the preparation of their educational plans and their potential in this regard is being increasingly realized. As a result, models have found application at all levels at which planning is conducted.This paper examines the potential of one model—the Markov Chain—which is capable of predicting enrolments for an education system.The model is applied to the New South Wales State Government education system between 1947 and 1961 and the projected enrolments compared to the actual enrolments in those years.Some success is achieved but it appears as if the data rather than the model are responsible for this. The limitations of the Markov Chain approach are discussed and present research and directions listed.     

Practices and Practicalities In Human Resource Management1

A wide-ranging research project covering change and its implementation in 27 companies provides the opportunity for the authors of this article to reassess the meaning and significance of HRM. They suggest that ‘it is too simple to dismiss HRM as “old wine in new bottles”.’ Rather, they find important changes taking place. But the true significance of HRM, they suggest, lies not in the fact that its practice actually does resolve underlying tensions but rather in its capacity to ‘manage’ these by ‘reducing, suppressing and glossing’ them. HRM itself is an outcome of the tensions in the employment relationship and, perhaps not surprisingly therefore, it continues to express them. the article ends with suggestions for future research.     

Unfinished Business: The Persistence of Child Labor in the US

Among historians it has become customary to acknowledge that children have always worked. That is, before industrialization children worked, but their work was not deemed a social problem. With industrialization, however, child labor came to be condemned as morally repugnant, economically foolhardy, and socially destructive. Reform efforts were mobilized and, after protracted struggle, children were effectively dispelled from the mines, mills, and factories. Problem solved-or at least we wished to think so. Unfortunately, the US accommodation with child labor was incomplete, and so, child labor persists in pockets of American society. In recent years there has been a growing recognition that many children work, and do so at very young ages. Not only have children always worked, but they continue to do so today.This essay assesses residual child labor problems in the US today. It asks why, when the US made its accommodation to child labor in mines, mills, and factories, we failed to adequately address child labor in other sectors, thus paving the way for continued problems in agriculture, street trades, sweatshops, and elsewhere in our economy.     

The use of co-nomination to identify expert participants for Technology Foresight

The United Kingdom has been carrying out a major exercise in the field of Technology Foresight, involving fifteen panels engaged in wide consultation about the future of their areas. The objectives of the Programme are to help set priorities for publicly funded science and technology and to create new working partnerships between science and industry. The paper describes the process by which members of the panels, and those whom they subsequently consulted, were identified. A survey-based technique known as co-nomination was employed, whereby respondents were asked to identify suitable participants and at the same time to profile their own expertise. The process was repeated with those nominated. The patterns of expertise thus revealed are themselves of interest and are used to construct a map of the inter-relationship between the fields covered by the panels.     

The use of multi-criteria decision-making methods in the integrated assessment of climate change: implications for IA practitioners

Integrated assessment (IA) considers interactions of physical, biological, and human systems in order to assess long-term consequences of environmental and energy policies such as limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and other strategies to negate climate change. Users of IA face the daunting task of interpreting large amounts of data and uncertainties. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods can help users process IA data, understand policy tradeoffs, and learn how their value judgments affect decisions. We held a workshop during which climate change experts tested several MCDM methods for using IA outputs to rank hypothetical policies for abating greenhouse gas emissions. Participants also evaluated several methods for visualizing tradeoffs under both certainty and uncertainty cases. This paper explores potential roles for MCDM in IA identified during the workshop, along with implications for IA design and implementation. We summarize the workshops’ results regarding intertemporal discounting (a type of MCDM weighting judgment), visualization of impacts, how MCDM methods can help users to incorporate their background knowledge, and how MCDM can improve understanding of tradeoffs and the importance of value judgments. A key result is that the interest rates IA experts recommend for discounting future impacts depend strongly on what type of impact is being discounted, as well as upon the exact phrasing of questions used to elicit rates from the experts.     

Accounting,Remuneration and Employee Motivation in the New Organisation

The paper draws upon two detailed case studies of global manufacturing companies to examine the role of accounting in redesigned remuneration systems which are emerging as organisations delayer their structures, change their production methods and move to team-based systems of work and reward. In this way, changes in the content and application of accounting measures are framed within new approaches to rewarding and motivating employees that have been stimulated by efforts to develop alternative, ‘leaner’ manufacturing practices. The focus is principally upon the remuneration of shopfloor employees, but we also consider the implications of team-based reward systems for managerial staff. We argue that despite the recent complementing of financial with non-financial forms of reward (e.g. skill acquisition, improvements to health and safety), and an emphasis upon peer pressure from team members in addition to individual incentives as a source of motivation, the language and calculations of accounting remain central and pervasive in developing, justifying and mobilising support for the new reward system.     

Managing Workplace Sexual Harassment: The Role of Manager Training

Sexual harassment remains a persistent problem for businesses. Indeed, employers spend millions annually in sexual harassment litigation and liability costs. Furthermore, current U.S. law effectively makes it management's responsibility to implement programs to prevent and correct harassment, or else face heightened liability. A common element of prevention programs is training, especially for employees in positions of authority. Several states have gone so far as to mandate sexual harassment training. However, little research exists to demonstrate the efficacy of such training programs. It is known that training sensitizes people in recognizing harassment. However, no research has indicated that training enables managers to accurately identify harassment and respond appropriately. This exploratory study addresses this issue by examining whether training quantity (i.e., cumulative training hours), training variety (i.e., the number of training methods employed), and training recency (i.e., the elapsed time since training) predict a manager's ability to (a) accurately identify sexual harassment and (b) recommend an appropriate response. Results suggest that, while training increases sensitivity, training is associated with decreased accuracy in identification of sexual harassment. No relationship was found among the predictor variables and manager accuracy in recommending an appropriate response. Implications concerning these results are offered along with directions for future research.     

A decomposition of monopolistic quality distortion

The quality distortion caused by a linear pricing monopolist is separated into two components; one measures the imbalance of quality and quantity (the skewed component) and the other measures the restriction of production to increase marginal willingness to pay (the unskewed component). Conditions identifying the direction of quality distortion caused by each of these components are presented. Fundamental special cases of preferences and costs, which are useful representation in a variety of contexts, are analyzed using this framework.