Format effects in the understanding of motion from kinematic diagrams in engineering education

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Understanding and constructing domain-specific external representations, such as kinematic diagrams, is an important goal of engineering...     

Strategic behavior within families of hedge funds

The paper investigates the strategic behavior of hedge fund families. It focuses on decisions to start and liquidate family-member funds. Hedge fund families tend to liquidate funds that underperform compared to other member funds, and to replace them by new ones. By choosing a launch time after a short period of superior performance by their member funds, families extend the spillover to new funds. Hedge fund families seem to be more experienced in promoting their funds and attracting fund inflow than in generating superior performance. This results in higher dollar compensation earned by managers within multi-fund families than in stand-alone funds.     

Interacting with a questionnaire: respondents’ constructions of questionnaire completion

This article explores informants’ constructions of the situation of completing a questionnaire. The data comes from a study qualitatively replicating a quantitative method in which informants were asked to think aloud when completing a questionnaire designed to identify and measure feelings and behaviours in the situation of a job loss. The thinking aloud data showed that the informants constructed the situation of completing the questionnaire as interaction and they engaged themselves in a complex social communication anchored in a local context. The article shows how the informants positioned themselves with regard to the activity of completing a questionnaire, how they constructed their choice of answers and, finally, how they positioned the psychologist who asked for the questionnaire to be completed. The article concludes by discussing potential consequences of the findings for psychological assessment in clinical practice and research.     

Do science and money go together? The case of the French biotech industry

Developing technological applications, entering exploitation alliances, and choosing between research‐ or service‐focused strategic orientations are decisions that high‐tech firms must manage concurrently. This article explores systematically the contrasting effects of these strategic determinants on rent generation and rent appropriation using the entire population of French biotech firms (1994–2002). Findings indicate that science and money do not unconditionally go together–the direct relationship between rent‐accruing resources (e.g., patents or articles) and rent appropriation varies depending on the type of resources and the strategic orientation. Moreover, the effects of strategic determinants differ for rent generation vs. rent appropriation: 1) technological application diversity undermines a firm's capacity to appropriate rents–in particular for research‐oriented firms; 2) exploitation alliances favor rent generation but hinder rent appropriation; 3) service‐oriented firms exhibit significantly better performance than research‐oriented firms. Such evidence challenges the emergence in the biotechnology industry of a ‘one‐best’ strategic trajectory, as represented by research‐intensive start‐ups funded by private money engaged in publishing and patenting races. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cultural changes,popular creativity and mass communication: the Brazilian carnival over the past two centuries

The article analyses festive activities of central/south Brazilian urban society during the past two centuries examining cultural changes, the role of popular creativity, and the effect of the mass media. The article notes the rise of a dominant sector in society which imposes cultural creations on the lower classes while at the same time appropriating cultural traits of popular origin adapting those to fit into a consume oriented capitalist system.     

HURRICANE KATRINA'S EFFECT ON THE PERCEPTION OF NEW ORLEANS LEISURE TOURISTS

Destination image is a critical factor to potential travelers. Many say that Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. The purpose of this study was to investigate the tourist destination images of leisure travelers to New Orleans before and after the storm. Further, this study assessed the influence of media exposure and geographic point of origin on perceptions. The results of this research provide fundamental implications for strategic image management that can assist in designing and implementing marketing campaigns to enhance tourism destination images and to overcome prevailing negative ones.     

Empirical confidence intervals for USDA commodity price forecasts

Conventional procedures for calculating confidence limits of forecasts generated by statistical models provide little guidance for forecasts based on a combination or a consensus process rather than formal models, as is the case with US Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts. This study applied and compared several procedures for calculating empirical confidence intervals for USDA forecasts of corn, soybean and wheat prices over the 1980/81 through 2006/07 marketing years. Alternative procedures were compared based on out-of-sample performance over 1995/96 through 2006/07. The results of this study demonstrate that kernel density, quantile distribution and best fitting parametric distribution (logistic) methods provided confidence intervals calibrated at the 80% level prior to harvest and 90% level after harvest. The kernel density-based method appears most accurate both before and after harvest with the final value falling inside the forecast interval 77% of the time before harvest and 92% after harvest, followed by quantile regression (73% and 91% before and after harvest, respectively) logistic distribution (73% and 90% before and after harvest, respectively) and histogram (66% and 84% before and after harvest, respectively). Overall, this study demonstrates that empirical approaches may be used to construct more accurate confidence intervals for USDA corn, soybean and wheat price forecasts.     

Mattel,Inc.: Global Manufacturing Principles (GMP) – A Life-Cycle Analysis of a Company-Based Code of Conduct in the Toy Industry

Over the last 20+ years, multinational corporations (MNCs) have been confronted with accusations of abuse of market power and unfair and unethical business conduct especially as it relates to their overseas operations and supply chain management. These accusations include, among others, worker exploitation in terms of unfairly low wages, excessive work hours, and unsafe work environment; pollution and contamination of air, ground water and land resources; and, undermining the ability of natural government to protect the well-being of their citizens. MNCs have responded to these accusations by creating voluntary codes of conduct which commit them to specific standards for addressing these issues. These codes are created at both the industry-wide and the individual company level. Unfortunately, these codes have generated little credibility and public trust because their compliance claims cannot be independently verified, and they lack transparency and full public disclosure. In this article, we present a case study of the voluntary code of conduct by Mattel, Inc., the world’s largest toy company. The code, called the Global Manufacturing Principles (GMP), confronts the general criticism leveled against voluntary codes of conduct by (a) creating detailed standards of compliance, (b) independent external monitoring of the company’s compliance with its code of conduct, and (c) making full, and uncensored public disclosure of the audit findings and company’s response in terms of remedial action. We present a detailed account of how Mattel’s voluntary code of conduct was created, implemented, and ultimately abandoned over 9 years. We provide an evaluative analysis of the company’s GMP compliance throughout its life span, which suggests a bell-shaped curve, where early top management commitments were met with pockets of resistance from operational groups, who were concerned about balancing GMP compliance efforts with traditional performance criteria. The early stage response from Mattel’s top management was quick and supported with the requisite resources. As a result, the compliance process accelerated, becoming increasingly more robust and effective. The success of code compliance and increased transparency in public disclosure energized field managers with a sense of professional satisfaction and publicly recognized accomplishments. The decline in GMP compliance was equally steep. When all the easily attainable targets had been reached at the company-operated plants, addressing vendor plants’ compliance presented a new set of challenges, which taxed corporate resources and management commitment. It would seem that value-based and ethics-oriented considerations, i.e., doing the right thing for the right reason, were no longer the driving force for Mattel’s management. Mattel did not see any economic benefit from its proactive stance, when competitors did not seem to suffer adverse consequences for not following suit. The final contributing factor to the code’s abandonment was a widely publicized series of product recalls which absorbed top management’s attention.