重新发现IT外包

IT业务外包已成为越来越普遍的现象,然而,企业从外包中获得好处的愿望能否成真?企业的商务环境是否发生了彻底变化?BCG专家经过研究认为,如果你对上述任一问题的答案是肯定的,那现在就到了你对上一次IT外包举措进行批判性审视的时候了。     

Management strategies in the Czech telecommunications sector: a comparative study of Český Telecom and T-Mobile

This article compares employment relations (ER) strategies at the incumbent fixed line Czech telecommunications company (TelCo), ?eský Telecom (?T), and the T-Mobile subsidiary, T-Mobile Czech Republic (TMCZ). It considers the extent to which the firms were able to introduce Western-style HRM practices within the context of three changing dynamics. First, the collapse of communism in the former Czechoslovakia was followed by rapid economic liberalization and privatization in the Czech Republic. Second, telecommunications sectors worldwide were subject to deregulation and the rapid diffusion of new technologies. Third, fixed line and mobile TelCos were subject to differing challenges and opportunities. The article uses path dependency, institutionalist and strategic human resource management (SHRM) related theories to assist in this analysis. It concludes that by 2005 the introduction of Western-style HRM practices into the Czech telecommunications sector appeared less constrained by former institutional and historical constraints. TMCZ's ER policies were further influenced by its parent firm's transnational strategies that sought to coordinate better its subsidiaries and create a ‘global’ brand. Despite the differing circumstances of the fixed line and mobile sectors, by 2005 ER practices and strategies at the two firms were to an extent converging, as ?T continued to cut costs and TMCZ adjusted its strategies to better accommodate a saturated market. Given these changes the article postulates that the Czech telecommunications sector has now shifted towards a mature transformation stage, as ER strategies increasingly reflect Western-based SHRM practices and concepts.     

On the non-emptiness of the Mas-Colell bargaining set

We introduce an extension of the Mas-Colell bargaining set and construct, by an elaboration on a voting paradox, a superadditive four-person non-transferable utility game whose extended bargaining set is empty. It is shown that this extension constitutes an upper hemicontinuous correspondence. We conclude that the Mas-Colell bargaining set of a non-levelled superadditive NTU game may be empty.     

Charity Technology Trust: a case study

Charity Technology Trust (CTT) is one of a new breed of philanthropic initiatives aimed at helping UK charities become more efficient by better use of technology. Its founder believes that charities are ideally placed to benefit from the reduced costs and shared benefits of jointly developed strategies and fundraising, communications and data management tools. CTT was formed to catalyse a move in this direction from the major UK fundraising charities and is supported by the personal philanthropic contributions of its trustees—a group of successful businessmen. The challenge for such a new organisation with a new idea is considerable, but after 18 months CTT is working with 27 of the top 100 UK charities on projects from online raffles through e‐mail communications to IT strategy. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Nash-equilibria in a heterogeneous oligopoly with fuzzy information

We consider a model of an oligopolistic market with heterogeneous firms and products where neither the cost nor the demand functions are common knowledge. Instead, each firm only has some vague ideas about the price strategies adopted by its competitors which is modelled by a fuzzy set. In analogy to the notion of an "equilibrium of actions and beliefs" we define and characterize a generalized Nash-equilibrium and show its existence under general conditions. Furthermore, the impact of the fuzzy information on the equilibrium outcome is analyzed by means of a comparative static analysis within a particular model framework.Received: 28 May 2002, Accepted: 25 December 2002, JEL Classification: D43, D80, L13We wish to thank Bernhard F. Arnold, the editor Murat Sertel , and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Of course, we are responsible for all remaining errors.     

Estimating the Size of a Criminal Population from Police Records Using the Truncated Poisson Regression Model

The truncated Poisson regression model is used to arrive at point and interval estimates of the size of two offender populations, i.e. drunk drivers and persons who illegally possess firearms. The dependent capture–recapture variables are constructed from Dutch police records and are counts of individual arrests for both violations. The population size estimates are derived assuming that each count is a realization of a Poisson distribution, and that the Poisson parameters are related to covariates through the truncated Poisson regression model. These assumptions are discussed in detail, and the tenability of the second assumption is assessed by evaluating the marginal residuals and performing tests on overdispersion. For the firearms example, the second assumption seems to hold well, but for the drunk drivers example there is some overdispersion. It is concluded that the method is useful, provided it is used with care.     

Why Distinguish Between Statistics and Mathematical Statistics–The Case of Swedish Academia

A separation between the academic subjects statistics and mathematical statistics has existed in Sweden almost as long as there have been statistics professors. The same distinction has not been maintained in other countries. Why has it been kept for so long in Sweden, and what consequences may it have had? In May 2015, it was 100 years since Mathematical Statistics was formally established as an academic discipline at a Swedish university where Statistics had existed since the turn of the century. We give an account of the debate in Lund and elsewhere about this division during the first decades after 1900 and present two of its leading personalities. The Lund University astronomer (and mathematical statistician) C. V. L. Charlier was a leading proponent for a position in mathematical statistics at the university. Charlier's adversary in the debate was Pontus Fahlbeck, professor in political science and statistics, who reserved the word statistics for ‘statistics as a social science’. Charlier not only secured the first academic position in Sweden in mathematical statistics for his former PhD student Sven Wicksell but also demonstrated that a mathematical statistician can be influential in matters of state, finance as well as in different natural sciences. Fahlbeck saw mathematical statistics as a set of tools that sometimes could be useful in his brand of statistics. After a summary of the organisational, educational and scientific growth of the statistical sciences in Sweden that has taken place during the last 50 years, we discuss what effects the Charlier–Fahlbeck divergence might have had on this development.     

Because you're worth it? Determinants of Vice Chancellor pay in the UK

Wage inequality has increased across most developed nations; this has been manifested in a wide range of organisations and sectors, with implications for well‐being and sustainability; within UK universities, this has become increasingly visible. There is increasing pressure on universities to deliver social and economic impact in an increasingly market‐driven and metric‐driven environment. In the UK context, increasing financial pressure has led to both an escalation of student fees and constrained wage growth for faculty. In contrast, most Vice Chancellors have secured substantive pay packages raising concerns that regulatory failures may be contributing to the rise. We show that Vice Chancellors use their internal power within organisations to extract a disproportionate amount of the value created by the institution. However, we encountered much diversity according to the quality of governance, highlighting the extent to which not only contextual but also internal dynamics drive wage inequality.