The impact of vocational education on productivity in the United States

This paper examines the impact of vocational education on productivity in the United States. By using a cross-correlation test for directional causality, it is shown that vocational education has led to improvements in human capital that in turn increase productivity as measured by real private domestic product per worker hour in nonfarm business. The reverse is not true: that is, changes in productivity do not have a statistically identifiable impact on vocational education. Moreover, the time it takes for significant cross-correlations to appear suggests that the total effect of any vocational educational change takes at least 10 to 20 years to exhaust itself.When the manufacturing sector is studied separately, such positive results are not obtained. Only two out of seven vocational education measures appear to have a significant effect on productivity. For these two measures, the time for an identifiable impact to occur is also fairly long.     

Breaking the link between quality and the environment: Auditing for sustainability and life cycle assessment

This article outlines the trend in business towards the integration of environmental issues into quality management. It outlines how standards like BS7750 and the EU eco-management and audit scheme are based on a paradigm which stresses environmental management as a continuous cycle of incremental improvement which ignores many of the wider aspects of sustainable development. In an attack on the dominant ideology surrounding environmental management the article stresses the need to change corporate cultures, to move towards new auditing methodologies, to put increasing stress on life-cycle assessment, and to increase (and not deregulate) environmental legislation.     

International projects'' changing patterns: Sales engineers'' changing roles

Dealing with international projects, a reflexion on recent changes of international environment as well as client expectations suggests to emphasize the importance of two additional types of business relationships which tend to complete the “traditional” big international bi-/multi-laterally supported projects scheme: — (a) big international “self-supporting” projects requiring partnership with client or, even, direct provider's involvement (if not investment), — (b) big multi-national clients developing a huge range of projects of all size worldwide, with a more or less developed need of integration of sourcing.The key issue for the providers lies, in fact, in the organisation of relationships with existing and potential clients in those two developing types of complex international operations. Hence, it suggests to re-define the company contacts systems with the client and, above all, the role and profile of the sales engineers, traditionally in charge of these responsabilities.The purpose of this article is to evaluate the environmental changes as well as their impact on international project features and to make a first attempt to evaluate the consequences of these changes on coordinators'/managers' profiles.     

一种计算图象速度的新方法

本文描述的是一种计算图象速度的新奇技术,用一个交又时延线对图象速度的两个相互垂直的分量分别进行计算。如果图象面积是已知的,计算图象速度时就不需要图象面积的其它知识,两个交叉时延线是需要的。该方法作为模拟超大规模集成电路的一种工具是非常适合的。