...equilibrium. It is suggested that the integration of companies with intellectual and material components of different levels does not always result in an increase in value. JEL Codes: D21, G32, G34. Keywords: intellectual capital, material capital, integration processes, companies’ competitive energy capacity. Introduction The development of an evolutionary trend in corporate analysis in the last quarter of the 20th century, mainly dealt with in the works of foreign scholars’ [17, p. 777–795; 2, p. 141–151; 11, p. 388; 1, p. 79–100; 10, p. 416; 18, p. 79–91; 9, p. 95–120] was brought about by the emergence of post-industrial economies in developed countries. The growing role of knowledge and the rapid expansion of markets for commodities and factors of production contributed to intangible assets becoming a basis for competitive differentiation between companies in many sectors of the economy. The basic object for evolu- 56 International Journal of Advanced Studies, Volume 3, no. 2 (2013) tionary analysis is the company itself, its specific physical (material) and human assets. Characteristics of central significance for corporate analysis are its strategy, structure and key organizational capabilities [1, p. 79–100]. The basis of a company’s knowledge is composed of its key characteristics and competencies based on the...
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...known as System Safety Mechanics. System Safety Mechanics is a comprehensive overview of the entire life cycle of a part, component, or assembly. Utilizing the tools discussed in this paper, the mechanics of this program will not only create a safer aviation industry but provide a highly cost effective operation as well. In addition to discussing techniques on how to approach an aviation operation and transform it into a safe and self-sufficient system, this paper will also discuss the most important ingredient, training. System Safety has been defined by the United States Naval Safety Center as the accepted methodology for identifying potential hazards during the design process and preventing hazards by addressing their root causes. This methodology proactively identifies risks inherent in a process, reviews operational systems for possible failure modes and provides a systems engineering practice principles approach to tracking and resolution of potential hazards (safetycenter.navy.mil, 2008). The Department of the Army has taken this concept very seriously and has written a 55-page pamphlet containing very detailed information on how to use and implement a System Safety Program way back in 1987. Outside the United States Government, many civilian industries are now being pressed to assume corporate social responsibility and improve safety for employees and the environment, keep in mind, these industries have not been typical users of...
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...Introduction 1-1. Purpose The primary purpose of test and evaluation (T&E) is to support system development and acquisition by serving as a feedback mechanism in the iterative systems engineering process. This pamphlet provides guidance and procedures to implement T&E policy for materiel and information systems with regard to planning, executing, and reporting T&E in support of the acquisition process as promulgated by Army Regulation (AR) 73-1 . Developing and deploying Army systems that are operationally effective, suitable, and survivable represents a significant challenge to all involved in the systems acquisition process. The procedures and guidelines in this pamphlet apply to-- a. All systems developed, acquired, and managed under the auspices of Department of Defense (DOD) Directive (DODD) 5000.1 , DOD Instruction (DODI) 5000.2 , and AR 70-1 ; these systems are referred to as materiel and Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence/Information Technology (C4I/IT); and AR 40-60 ; these systems are referred to as medical systems. b. All systems managed and certified for interoperability under the auspices of DODD 4630.5 , DODI 4630.8 , and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction (CJCSI) 6212.01B . c. All special access programs (SAP) under the auspices of AR 380-381 . d. Materiel developers (MATDEV), combat developers (CBTDEV), functional proponents for non-tactical C4I/IT systems, training developers (TNGDEV), threat...
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...customer acquisition. In this environment service providers have realized the importance of the retention of existing customers. Therefore, providers are forced to put more efforts for prediction and prevention of churn. This paper aims to present commonly used data mining techniques for the identification of churn. Based on historical data these methods try to find patterns which can point out possible churners. Well-known techniques used for this are Regression analysis, Decision Trees, Neural Networks and Rule based learning. In section 1 we give a short introduction describing the current state of the market, then in section 2 a definition of customer churn, its’ types and the imporance of identification of churners is being discussed. Section 3 reviews different techniques used, pointing out advantages and disadvantages. Finally, current state of research and new emerging algorithms are being presented. given a huge choice of offers and different service providers to decide upon, winning new customers is a costly and hard process. Therefore, putting more effort in keeping churn low has become essential for service-oriented companies. Van Den Poel and Larivi`re [2] summarize the economic e value of customer retention: • lowering the need to seek new and potentially risky customers, which allows focusing on the demands of existing customers; • long-term customers tend to buy more; • positive word of mouth from satisfied customers is a good way for new customers’ acquisition; •...
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...Better than Rational: Evolutionary Psychology and the Invisible Hand @ Leda Cosmides; John Tooby The American Economic Review, Vol. 84, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred and Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1994), 327-332. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28 199405%2984%3A2%3C327%3ABTREPA%3E2.O.CO%3B2-9 The American Economic Review is currently published by American Economic Association. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.j stor.org/journals/aea.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org/ Fri Sep 10 17:38:04 2004 Better than Rational: Evolutionary Psychology and the Invisible...
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...Developing Business/IT Solutions Systems Analysis and Design (SAD) • Overall process by which IS are designed and implemented within organizations • The process of completing an IS project is known as systems analysis and design (SAD). • Any SAD project involves four essential ingredients: – People - Methodology - Management - Tools • Two most common approaches to Systems Analysis and Design ← Object-oriented analysis and design ← Systems Development Life Cycle Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) [pic] [pic] Systems Investigation Stage The Investigation Phase begins the preliminary study of the proposed information system solution to meet the e-business needs. Its focus is to seek to answer the questions: What are our opportunities? What are our business priorities? How can information technologies provide information systems solutions that can be used to address theses needs? Because the process of application development can be costly both in time and resources, the system investigation phase begins with a Feasibility Study. The goal of feasibility studies is to evaluate alternative systems and to propose the most feasible and desirable systems. Feasibility is assessed across four major categories: [pic] Organizational Feasibility: This focuses on how well a proposed information system supports the objectives of the organization. – Specific features...
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...Processual, Rational, Fuzzy, Evolutionary 1. Processual approach: Strategy is produced in an incremental fashion, as a 'pattern in a stream of decisions'. Fuzzy approach: Companies sometimes adopt an incremental approach to change. What's different between these two approach? The Processual approach is really talking about strategy emerging from the many different day-to-day decisions taken by the staff. It’s incremental, in that it is occurring by being added to with each decision taken. Each decision taken is based on what seems like the best thing to do at the time; and really, only by looking back can you see the pattern – the strategy – being followed by the organisation. The Fuzzy approach is really when a firm has a stated strategy. It is likely to be following a rational approach to strategy, and it may be doing it very successfully. However, at the same time, it might also be doing something outside of its stated strategy too. This is the “fuzzy” aspect. The example on Page 3.28 is of Macquarie Bank, who had a stated strategy of being the leading investment bank in Australia, but was also involved in 6 different overseas countries at the same time. The idea is that there are reasons why this is a good idea – first, the business might want to change their strategy, but rather than trying to change everything at once they take an incremental approach to making the change – changing some things, and then more later etc. A second reason is that opportunities arise...
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...Fedex: a perspective study | | Contents Introduction 3 1. The outside in perspective 4 1.1 Markets over Resources 4 1.2 Opportunity driven. 5 1.3 Market demand and industry structure 6 1.4 Adaptation to environment 6 1.5 Attaining advantageous position 6 1.6 Acquiring necessary resources 6 1.7 Inside-out perspective 7 2. Industry dynamics perspective 8 2.1 Compliance over choice 8 2.2 Uncontrollable evolutionary process 8 2.3 Fitness to industry demands 9 2.4 Low and slow ability to change the industry 9 2.5 Convergent to dominant design 10 2.6 Profit is largely industry dependent 10 2.7 Industry Leadership perspective 10 3. Integrated perspective and portfolio perspective 11 3.1 Synergy over responsiveness 11 3.2 Tightly related composition 11 3.3 Joint strategy development 12 3.4 Multi-business synergy & integrating resources, activities and positions 12 3.5 Acquisitions are difficult to integrate 12 3.6 Portfolio perspective 13 4. Conclusion 14 4.1 What strategic perspective does FedEx fit in? 14 4.2 Did it lead them to having a sustainable competitive advantage? 14 Introduction FedEx started out in its early years as a true pioneer. Originally an express delivery company, it transformed itself to a global logistics and supply chain management company. The CEO of FedEx saw enormous potential in connecting their business with IT. For instance, in the 80’s, FedEx gave away more than 100.000 PC’s...
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...Objectives: - 4 components of strategy analysis: firms goals and values, resources and capabilities, structure and management systems and industry environment - Measurement of profitability, Profit most useful measure of firm performance (maximization of profit) - Tools of Financial analysis - Shareholders and stakeholders - Value: - Commerce is creating value - Firm have to know what profit is and how to measure it - Economic profit more reliable measure as accounting profit - Measure of e.p. is EVA, economic value added - Firm must maximize the future net cash flow to maximize its value and mimimize cost of capital - C.f. forecasts are very difficult,estimate future c.f. need make assumption - Important for value maximization is the consistency Real options theory - Two types: growth and flexibility options - Strategic alliances and joint ventures, investment in core products Putting performance analysis into practice - Need to asses current situation - Identify current strategy - Identify sources of unsatisfactory performance - Balanced scorecards -> balancing financial and strategic goals Profits and purpose - Companies that are more focused on making profit are often unsuccessful at achieving their goals - “Profits are important for existence of a company but not the reason for its existence” - Important is to have a dream, to have a joy of creating things - To have a vision for the future and a core ideology (values and principles) are both...
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...View of Self Television images are present for all of us in some way or form everyday of our lives. The article “Television Images: Exploring How They Affect People’s View of Self and Others” takes on an exploration of the details that form our views based on the images we watch. In a survey conducted by Graves in 1999 it revealed that children watch almost three hours of television per day (Alexandrin, 2009, p. 150). The article details that there are often both perceptions and misperceptions of ones views based on the content of television one watches. Images about others are often formed based on the idea on ones biases in the programs watched. The article uses race as one aspect of bias that is created from the television medium. In a sample of primetime television it found that the majority of television characters were 80 percent white and only 20 percent were of a different ethic culture (Alexandrin, 2009, p. 151). In television commercials the numbers were 86 percent white and 14 percent were of a different ethnic culture (Alexandrin, 2009, p. 151). The dichotomy of black Americans on television leads to two main characterizations: 1) educated and successful or 2) poor and criminal (Alexandrin, 2009, p. 151). This has shown to have an effect on children watching in the belief that there if a dominate positive model character is missing or invisible then the child will have a resultant low self esteem (Alexandrin, 2009, p. 151). In recent television the number of...
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...Running Head: CLASSICAL CONDITIONING Generalisation & Discrimination Are Characteristics of Classical Conditioning- An Evolutionary Perspective [Name of the Student] [Name of the Institution] Generalisation & Discrimination Are Characteristics of Classical Conditioning- An Evolutionary Perspective Classical Conditioning Classical conditioning also called respondent conditioning; packaging type I or Pavlovian conditioning is a concept of behaviourism proposed by Ivan Pavlov in the early twentieth century. This theory focuses on the learning achievements due to the association between stimuli of the environment and automatic reactions in the body. This notion of involuntary reaction is the main point that differentiates the operant conditioning. It is a learning theory that states that a natural, mostly innate, unconditioned reflex can be added by learning a new conditioned reflex. The assumptions and techniques of classical conditioning can also be used to treat anxiety, compulsive behaviours or anxiety-like symptoms. From the classical conditioning, the concerns triggered behaviours that are instrumental and operant; conditioning to distinguish that affect spontaneous behaviour (Clark & Squire, 2008, pp. 77-81). Phenomena Associated With Classical Conditioning ← Generalization: The conditional response (CR) is not only obtained with a specific stimulus, but with elements that have some resemblance to the conditioned stimulus (CS). The behaviour...
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...in R&D as a means of developing AC. Following from that, and building on the recent developments in literature, I argue that research in this area are needed and that the focus of research has to be aligned again to the Cohen and Levinthal’s 1989 and 1990 papers that discuss the general commercial application of acquired knowledge. This study, therefore, contributes to the understanding of absorptive capacity's antecedents and outcomes by offering important recommendations for policy makers and firms’ management. Introduction Nowadays, internal research and development (R&D) are integrated with knowledge sources external to the firm through licensing, company acquisition, R&D outsourcing, or the hiring of qualified researchers with relevant knowledge. This simultaneous internal and external knowledge acquisition activities prompt that these two activities are complementary. This recall the notion of “absorptive capacity”. The motivation on choose the topic of absorptive capacity (AC) is due to the large use of it by researchers to explain various organizational phenomena. In addition, according to the focus of the course on developing and emerging economies, AC can act as a valuable complement to the traditional set of policy interventions aiming at enhancing the innovation performance of catching up economies. Indeed, since firms' AC relates to a country's AC (Mowery and Oxley, 1995), a policy planned to develop firms' AC may be very effective in making the country more...
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...Nonheritable Cellular Variability Accelerates the Evolutionary Processes of Cancer Steven A. Frank1,2*, Marsha Rich Rosner3 1 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California, United States of America, 2 Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, 3 Ben May Department for Cancer Research, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America Summary: Recent cancer studies emphasize that genetic and heritable epigenetic changes drive the evolutionary rate of cancer progression and drug resistance. We discuss the ways in which nonheritable aspects of cellular variability may significantly increase evolutionary rate. Nonheritable variability arises by stochastic fluctuations in cells and by physiological responses of cells to the environment. New approaches to drug design may be required to control nonheritable variability and the evolution of resistance to chemotherapy. Cancer progression is a series of evolutionary changes. Those changes include enhanced cellular proliferation, reduced cellular death by abrogating normal apoptotic mechanisms, greater invasiveness by increased expression of proteases, and improved colonizing ability to achieve metastasis [1]. In response to drug treatment, cancer cells often evolve resistance and continue to spread. Each evolutionary step typically proceeds by acquisition of genetic or heritable epigenetic changes in cells...
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...sexuality. These two aforementioned features are intricately entwined and have heavily influenced much of extant research which attempts to explain the impact of love and sexuality on a sociobiological level and on the formation of gender expectations. This essay aims to investigate and explain how attitudes with respect to relationships are affected by gender. In order to achieve this, a compilation of studies that assess the correlation between interpersonal relationships and gender will be considered. Finally, the essay will discuss possible ideas for future development in this field. Although a fine line exists between love, lust and attraction, these three components are often misinterpreted for one another. The need to belong is an evolutionary human instinct, and one that characterises an individual’s chances of survival. It is essential to acknowledge the common attributes of the three preceding elements which determine relationship statuses, so a clearer understanding can be achieved when considering the dissimilarities in attitudes between the genders. Conventionally, love has always been thought to be undemanding and trivial whereas attraction, or borderline infatuation, is affiliated with connections on a deeper energetic level. Lust can be summed up as the craving for sex, where the individuals engage in such activity without being exclusive to each other. Trailing an individual’s childhood attachment styles has helped determine prospective romantic attachment styles...
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...customers and equally hard to discourage the unprofitable customers which those that are price shopping and looking for discounts and promotions and comparing prices to Walmart. Best Buy studies demographic and sales data for each store location to identify profitable and unprofitable customers. Customer profitabilty analysis idetifies customer service activities and cost drivers and determines the profitability of each customer or customer group. Here, customer service include all activities to complete the sale and satisfy the customer including advertising, sales calls, delivery, billing, collection, service calls, inquiries and other forms of customer service. Customer profitability analysis allow managers to: * Identify most profitable customers * Manage each customer’s cost-to-serve * Introduce profitable new products and services * Discontinue unprofitable products, services or customers * Shift a costomer’s purchase mix toward higher-margin products and service lines * Offer discounts to gain more volume with low costs-to-serve customers * Choose types of after-sale services to provide How to calculate Customer Profitability Analysis * The first step of CPA is to create a simple model of revenue by customer on the one hand, and total business unit costs and overheads on the other. * Second, subtract the direct product and...
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