A stochastic frontier approach to modelling financial constraints in firms:an application to India

We propose the use of stochastic frontier approach to modelling financial constraints of firms. The main advantage of the stochastic frontier approach over the stylised approaches that use pooled OLS or fixed effects panel regression models is that we can not only decide whether or not the average firm is financially constrained, but also estimate a measure of the degree of the constraint for each firm and for each time period, and also the marginal impact of firm characteristics on this measure. We then apply the stochastic frontier approach to a panel of Indian manufacturing firms, for the 1997–2006 period. In our application, we highlight and discuss the aforementioned advantages, while also demonstrating that the stochastic frontier approach generates regression estimates that are consistent with the stylised intuition found in the literature on financial constraint and the wider literature on the Indian credit/capital market.

The influence of age and trait attributions on recruitment selection

The role of interpersonal attraction into the recruitment selection is gaining research attention. Early work in the domain of the influence of attraction in organisations suggested that men are given more resources, such as higher salaries and promotions. However, recent research has found women have an automatic in-group bias. It was suggested that female interviewers are more likely to hire another female. In contrast, male interviewers were found to be equally as likely to hire men as women. To resolve these two conflicting findings a behavioural experiment was set up looking at gender, attractiveness and recruitment selection. Forty participants, twenty male and twenty female, of varying ages (18-65) were recruited through age stratified sampling. Participants took on the role of manager of a medium sized company and were shown twenty photographs of faces previously rated for attractiveness. On initial viewing participants were asked to decide whether they would firstly hire the person and secondly give as many reasons for their decision. Findings from this research show that in all age groups male and female participants gave females (especially attractive females) more jobs, except in the case of the 18-21 year old females who gave attractive males more jobs. On examining the reasons behind the participant’s decisions, it was evident that if you appeared confident, friendly, youthful and attractive you were 46% more likely to receive the job. However, if you were perceived to be untrustworthy, lazy, arrogant and unintelligent you were 49% more likely not to receive the job. These findings shed light on the various processes that may underpin human resource decisions in an organisational setting.

The derivation and application of risk tolerability criteria

This research involves a study of the questions, "what is considered safe", how are safety levels defined or decided, and according to whom. Tolerable or acceptable risk questions raise various issues: about values and assumptions inherent in such levels; about decision-making frameworks at the highest level of policy making as well as on the individual level; and about the suitability and competency of decision-makers to decide and to communicate their decisions. The wide-ranging topics covering philosophical and practical concerns examined in the literature review reveal the multi-disciplined scope of this research. To support this theoretical study empirical research was undertaken at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) of the European Space Agency (ESA). ESTEC is a large, multi-nationality, high technology organisation which presented an ideal case study for exploring how decisions are made with respect to safety from a personal as well as organisational aspect. A qualitative methodology was employed to gather, analyse and report the findings of this research. Significant findings reveal how experts perceive risks and the prevalence of informal decision-making processes partly due to the inadequacy of formal methods for deciding risk tolerability. In the field of occupational health and safety, this research has highlighted the importance and need for criteria to decide whether a risk is great enough to warrant attention in setting standards and priorities for risk control and resources. From a wider perspective and with the recognition that risk is an inherent part of life, the establishment of tolerability risk levels can be viewed as cornerstones indicating our progress, expectations and values, of life and work, in an increasingly litigious, knowledgeable and global society.

Privacy and the City:user identification and location semantics in location-based social networks

With the advent of GPS enabled smartphones, an increasing number of users is actively sharing their location through a variety of applications and services. Along with the continuing growth of Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs), security experts have increasingly warned the public of the dangers of exposing sensitive information such as personal location data. Most importantly, in addition to the geographical coordinates of the user’s location, LBSNs allow easy access to an additional set of characteristics of that location, such as the venue type or popularity. In this paper, we investigate the role of location semantics in the identification of LBSN users. We simulate a scenario in which the attacker’s goal is to reveal the identity of a set of LBSN users by observing their check-in activity. We then propose to answer the following question: what are the types of venues that a malicious user has to monitor to maximize the probability of success? Conversely, when should a user decide whether to make his/her check-in to a location public or not? We perform our study on more than 1 million check-ins distributed over 17 urban regions of the United States. Our analysis shows that different types of venues display different discriminative power in terms of user identity, with most of the venues in the “Residence” category providing the highest re-identification success across the urban regions. Interestingly, we also find that users with a high entropy of their check-ins distribution are not necessarily the hardest to identify, suggesting that it is the collective behaviour of the users’ population that determines the complexity of the identification task, rather than the individual behaviour.

Person-oriented and process-oriented teachers : an investigation of the links between ESOL teachers' personal belief systems and approaches to teaching

This thesis looks to two traditions in research into language teaching, teacher beliefs and classroom interaction, in order to investigate the question: Do teachers of ESOL have an identifiable and coherent system of beliefs about teaching and learning that may account for different approaches to teaching? A qualitative approach to research is taken, following a case study tradition, in order to carry out an in-depth study into the beliefs of six ESOL teachers. Five teachers participated in an initial pilot study and two subsequently became the main case studies for the research. The beliefs of a sixth teacher were then investigated to verify the findings. Semi-structured interviews and classroom observations were carried out with all the teachers. The teachers in the study were found to have personal belief systems that cohere around two orientations to teaching and learning - a person orientation and a process orientation. Moreover, the findings suggest that underlying the orientations is the perception that teachers have of their teacher identity, in terms of whether this is seen as a separate identity or as part of their personality. It is suggested that the two orientations may offer a powerful tool for teacher education as it is increasingly recognised that, in order to be effective, teacher educators must take into account the beliefs that teachers bring with them to training and development programmes. An initial investigations into the teachers’ classroom behaviour suggests that while their methodologies approach may be very similar there are fundamental differences in their interactions patterns and these differences may be a result of their own orientation. However, while teachers’ personal belief systems undoubtedly underlie their approach to teaching, further research is needed to establish the extent and the nature of the relationship between orientation and classroom interaction.

Moving from HRM to knowledge productivity:a study of whether and how organizations become learning organizations

Practitioners and academics are in broad agreement that, above all, organizations need to be able to learn, to innovate and to question existing ways of working. This thesis develops a model to take into account, firstly, what determines whether or not organizations endorse practices designed to facilitate learning. Secondly, the model evaluates the impact of such practices upon organizational outcomes, measured in terms of products and technological innovation. Researchers have noted that organizations that are committed to producing innovation show great resilience in dealing with adverse business conditions (e.g. Pavitt, 1991; Leonard Barton, 1998). In effect, such organizations bear many of the characteristics associated with the achievement of ‘learning organization’ status (Garvin, 1993; Pedler, Burgoyne & Boydell, 1999; Senge, 1990). Seven studies are presented to support this theoretical framework. The first empirical study explores the antecedents to effective learning. The three following studies present data to suggest that people management practices are highly significant in determining whether or not organizations are able to produce sustained innovation. The thesis goes on to explore the relationship between organizational-level job satisfaction, learning and innovation, and provides evidence to suggest that there is a strong, positive relationship between these variables. The final two chapters analyze learning and innovation within two similar manufacturing organizations. One manifests relatively low levels of innovation whilst the other is generally considered to be outstandingly innovative. I present the comparative framework for exploring the different approaches to learning manifested by the two organizations. The thesis concludes by assessing the extent to which the theoretical model presented in the second chapter is borne out by the findings of the study. Whilst this is a relatively new field of inquiry, findings reveal that organizations have a much stronger chance of producing sustained innovation where they manage people proactively where people process themselves to be satisfied at work. Few studies to date have presented empirical evidence to substantiate theoretical endorsements to engage in higher order learning, so this research makes an important contribution to existing literature in this field.

A study of load support and other criteria appropriate to the selection of industrial conveyor belts

A study of conveying practice demonstrates that belt conveyors provide a versatile and. much-used method of transporting bulk materials, but a review of belting manufacturers' design procedures shows that belt design and selection rules are often based on experience with all-cotton belts no longer in common use, and are net completely relevant to modern synthetic constructions. In particular, provision of the property "load support", which was not critical with cotton belts, is shown to determine the outcome of most belt selection exercises and lead to gross over specification of other design properties in many cases. The results of an original experimental investigation into this property, carried out to determine the belt and conveyor parameters that affect it, how the major role that belt stiffness plays in its provision; the basis for a belt stiffness test relevant to service conditions is given. A proposal for a more rational method of specifying load support data results from the work, but correlation of the test results with service performance is necessary before the absolute toad support capability required from a belt for given working conditions can be quantified. A study to attain this correlation is the major proposal for future work resulting from the present investigation, but a full review of the literature on conveyor design and a study of present practice within the belting industry demonstrate other, less critical, factors that could profitably be investigated. It is suggested that the most suitable method of studying these would be a rational data collection system to provide information on various facets of belt service behaviour; a basis for such a system is proposed. In addition to the work above, proposals for simplifying the present belt selection methods are made and a strain transducer suitable for use in future experimental investigations is developed.

Staying in nursing:what factors determine whether nurses intend to remain employed?

Aim. To test a model of eight thematic determinants of whether nurses intend to remain in nursing roles. Background. Despite the dramatic increase in the supply of nurses in England over the past decade, a combination of the economic downturn, funding constraints and more generally an ageing nursing population means that healthcare organizations are likely to encounter long-term problems in the recruitment and retention of nursing staff. Design. Survey. Method. Data were collected from a large staff survey conducted in the National Health Service in England between September-December 2009. A multi-level model was tested using MPlus statistical software on a sub-sample of 16,707 nurses drawn from 167 healthcare organizations. Results. Findings were generally supportive of the proposed model. Nurses who reported being psychologically engaged with their jobs reported a lower intention to leave their current job. The perceived availability of developmental opportunities, being able to achieve a good work-life balance and whether nurses' encountered work pressures were also influencing factors on their turnover intentions. However, relationships formed with colleagues and patients displayed comparatively small relationships with turnover intentions. Conclusion. The focus at the local level needs to be on promoting employee engagement by equipping staff with the resources (physical and monetary) and control to enable them to perform their tasks to standards they aspire to and creating a work environment where staff are fully involved in the wider running of their organizations, communicating to staff that patient care is important and the top priority of the organization. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Utilising fiction to promote english language acquisition

Towards the end of the university stage, students residing in the United Arab Emirates and specialising in subjects other than English are expected- amongst other university requirements- to have acquired adequate communicative competence as well as a repertoire of critical thinking skills. Despite the efforts made within the field of teaching English to EFL university students in the country, the output gained in terms of acquired skills and competencies is still below expectations. The main concerns of the current thesis are, therefore, a) to investigate the factors which inhibit EFL university students’ progress in the areas of acquiring adequate communicative competence as well as critical thinking skills, and b) to propose a course book and pedagogic methods to improve students’ progress in the areas of acquiring adequate communicative competence as well as critical thinking skills. Believing in the essential role literature plays in enhancing critical thinking and promoting communicative competence on the part of EFL learners, the current study introduces a course, designed and implemented by the researcher: LEARN AND GAIN. The proposed course is fiction-based language teaching, adopting the view that literature is a resource rather than an object, thus advocating the use of literature as one of the main resources in foreign/second language acquisition. Investigating whether or not the proposed course was effective in promoting EFL university students’ communicative competence as well as enhancing their critical thinking skills, a study sample taken from the study population was selected. Adopting an experimental design, the research project involved two groups: experimental and control. The experimental group students were exposed to the proposed course whilst the control group students were exposed to a general English language course. To examine treatment effectiveness, the researcher set and administered a pre-post test. Divided into two main parts, communicative critical reading competence and communicative critical writing competence, the pre-post test measured subjects’ communicative critical reading competence and subjects’ communicative critical writing competence. In addition, a pre-post questionnaire was administered and a semi-structured interview was conducted involving the experimental group students, to gain an awareness of students’ attitudes towards learning literary texts in general, and the proposed course in particular. To examine issues of interest and relevance, gender differences: male vs. female, and university major: science vs. non-science, were also examined for enrichment purposes. For the purpose of gathering sufficient data about subjects’ achievements on the pre-post, the following statistical tests were conducted: Mann-Whitney test, and paired data t-test. Based on the statistical findings, the experimental group students’ performance on the communicative critical reading competence pre-post test and the communicative critical writing competence pre-post test was significantly better than their counterparts of the control group students. Speaking of gender differences in relation to language performance on the communicative critical reading competence pre-post test and the communicative critical writing competence pre-post test, no significant differences were cited. Neither did the researcher cite any significant performance differences between science/non-science students on the communicative critical reading competence pre-post test and the communicative critical writing competence pre-post test. As far as the questionnaire’s findings are concerned, the experimental group students’ responses to the post-questionnaire’s items were more positive than those of their responses to the pre-questionnaire’s, thus indicating some positive attitudes towards literature, which students possibly gained throughout the course of implementation. Relating the discussion to the interview’s results, students conveyed their satisfaction with the proposed course, emphasising that promoting English language skills through the use of literary texts was rewarding. In the light of findings and conclusions, a number of recommendations as well as implications have been proposed. The current study aimed to arrive at some appropriate suggestions to a number of enquiries, yet concluding with some areas of enquiry to be explored for further research.

Evaluating the use of IT by the third party logistics in South East Asia to achieve competitive advantage and its future trend

As the number of using 3PL providers are increasing rapidly in recent years, 3PL providers play a major role in the logistics industry. Due to customers demands are raising and changing, it has facilitated 3PL providers to invest IT systems that could meet customer requirements and create competitive advantage. The use of IT systems could assist 3PL providers to achieve supply chain visibility and enhance supply chain collaboration with business partners. In this paper, it is mainly focus on the Europe and Far East 3PL providers in terms of current and future IT systems, IT motivators and barriers, as well as the future supply chain demands that address by IT systems. The common IT system that implemented in both regions is information technology, which is mainly used to collaborate and share information with supply chain partners. Some of the common motivations and barriers were existed and 3PL providers need to be understood. Given the future demands of IT implementation and supply chain collaboration, IT systems such as RFID and integration systems would be strongly focus in the future. The suggestion about the advanced integration system such as business process management (BPM) could be the next key IT systems in the future logistics industry. © 2012 AICIT.

From 3LSP (Third Party Logistics Service Provider) to 4LSP (Fourth Party Logistics Service Provider):a case study from Ireland

Increased competition, geographically expanded marketplaces, technology replication and an ever discerning consumer base, are reasons why companies need to regularly reappraise their competencies in terms of activities and functions they perform themselves. Where viable alternatives exist, companies should consider outsourcing of non-core activities and functions. Within SCM (Supply Chain Management) it could be preferable if a “one stop shop” existed for companies seeking to outsource functions identified as non-core. “Traditionally” structured LSP’s who have concentrated their service offer around providing warehousing and transport activities are potentially at a crossroads – clients and potential clients requiring “new” services which could increase LSP’s revenues if provided, whilst failure to provide could perhaps result in clients seeking outsourced services elsewhere.

Emotional responses to King-Kopetzky syndrome:a qualitative study

The objective of the study was to identify the effects of King-Kopetzky syndrome on emotional well-being and the effects of emotional well-being on the condition itself. The study was designed as a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews, using six patients with long-standing hearing problems and exposure to a range of interventions. Participants were recruited from Audiology and Hearing Therapy Services, Bath and the Welsh Hearing Institute, Cardiff. Interviews were conducted in participants' homes and work places. King-Kopetzky syndrome was perceived to result in a change in level of anxiety, distress and depression. The determining factor in whether the change was positive (e.g. reduction in anxiety, distress or depression) or negative (e.g. increase in anxiety, distress or depression) was the person's interpretation of the experience of not hearing. This process of interpretation was based on feeling different towards other people, the relationship with the communicant person, and the confidence to employ strategies and the types of strategies chosen. Participants associated an increase in distress, anxiety or depression with an increase in mishearing or not hearing, and a reduction in hearing difficulties with a reduction in anxiety, distress and depression. It is hypothesised that emotional response to King-Kopetzky syndrome affects the degree of hearing difficulty experienced. Interventions aimed at the process of interpretation may be a means of empowering individuals in managing their own hearing difficulties.

The Front National:from systematic opposition to systemic integration?

For most of its existence, the Front National (FN) fitted the classic definition of the anti-system party, opposing the founding values, institutions and elites of the Fifth Republic. Now, under Marine Le Pen's leadership, it has embarked on a strategy to integrate to the regime it once defied. Does this strategy of normalisation bear scrutiny? Using a framework drawn from Giovanni Sartori and Robert Michels, this article asks whether the FN is a one-time anti-system party that is becoming mainstream, and also whether these simple oppositional categories are adequate for understanding ideological and policy evolution in the FN's case. Through an analysis of continuity and change in FN strategy and programmes, the article shows a party torn between anti-system differentiation and institutional adaptation. It may claim to have cast out its demons but has not undertaken the necessary moderation of its programme to substantiate that claim. The FN today is on no linear path of deradicalisation but exhibits a combination of consistent, diminished and increasing radicalism across different policy areas. Despite an upward dynamic and a hugely favourable context, it remains almost entirely excluded from power and far from the breakthrough required to become a party of government.