New media for the promotion of self-regulated learning in higher education

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

E-commerce environment and trade promotion for Latin America: policy implications from East Asian and advanced economies' experiences

Includes bibliography

Selling printing and direct advertising; handbook for management, salesmen, planners, and producers of printed promotion.

Mode of access: Internet.

Foreign Sales Corporation Act : hearings before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, Ninety-eighth Congress, first session, on S. 1804 ....

Item 1038-A, 1038-B (microfiche)

Effectuation & newness : an intertwined relationship?

Principal topic: Effectuation theory suggests that entrepreneurs develop their new ventures in an iterative way by selecting possibilities through flexibility and interactions with the market; a focus on affordability of loss rather than maximal return on the capital invested, and the development of pre-commitments and alliances from stakeholders (Sarasvathy, 2001, 2008; Sarasvathy et al., 2005, 2006). In contrast, causation may be described as a rationalistic reasoning method to create a company. After a comprehensive market analysis to discover opportunities, the entrepreneur will select the alternative with the higher expected return and implement it through the use of a business plan. However, little is known about the consequences of following either of these two processes. One aspect that remains unclear is the relationship between newness and effectuation. On one hand it can be argued that the combination of a means-centered, interactive (through pre-commitments and alliances with stakeholders from the early phases of the venture creation) and open-minded process (through flexibility of exploiting contingencies) should encourage and facilitate the development of innovative solutions. On the other hand, having a close relationship with their “future first customers” and focussing too much on the resources and knowledge already within the firm may be a constraint that is not conducive to innovation, or at least not to a radical innovation. While it has been suggested that effectuation strategy is more likely to be used by innovative entrepreneurs (Sarasvathy, 2001), this hypothesis has not been demonstrated yet (Sarasvathy, 2001). Method: In our attempt to capture newness in its different aspects we have considered the following four domains where newness may happen: new product/service; new method for promotion and sales; new production methods/sourcing; market creation. We identified how effectuation may be differently associated with these four domains of newness. To test our four sets of hypotheses a dataset of 1329 firms (702 nascent and 627 young firms) randomly selected in Australia was examined through ANOVA Tukey HSD Test. Results and Implications: Results indicate the existence of a curvilinear relationship between effectuation and newness where low and high levels of newness are associated with low level of effectuation while medium level of newness is associated with high level of effectuation. Implications for academia, practitioners and policy makers are also discussed.

Asset specificity and behavioural uncertainty as moderators of the sales growth : employment growth relationship in emerging ventures

Sales growth and employment growth are the two most widely used growth indicators for new ventures; yet, sales growth and employment growth are not interchangeable measures of new venture growth. Rather, they are related, but somewhat independent constructs that respond differently to a variety of criteria. Most of the literature treats this as a methodological technicality. However, sales growth with or without accompanying employment growth has very different implications for managers and policy makers. A better understanding of what drives these different growth metrics has the potential to lead to better decision making. To improve that understanding we apply transaction cost economics reasoning to predict when sales growth will be or will not be accompanied by employment growth. Our results indicate that our predictions are borne out consistently in resource-constrained contexts but not in resource-munificent contexts.

The research pathway to developing a health promotion intervention for the high school curriculum

Introduction: Schools provide the opportunity to reach a large number of adolescents in a systematic way however there are increasing demands on curriculum providing challenges for health promotion activities. This paper will describe the research processes and strategies used to design an injury prevention program.----- Methods: A multi-stage process of data collection included: (1) Surveys on injury-risk behaviours to identify targets of change (examining behaviour and risk/ protective factors among more than 4000 adolescents); (2) Focus groups (n= 30 high-risk adolescents) to understand and determine risk situations; (3) Hospital emergency outpatients survey to understand injury types/ situations; (4) Workshop (n= 50 teachers/ administrators) to understand the target curriculum and experiences with injury-risk behaviours; (5) Additional focus groups (students and teachers) regarding draft material and processes.----- Results: Summaries of findings from each stage are presented particularly demonstrating the design process. The baseline data identified target risk and protective factors. The following qualitative study provided detail about content and context and with the hospital findings assisted in developing ways to ensure relevance and meaning (e.g. identifying high risk situations and providing insights into language, culture and development). School staff identified links to school processes with final data providing feedback on curriculum fit, feasibility and appropriateness of resources. The data were integrated into a program which demonstrated reduced injury.----- Conclusions: A comprehensive research process is required to develop an informed and effective intervention. The next stage of a cluster randomised control trial is a major task and justifies the intensive and comprehensive development.