A marketing-erőforrások hatások a vállalati versenyképességre (The impact of marketing resources to corporate competitiveness)

A tanulmány a marketing-erőforrások és a vállalatok versenyképessége közötti összefüggéseket elemzi és hasonlítja össze az öt évvel korábbi felmérés eredményeivel. A háromszáz hazai vállalatra kiterjedő kutatás során a szerzők azt állapították meg, hogy a vizsgált marketing-erőforrások mindegyike hatással van a vállalati teljesítményre. Ez annyiban jelent változást az öt évvel korábbi eredményekhez képest, hogy akkor a marketingképességek szerepe még nem volt egyértelmű. Az elemzés során kimutatták, hogy a vállalatok által birtokolt marketing-erőforrások hasonló struktúrát mutatnak, mint korábban. Ezek közül kiemelkedik a marketingfunkcióhoz leginkább köthető piacszervezési dimenzió, amely a legszorosabb összefüggést mutatja a versenyképességgel. A vizsgált vállalatok egy kis csoportjának (12%) sikerült a versenyképes termékkínálat és árak fenntartása mellett e képesség kifejlesztésében és birtoklásában előre lépniük. Körükben a sikeres vállalatok aránya kiemelkedő. / === / The study aimed to analyse the association between marketing resources and corporate competitiveness and it compared the results to the ones of a similar research conducted five years before. Based on the survey of 300 domestic organisations the authors found that all the marketing resources investigated have a significant effect on marketing performance. These results differ from the previous ones only in terms of marketing capabilities, as their role was ambiguous at that time. They revealed the same structure of marketing resources owned by the companies as last time. Among them the most marketing related resource-dimension called market management excels regarding the strength of the association with competitiveness. A small group of the companies investigated (12%) managed to advance in development and possession of this dimension of marketing resources whilst maintaining competitive product supply and price. The proportion of successful companies among them is highly significant

Social resources in local development. Conference proceedings

It was the intention of the Institute for Sociology and Social Policy at the Corvinus University Budapest in collaboration with the University of Trento to reflect the breadth of local development studies in the conference it staged in June 2011 ‘Social Resources in Local Development’. The event was in the framework of ‘Efficient Government, Professional Public Administration and Regional Development for a Competitive Society’ which is part of the TAMOP Project 4.2.1/B-09/1/KMR – 2010-0005 (Social and Cultural Resources Development Policies and Local Development Research Workshop led by Professor Zoltán Szántó). All the papers which feature in this volume were presented at the workshop. The research activity behind these papers (with the exception of Blokker) was supported by the aforementioned TAMOP project. The event was attended by a range of international participants including Erasmus Mundus students from the University of Trento and Corvinus students taking the MA in Local Development. It is hoped that this publication of conference proceedings highlights some current and key issues and controversies in local development research and academic debate.

Interaction of the parasitic angiosperm {\it Cassytha filiformis\/} L. (Lauraceae) with the exotic {\it Schinus terebinthifolius\/} Raddi (Anacardiaceae) in southern Florida

Brazilian pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius) is an exotic shrub or small tree that has become well established as an invasive and highly competitive species through much of southern Florida. Love vine (Cassytha filiformis), a native parasitic plant, was noted parasitizing Brazilian pepper, apparently affecting its health. The objective of this study was to investigate the nature of this parasitic interaction in southern Florida. Brazilian pepper populations were studied to determine whether parasitism by love vine may affect growth and reproduction. Anatomical studies of love vine parasitizing Brazilian pepper determined physical aspects of the parasitic interaction at the cell and tissue level. Physiological aspects of this interaction were investigated to help describe love vine resource acquisition as a parasite on host Brazilian pepper plants, and as an autotrophic plant. An investigation of ecological aspects of this parasitic interaction was done to determine whether physical or biological aspects of habitats may contribute to love vine parasitism on Brazilian pepper. These studies indicated that: (1) parasitism by love vine significantly decreased growth and reproduction of Brazilian pepper plants; (2) anatomical and physiological investigations indicated that love vine was primarily a xylem parasite on Brazilian pepper, but that some assimilated carbon nutrients may also be acquired from the host; (3) love vine is autotrophic (i.e., hemiparasitic), but is totally dependent on its host for necessary resources; (4) the occurrence of love vine parasitism on Brazilian pepper is mediated by physical characters of the biological community. ^

Resources, strategies, location determinants, and host country location choice by emerging market firms

The extant literature had studied the determinants of the firms’ location decisions with help of host country characteristics and distances between home and host countries. Firm resources and its internationalization strategies had found limited attention in this literature. To address this gap, the research question in this dissertation was whether and how firms’ resources and internationalization strategies impacted the international location decisions of emerging market firms. ^ To explore the research question, data were hand-collected from Indian software firms on their location decisions taken between April 2000 and March 2009. To analyze the multi-level longitudinal dataset, hierarchical linear modeling was used. The results showed that the internationalization strategies, namely market-seeking or labor-seeking had direct impact on firms’ location decision. This direct relationship was moderated by firm resource which, in case of Indian software firms, was the appraisal at CMMI level-5. Indian software firms located in developed countries with a market-seeking strategy and in emerging markets with a labor-seeking strategy. However, software firms with resource such as CMMI level-5 appraisal, when in a labor-seeking mode, were more likely to locate in a developed country over emerging market than firms without the appraisal. Software firms with CMMI level-5 appraisal, when in market-seeking mode, were more likely to locate in a developed country over an emerging market than firms without the appraisal. ^ It was concluded that the internationalization strategies and resources of companies predicted their location choices, over and above the variables studied in the theoretical field of location determinants.^

The production effect: the role of attentional resources

The production effect is the benefit in memory found for produced (i.e., read aloud) words relative to words read silently. It is proposed that the production effect occurs as a result of the enhanced distinctiveness associated with the produced items. The current research investigated whether attentional resources are required to encode and/or retrieve the distinctive information associated with the produced words. The literature suggests that the encoding of this distinctive information occurs automatically, but at test, purposeful attention is required to retrieve this distinctive information. To test this, participants read words aloud and silently, under either full or divided attention. Participants then completed either a recognition (Experiment 1) or free recall (Experiment 2) memory test under either full or divided attention. The findings show that when attention is divided at encoding, the benefit for aloud words remains for both recognition and free recall. When attention is divided at test, however, the benefit for aloud words remains for recognition but is absent for free recall. Overall, these results suggest that the distinctive information associated with produced words is encoded automatically, but it may not be accessible at test under attentionally demanding conditions.

Sustainable use of organic resources for bioenergy, food and water provision in rural Sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgements We are grateful to the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council Nexus Network for funding this work.

Sustainable use of organic resources for bioenergy, food and water provision in rural Sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgements We are grateful to the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council Nexus Network for funding this work.

Sustainable use of organic resources for bioenergy, food and water provision in rural Sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgements We are grateful to the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council Nexus Network for funding this work.

Game-Theoretically Allocating Resources to Catch Evaders and Payments to Stabilize Teams

Allocating resources optimally is a nontrivial task, especially when multiple

self-interested agents with conflicting goals are involved. This dissertation

uses techniques from game theory to study two classes of such problems:

allocating resources to catch agents that attempt to evade them, and allocating

payments to agents in a team in order to stabilize it. Besides discussing what

allocations are optimal from various game-theoretic perspectives, we also study

how to efficiently compute them, and if no such algorithms are found, what

computational hardness results can be proved.

The first class of problems is inspired by real-world applications such as the

TOEFL iBT test, course final exams, driver's license tests, and airport security

patrols. We call them test games and security games. This dissertation first

studies test games separately, and then proposes a framework of Catcher-Evader

games (CE games) that generalizes both test games and security games. We show

that the optimal test strategy can be efficiently computed for scored test

games, but it is hard to compute for many binary test games. Optimal Stackelberg

strategies are hard to compute for CE games, but we give an empirically

efficient algorithm for computing their Nash equilibria. We also prove that the

Nash equilibria of a CE game are interchangeable.

The second class of problems involves how to split a reward that is collectively

obtained by a team. For example, how should a startup distribute its shares, and

what salary should an enterprise pay to its employees. Several stability-based

solution concepts in cooperative game theory, such as the core, the least core,

and the nucleolus, are well suited to this purpose when the goal is to avoid

coalitions of agents breaking off. We show that some of these solution concepts

can be justified as the most stable payments under noise. Moreover, by adjusting

the noise models (to be arguably more realistic), we obtain new solution

concepts including the partial nucleolus, the multiplicative least core, and the

multiplicative nucleolus. We then study the computational complexity of those

solution concepts under the constraint of superadditivity. Our result is based

on what we call Small-Issues-Large-Team games and it applies to popular

representation schemes such as MC-nets.

King Democracy: Do Democratic Nations Mitigate Conflict Over Transboundary Freshwater Resources Better Than Other Nations?

The prospect of water wars and conflict over water are ideas that are frequently dramatized in media and also studied by scholars. It is well-established that bona fide wars are not started over water resources, but conflict over water does exist and is not well understood. One would suppose, as scholars often do, that dyads composed of two democratic nations would be the best at mitigating conflict and promoting cooperation over freshwater resources. General conflict research supports that supposition, as does the argument that democracies must be best at avoiding conflicts over resources because they excel at distributing public goods. This study provides empirical evidence showing how interstate dyads composed of various governance types conflict and cooperate over general water and water quantity issues relative to each other. After evaluating the water conflict mitigating ability of democratic-democratic, democratic-autocratic, and autocratic-autocratic dyads, this study found that democracy-autocracy dyads are less likely to cooperate over general water issues and water quantity issues than the other two dyad types. Nothing certain can be said about how the three dyad types compare to each other in terms of likelihood to conflict over water quantity issues. However, two-autocracy dyads seem to be most likely to cooperate over water quantity issues. These findings support the established belief that democratic-autocratic pairs struggle to cooperate while also encouraging greater scrutiny of the belief that democracies must be best at cooperating over water resources.

Party rules, party resources and the politics of parliamentary democracies How parties organize in the 21st century

This article introduces the first findings of the Political Party Database Project, a major survey of party organizations in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. The project’s first round of data covers 122 parties in 19 countries. In this article, we describe the scope of the database, then investigate what it tells us about contemporary party organization in these countries, focusing on parties’ resources, structures and internal decision-making. We examine organizational patterns by country and party family, and where possible we make temporal comparisons with older data sets. Our analyses suggest a remarkable coexistence of uniformity and diversity. In terms of the major organizational resources on which parties can draw, such as members, staff and finance, the new evidence largely confirms the continuation of trends identified in previous research: that is, declining membership, but enhanced financial resources and more paid staff. We also find remarkable uniformity regarding the core architecture of party organizations. At the same time, however, we find substantial variation between countries and party families in terms of their internal processes, with particular regard to how internally democratic they are, and the forms that this democratization takes.

MSc Thesis - Discoverability Strategies for Open Educational Resources: A Scoping Study

With an early focus on achieving a critical mass of released open educational content, challenges of how resources can be found by beneficiaries has been highlighted as a major issue. As we move forward further research and investigation is required to understand the most effective approaches of reaching out to and engaging a globally dispersed population of education users. In 2014 I conducted a small scale scoping study into the discoverability strategies identified as being used by higher education institutions releasing OERs in the UK. This was mapped against a body of literature on our understanding of user behaviour for online resource discovery and the technologies available to support this to identify trends and gaps as opportunities for improvements. Please note this report was not originally written for publication. I hope however it is of value to the open education community and will act as a starting point for further research in this area.

[Review of the Book The Challenge of Organizational Change: How Companies Experience It and Leaders Guide It]

[Excerpt] Overall, this book is an important contribution to the organizational studies literature. The Big-Three Model and the case studies supporting it provide new insights regarding the ways in which changes affect individuals and organizations. Further theoretical developments should build on this framework, and incorporate elements of this model into more detailed schemas of change. The authors have exposed many new research questions and provided many lessons for practitioners. I look forward to additional work from them.

IT Adoption and Usage in Non-Profit Organizations: a Cross-generational Case Study

A gulf has tended to develop between the adoption and usage of information technology by different generations, at the heart of which is different ways of experiencing and relating to the world around us. This research idea is currently being developed following data collection and feedback is sought on ways forward to enable impact. The research focuses on information technology in the form of multimedia. Multimedia meaning ‘media’ and ‘content’ that uses a combination of different content forms; or electronically integrated communication engaging all or most of the senses (e.g. graphic art, sound, animation and full-motion video presented by way of computer or other electronic means) mainly through presentational technologies. Although multimedia is not new, some organization’s particularly those in the non-profit sector do not always have the technical or financial resources to support such systems and consequently may struggle to adopt and support its usage amongst different generations. However non-profit organizations are being forced to pay more attention to the way they communicate with markets and the public due to the professionalism of communication everywhere in society. The case study used for this study is a church circuit comprising of 15 churches in the Midlands region of the United Kingdom which was selected due to the diverse age groups catered for within this type of non-profit organization. Participants in the study also had a range of skills, experiences and backgrounds which adds to the diversity of the population studied. Data gathered focused on the attitudes and opinions of the adoption and use of multimedia amongst different age groups. 395 questionnaires were distributed, comprising of 11 opinion questions and 4 demographic questions. 83% of the questionnaires were returned, representing 35% of the total circuit membership. Three people from each of the following age categories were also interviewed: 1920 – 1946 (Matures); 1947-1964 (Baby Boomers); 1965-1982 (Generation X); 1983-2004 (Net Generation). Results of the questionnaire and comments from the interviews were found not to tally with the widespread assumption that the younger generation is attracted by the use of multimedia in comparison to the older generation. The highest proportion of those who said that they gain more from a service enhanced by multimedia was from the Baby Boomers. Comments from interviews suggested that: ‘we need to embrace multimedia if we are to attract and retain the younger generation’; ‘multimedia often helps children to remain focused and clarifies the objective of the service’. However, because the younger generations’ world tends to be dominated by computer technology the questionnaire showed that they are more likely to have higher standards when it comes to the use of multimedia, such as identifying higher levels of equipment failing to work and annoying use of sounds compared to older age groups. In comparison problems experienced with multimedia for the Matures age group had the highest percentage of difficulty with the size of letters; the colour of letters and background and the sound not loud enough which is to be expected. Since every organization is unique any type of multimedia adopted and used should be specific to their needs, its stakeholders and the physical building in order to enhance that uniqueness and its needs. Giving thought to whether the type of multimedia is the best method for communicating the message to the particular audience alongside how technical and financial resources are best used can assist in accommodating different age groups that need to be catered for.

Viewpoint 66: What is the Housing with Care ‘Offer’ and who is it for?

Published to coincide with the International Day of Older Persons, this viewpoint explores some of the findings from Adult Social Services Environments and Settings(ASSET), a research project that was funded by the NIHR School for Social Care Research from February 2012 to April 2014. The project explored how adult social care services are commissioned and delivered in extra care housing and retirement villages. It is a timely paper, coming hot off the heels of the recent Commission on Residential Care, chaired by former Care Services Minister, Paul Burstow MP. This recommended greater clarification on what constitutes housing with care.