ANÁLISE DAS MUDANÇAS DOS FATORES DETERMINANTES DA ESTRUTURA DE CAPITAL EM FUNÇÃO DO CICLO DE VIDA DAS EMPRESAS BRASILEIRAS SÃO BERNARDO DO CAMPO

As várias teorias acerca da estrutura de capital despertam interesse motivando diversos estudos sobre o assunto sem, no entanto, ter um consenso. Outro tema aparentemente pouco explorado refere-se ao ciclo de vida das empresas e como ele pode influenciar a estrutura de capital. Este estudo teve como objetivo verificar quais determinantes possuem maior relevância no endividamento das empresas e se estes determinantes alteram-se dependendo do ciclo de vida da empresa apoiada pelas teorias Trade Off, Pecking Order e Teoria da Agência. Para alcançar o objetivo deste trabalho foi utilizado análise em painel de efeito fixo sendo a amostra composta por empresas brasileiras de capital aberto, com dados secundários disponíveis na Economática® no período de 2005 a 2013, utilizando-se os setores da BM&FBOVESPA. Como resultado principal destaca-se o mesmo comportamento entre a amostra geral, alto e baixo crescimento pelo endividamento contábil para o determinante Lucratividade apresentando uma relação negativa, e para os determinantes Oportunidade de Crescimento e Tamanho, estes com uma relação positiva. Para os grupos de alto e baixo crescimento alguns determinantes apresentaram resultados diferentes, como a singularidade que resultou significância nestes dois grupos, sendo positiva no baixo crescimento e negativa no alto crescimento, para o valor colateral dos ativos e benefício fiscal não dívida apresentaram significância apenas no grupo de baixo crescimento. Para o endividamento a valor de mercado foi observado significância para o Benefício fiscal não dívida e Singularidade. Este resultado reforça o argumento de que o ciclo de vida influência a estrutura de capital

The impact of supply chain performance measurement systems on dynamic behaviour in supply chains

The amplification of demand variation up a supply chain widely termed ‘the Bullwhip Effect’ is disruptive, costly and something that supply chain management generally seeks to minimise. Originally attributed to poor system design; deficiencies in policies, organisation structure and delays in material and information flow all lead to sub-optimal reorder point calculation. It has since been attributed to exogenous random factors such as: uncertainties in demand, supply and distribution lead time but these causes are not exclusive as academic and operational studies since have shown that orders and/or inventories can exhibit significant variability even if customer demand and lead time are deterministic. This increase in the range of possible causes of dynamic behaviour indicates that our understanding of the phenomenon is far from complete. One possible, yet previously unexplored, factor that may influence dynamic behaviour in supply chains is the application and operation of supply chain performance measures. Organisations monitoring and responding to their adopted key performance metrics will make operational changes and this action may influence the level of dynamics within the supply chain, possibly degrading the performance of the very system they were intended to measure. In order to explore this a plausible abstraction of the operational responses to the Supply Chain Council’s SCOR® (Supply Chain Operations Reference) model was incorporated into a classic Beer Game distribution representation, using the dynamic discrete event simulation software Simul8. During the simulation the five SCOR Supply Chain Performance Attributes: Reliability, Responsiveness, Flexibility, Cost and Utilisation were continuously monitored and compared to established targets. Operational adjustments to the; reorder point, transportation modes and production capacity (where appropriate) for three independent supply chain roles were made and the degree of dynamic behaviour in the Supply Chain measured, using the ratio of the standard deviation of upstream demand relative to the standard deviation of the downstream demand. Factors employed to build the detailed model include: variable retail demand, order transmission, transportation delays, production delays, capacity constraints demand multipliers and demand averaging periods. Five dimensions of supply chain performance were monitored independently in three autonomous supply chain roles and operational settings adjusted accordingly. Uniqueness of this research stems from the application of the five SCOR performance attributes with modelled operational responses in a dynamic discrete event simulation model. This project makes its primary contribution to knowledge by measuring the impact, on supply chain dynamics, of applying a representative performance measurement system.

Brand extensions in emerging markets:theory development and testing in China

Brand extensions are increasingly used by multinational corporations in emerging markets such as China. However, understanding how consumers in the emerging markets evaluate brand extensions is hampered by a lack of research in the emerging markets contexts. To address the knowledge void, we built on an established brand extension evaluation framework in the West, namely Aaker and Keller (1990)1. Aaker , D. A. and Keller , K. L. 1990 . Consumer evaluations of brand extensions . Journal of Marketing , 54 ( 1 ) : 27 – 41 . [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®] View all references, and extended the model by incorporating two new factors: perceived fit based on brand image consistency and competition intensity in the brand extension category. The additions of two factors are made in recognition of the uniqueness of the considerations of consumers in the emerging markets in their brand extension evaluations. The extended model was tested by an empirical experiment using consumers in China. The results partly validated the Aaker and Keller model, and evidence that both newly added factors were significant in influencing consumers' evaluation of brand extensions was also found. More important, one new factor proposed, namely, consumer-perceived fit based on brand image consistency, was found to be more significant than all the factors in Aaker and Keller's original model, suggesting that the Aaker and Keller model may be limited in explaining how consumers in the emerging markets evaluate brand extensions. Further research implications and limitations are discussed in the paper.

The impacts of market orientation and corporate social responsibility on firm performance:evidence from China

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the joint effects of market orientation (MO) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firm performance. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected via a questionnaire survey of star-rated hotels in China and a total of 143 valid responses were received. The hypotheses were tested by employing structural equation modelling with a maximum likelihood estimation option. Findings – It was found that although both MO and CSR could enhance performance, once the effects of CSR are accounted for, the direct effects of MO on performance diminish considerably to almost non-existent. Although this result may be due to the fact that the research is conducted in China, a country where CSR might be crucially important to performance given the country's socialist legacy, it nonetheless provides strong evidence that MO's impact on organizational performance is mediated by CSR. Research limitations/implications – The main limitations include the use of cross-sectional data, the subjective measurement of performance and the uniqueness of the research setting (China). The findings provide an additional important insight into the processes by which a market oriented culture is transformed into superior organizational performance. Originality/value – This paper is one of the first to examine the joint effects of MO and CSR on business performance. The empirical evidence from China adds to the existing literature on the respective importance of MO and CSR.

Diversity and the perceived barriers to participation in volunteer activity by older people

The first chapter introduces the subject from a psychological and sociological perspective emphasising the basic human activity of helping those in need. Governmental prominence for policies that assist this activity is briefly discussed with special mention of the programmes that encourage volunteering. Programmes particularly directed at older people, such as the Age Concern ‘Debate of the Age’ are considered briefly. An extensive review of the extant literature is the subject of the second chapter. The pervious research is explored to discover the formulae used to define a volunteer. A definition relative to this research is created. Volunteering issues aggravated by the demographic situation of older people are explored. Empirical volunteer survey research by mutual organisations is explored to ascertain the extent and nature of the already recorded volunteer population. The penultimate section of this chapter investigates the nature of old age and the strategies that older people adopt to enjoy the benefits and contain the problems. The issue of diversity arises from consideration of the literature suggesting that, although it is an essential voluntary sector strength, it is also a further barrier to recruitment. A model diversity is proposed. Chapter three reviews the theoretical processes, procedures and technologies used to collect and analyse the data required to discover the answer to the research problem. Analysis of the questionnaire survey data received is the subject of chapter four. The discovery of the agency uniqueness of volunteer profiles is the principle finding of this part of the research. The fifth chapter is the qualitative analysis of the oral and written statements received. A content analysis of the scripts and texts provided rich data covering motivational factors. Motivational factors were the same for volunteers in the same organisation, but differed between organisations. Finally, the analysed data is collated and discussed progressively toward a theory of diversity. The individuality of each branch of each agency is progressively described culminating in the creation of a model that infers that diversity is a barrier that aggravates all other barriers. The personal realisations of the researcher are described.

Increased diversity of libraries from libraries: chemoinformatic analysis of bis-diazacyclic libraries

Combinatorial libraries continue to play a key role in drug discovery. To increase structural diversity, several experimental methods have been developed. However, limited efforts have been performed so far to quantify the diversity of the broadly used diversity-oriented synthetic (DOS) libraries. Herein we report a comprehensive characterization of 15 bis-diazacyclic combinatorial libraries obtained through libraries from libraries, which is a DOS approach. Using MACCS keys, radial and different pharmacophoric fingerprints as well as six molecular properties, it was demonstrated the increased structural and property diversity of the libraries from libraries over the individual libraries. Comparison of the libraries to existing drugs, NCI Diversity and the Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository revealed the structural uniqueness of the combinatorial libraries (mean similarity < 0.5 for any fingerprint representation). In particular, bis-cyclic thiourea libraries were the most structurally dissimilar to drugs retaining drug-like character in property space. This study represents the first comprehensive quantification of the diversity of libraries from libraries providing a solid quantitative approach to compare and contrast the diversity of DOS libraries with existing drugs or any other compound collection.

Uncertainty and topographic visualisations

This thesis is a study of low-dimensional visualisation methods for data visualisation under certainty of the input data. It focuses on the two main feed-forward neural network algorithms which are NeuroScale and Generative Topographic Mapping (GTM) by trying to make both algorithms able to accommodate the uncertainty. The two models are shown not to work well under high levels of noise within the data and need to be modified. The modification of both models, NeuroScale and GTM, are verified by using synthetic data to show their ability to accommodate the noise. The thesis is interested in the controversy surrounding the non-uniqueness of predictive gene lists (PGL) of predicting prognosis outcome of breast cancer patients as available in DNA microarray experiments. Many of these studies have ignored the uncertainty issue resulting in random correlations of sparse model selection in high dimensional spaces. The visualisation techniques are used to confirm that the patients involved in such medical studies are intrinsically unclassifiable on the basis of provided PGL evidence. This additional category of ‘unclassifiable’ should be accommodated within medical decision support systems if serious errors and unnecessary adjuvant therapy are to be avoided.

Predictive gene lists for breast cancer prognosis: a topographic visualisation study

Background: The controversy surrounding the non-uniqueness of predictive gene lists (PGL) of small selected subsets of genes from very large potential candidates as available in DNA microarray experiments is now widely acknowledged 1. Many of these studies have focused on constructing discriminative semi-parametric models and as such are also subject to the issue of random correlations of sparse model selection in high dimensional spaces. In this work we outline a different approach based around an unsupervised patient-specific nonlinear topographic projection in predictive gene lists. Methods: We construct nonlinear topographic projection maps based on inter-patient gene-list relative dissimilarities. The Neuroscale, the Stochastic Neighbor Embedding(SNE) and the Locally Linear Embedding(LLE) techniques have been used to construct two-dimensional projective visualisation plots of 70 dimensional PGLs per patient, classifiers are also constructed to identify the prognosis indicator of each patient using the resulting projections from those visualisation techniques and investigate whether a-posteriori two prognosis groups are separable on the evidence of the gene lists. A literature-proposed predictive gene list for breast cancer is benchmarked against a separate gene list using the above methods. Generalisation ability is investigated by using the mapping capability of Neuroscale to visualise the follow-up study, but based on the projections derived from the original dataset. Results: The results indicate that small subsets of patient-specific PGLs have insufficient prognostic dissimilarity to permit a distinction between two prognosis patients. Uncertainty and diversity across multiple gene expressions prevents unambiguous or even confident patient grouping. Comparative projections across different PGLs provide similar results. Conclusion: The random correlation effect to an arbitrary outcome induced by small subset selection from very high dimensional interrelated gene expression profiles leads to an outcome with associated uncertainty. This continuum and uncertainty precludes any attempts at constructing discriminative classifiers. However a patient's gene expression profile could possibly be used in treatment planning, based on knowledge of other patients' responses. We conclude that many of the patients involved in such medical studies are intrinsically unclassifiable on the basis of provided PGL evidence. This additional category of 'unclassifiable' should be accommodated within medical decision support systems if serious errors and unnecessary adjuvant therapy are to be avoided.

Market orientation of hotels and travel services in China

China is unique both politically and economically. How this uniqueness impacts on firms'' adoption of market orientation and the impact of market orientation on business performance, however, remain unclear. This book reports a study by Dr Riliang Qu who aims to address the above knowledge void. The study employs a two-stage research strategy including interviews and a survey of 1000 hotels and travel services. The study found that government regulations restricting the firm rivalry and the shortage of competent managerial talents are among the most serious constraints to the firms'' development of market orientation along with such factors as inadequacy of government regulation on product quality and consumer protection. The findings suggest that in transitional like China, government actions could be a major force behind firms'' aspiration of being market-oriented. The study also found that the benefits of market orientation are multi-fold in that it not only improves company''s business performance but also has positive effects on customer satisfaction/retention, power in distribution channel, and corporate social responsibility.

Effective electromagnetic noise cancellation with beamformers and synthetic gradiometry in shielded and partly shielded environments

The major challenge of MEG, the inverse problem, is to estimate the very weak primary neuronal currents from the measurements of extracranial magnetic fields. The non-uniqueness of this inverse solution is compounded by the fact that MEG signals contain large environmental and physiological noise that further complicates the problem. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of magnetic noise cancellation by synthetic gradiometers and the beamformer analysis method of synthetic aperture magnetometry (SAM) for source localisation in the presence of large stimulus-generated noise. We demonstrate that activation of primary somatosensory cortex can be accurately identified using SAM despite the presence of significant stimulus-related magnetic interference. This interference was generated by a contact heat evoked potential stimulator (CHEPS), recently developed for thermal pain research, but which to date has not been used in a MEG environment. We also show that in a reduced shielding environment the use of higher order synthetic gradiometry is sufficient to obtain signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) that allow for accurate localisation of cortical sensory function.

Engineering education for the 21st century:scholarship, synergy and student success

Starting with the question “How can University level Engineering Education be developed in such a way so as to enhance the quality of the student learning experience?”, this discussion paper proposes an approach to engineering education developed by a senior engineering educator working alongside a pedagogical researcher in an attempt to engage colleagues in contemporary debates about the issues currently faced across the Sector. Such issues include difficulties with recruiting students onto programmes as well as high levels of student attrition and failure. Underpinned by three distinctive concepts: Synergy, Variety & Relationships (S+V+R), the approach brings together pedagogic and engineering epistemologies in an empirically grounded framework in such a way so as to provide an accessible and relevant learning approach that, if followed, engenders student success [S2]. Specifically developed with the intention of increasing retention and positively impacting student success [S2], the S+V+R=S2 approach provides a scholarly and Synergetic (S) approach to engineering education that is both innovative and exciting. Building on the argument that Variety (V) in education is pivotal to promoting originality and creativity in learning and teaching, this paper shows how, by purposefully developing a range of learning and teaching approaches, student engagement and thus success can be increased. It also considers the importance of Relationships (R) in higher education, arguing that belonging and relationships are crucial factors impacting student experiences. When taken together (Synergy, Variety and Relationships) and applied within an Engineering Education context, students are provided with a unique learning environment – one that both promotes individual success and improves organisational effectiveness. The uniqueness of the approach is in the synthesis of these three concepts within an Engineering Education epistemology.

Determining planar multiple sound-soft obstacles from scattered acoustic fields

An inverse problem is considered where the structure of multiple sound-soft planar obstacles is to be determined given the direction of the incoming acoustic field and knowledge of the corresponding total field on a curve located outside the obstacles. A local uniqueness result is given for this inverse problem suggesting that the reconstruction can be achieved by a single incident wave. A numerical procedure based on the concept of the topological derivative of an associated cost functional is used to produce images of the obstacles. No a priori assumption about the number of obstacles present is needed. Numerical results are included showing that accurate reconstructions can be obtained and that the proposed method is capable of finding both the shapes and the number of obstacles with one or a few incident waves.

Null Condition for Semilinear Wave Equation with Variable Coefficients

∗The author was partially supported by M.U.R.S.T. Progr. Nazionale “Problemi Non Lineari...”

A Gradient-Type Optimization Technique for the Optimal Control for Schrodinger Equations

In this paper, we are considered with the optimal control of a schrodinger equation. Based on the formulation for the variation of the cost functional, a gradient-type optimization technique utilizing the finite difference method is then developed to solve the constrained optimization problem. Finally, a numerical example is given and the results show that the method of solution is robust.

Cauchy Problem for Differential Equation with Caputo Derivative

The paper is devoted to the study of the Cauchy problem for a nonlinear differential equation of complex order with the Caputo fractional derivative. The equivalence of this problem and a nonlinear Volterra integral equation in the space of continuously differentiable functions is established. On the basis of this result, the existence and uniqueness of the solution of the considered Cauchy problem is proved. The approximate-iterative method by Dzjadyk is used to obtain the approximate solution of this problem. Two numerical examples are given.