Does absorptive capacity affect project performance? A study based on project management practices, organization learning, and knowledge

The literature has emphasized that absorptive capacity (AC) leads to performance, but in projects its influences still unclear. Additionally, the project success is not well understood by the literature, and AC can be an important mechanism to explain it. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of absorptive capacity on project performance in the construction industry of S��o Paulo State. We study this influence through potential and realized absorptive capacity proposed by Zahra and George (2002). For achieving this goal, we use a combination of qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative research is based on 15 interviews with project managers in different sectors to understand the main constructs and support the next quantitative phase. The content analysis was the technique used to analyze those interviews. In quantitative phase through a survey questionnaire, we collected 157 responses in the construction sector with project managers. The confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical linear regression were the techniques used to assess the data. Our findings suggest that the realized absorptive capacity has a positive influence on performance, but potential absorptive capacity and the interactions effect have no influence on performance. Moreover, the planning and monitoring have a positive impact on budget and schedule, and customer satisfaction while risk coping capacity has a positive impact on business success. In academics terms, this research enables a better understanding of the importance of absorptive capacity in the construction industry and it confirms that knowledge application in processes and routines enhances performance. For management, the absorptive capacity enables the improvements of internal capabilities reflected in the increased project management efficiency. Indeed, when a company manages project practices efficiently it enhances business and project performance; however, it needs initially to improve its internal abilities to enrich processes and routines through relevant knowledge.

Trinidad and Tobago: public sector investment programming and project cycle management in Trinidad and Tobago

Includes bibliography

Raman Lidar monitors emissions from sugar cane fires in the State of S��o Paulo: a pilot-project integrating radar, sodar, aerosol and gas observations

Funda����o de Amparo �� Pesquisa do Estado de S��o Paulo (FAPESP)

An Input-Process-Output Approach to Interorganizational Teams: The Influence of Work Group Diversity, Trust and Shared Leadership on Communication Network and Team Outputs.

The market���s challenges bring firms to collaborate with other organizations in order to create Joint Ventures, Alliances and Consortia that are defined as ���Interorganizational Networks��� (IONs) (Provan, Fish and Sydow; 2007). Some of these IONs are managed through a shared partecipant governance (Provan and Kenis, 2008): a team composed by entrepreneurs and/or directors of each firm of an ION. The research is focused on these kind of management teams and it is based on an input-process-output model: some input variables (work group���s diversity, intra-team's friendship network density) have a direct influence on the process (team identification, shared leadership, interorganizational trust, team trust and intra-team's communication network density), which influence some team outputs, individual innovation behaviors and team effectiveness (team performance, work group satisfaction and ION affective commitment). Data was collected on a sample of 101 entrepreneurs grouped in 28 ION���s government teams and the research hypotheses are tested trough the path analysis and the multilevel models. As expected trust in team and shared leadership are positively and directly related to team effectiveness while team identification and interorganizational trust are indirectly related to the team outputs. The friendship network density among the team���s members has got positive effects on the trust in team and on the communication network density, and also, through the communication network density it improves the level of the teammates ION affective commitment. The shared leadership and its effects on the team effectiveness are fostered from higher level of team identification and weakened from higher level of work group diversity, specifically gender diversity. Finally, the communication network density and shared leadership at the individual level are related to the frequency of individual innovative behaviors. The dissertation���s results give a wider and more precise indication about the management of interfirm network through ���shared��� form of governance.

Strategic decision making in international firms: effect of top management team internationalization on international strategic decision process

In this research project, I have integrated two research streams on international strategic decisions making in international firms: upper echelons or top management teams (TMT) internationalization research and international strategic decision making process research. Both research streams in international business literature have evolved independently, but there is a potential in combining these two streams of research. The first empirical paper ���TMT internationalization and international strategic decision making process: a decision level analysis of rationality, speed, and performance��� explores the influence of TMT internationalization on strategic decision rationality and speed and, subsequently, their effect on international strategic decision effectiveness (performance). The results show that the internationalization of TMT is positively related to decision effectiveness and this relationship is mediated by decision rationality while the hypotheses regarding the association between TMT internationalization and decision speed, and the mediating effect of speed were not supported. The second paper ���TMT internationalization and international strategic decision rationality: the mediating role of international information��� of my thesis is a simple but logical extension of first paper. The first paper showed that TMT Internationalization has a significant positive effect on international strategic decision rationality. The second paper explicitly showed that TMT internationalization affect on international strategic decision rationality comes from two sources: international experience (personal international knowledge and information) and international information collected from managerial international contacts. For this research project, I have collected data from international software firms in Pakistan. My research contributes to the literature on upper echelons theory and strategic decision making in context of international business and international firms by explicitly examining the link between TMT internationalization and characteristics of strategic decisions making process (i.e. rationality and speed) in international firms and their possible mediating effect on performance.

Knowledge Management and Decision Support for Sustainable Land Management

Much research has focused on desertification and land degradation assessments without putting sufficient emphasis on prevention and mitigation, although the concept of sustainable land management (SLM) is increasingly being acknowledged. A variety of SLM measures have already been applied at the local level, but they are rarely adequately recognised, evaluated, shared or used for decision support. WOCAT (World Overview of Technologies and Approaches) has developed an internationally recognised, standardised methodology to document and evaluate SLM technologies and approaches, including spatial distribution, allowing the sharing of SLM knowledge worldwide. The recent methodological integration into a participatory process allows now analysing and using this knowledge for decision support at the local and national level. The use of the WOCAT tools stimulates evaluation (self-evaluation as well as learning from comparing experiences) within SLM initiatives where all too often there is not only insufficient monitoring but also a lack of critical analysis. The comprehensive questionnaires and database system facilitate to document, evaluate and disseminate local experiences of SLM technologies and their implementation approaches. This evaluation process - in a team of experts and together with land users - greatly enhances understanding of the reasons behind successful (or failed) local practices. It has now been integrated into a new methodology for appraising and selecting SLM options. The methodology combines a local collective learning and decision approach with the use of the evaluated global best practices from WOCAT in a concise three step process: i) identifying land degradation and locally applied solutions in a stakeholder learning workshop; ii) assessing local solutions with the standardised WOCAT tool; iii) jointly selecting promising strategies for implementation with the help of a decision support tool. The methodology has been implemented in various countries and study sites around the world mainly within the FAO LADA (Land Degradation Assessment Project) and the EU-funded DESIRE project. Investments in SLM must be carefully assessed and planned on the basis of properly documented experiences and evaluated impacts and benefits: concerted efforts are needed and sufficient resources must be mobilised to tap the wealth of knowledge and learn from SLM successes.

A project-oriented course in probability and statistics for undergraduate electrical engineering students

An introductory course in probability and statistics for third-year and fourth-year electrical engineering students is described. The course is centered around several computer-based projects that are designed to achieve two objectives. First, the projects illustrate the course topics and provide hands-on experience for the students. The second and equally important objective of the projects is to convey the relevance and usefulness of probability and statistics to practical problems that undergraduate students can appreciate. The benefit of this course as to motivate electrical engineering students to excel in the study of probability concepts, instead of viewing the subject as one more course requirement toward graduation. The authors co-teach the course, and MATLAB is used for mast of the computer-based projects

Uncovering poiesis : the role of production in technical communication, work, and public life

This dissertation is a report on a collaborative project between the Computer Science and the Humanities Departments to develop case studies that focus on issues of communication in the workplace, and the results of their use in the classroom. My argument is that case study teaching simulates real-world experience in a meaningful way, essentially developing a teachable way of developing phronesis, the reasoned capacity to act for the good in public. In addition, it can be read as a "how-to" guide for educators who may wish to construct their own case studies. To that end, I have included a discussion of the ethnographic methodologies employed, and how it was adapted to our more pragmatic ends. Finally, I present my overarching argument for a new appraisal of the concept of techn��. This reappraisal emphasizes its productive activity, poiesis, rather than focusing on its knowledge as has been the case in the past. I propose that focusing on the telos, the end outside the production, contributes to the diminishment, if not complete foreclosure, of a rich concept of techn��.

Integration of QUAL2Kw and ArcGIS for Silver Bow Creek, Montana

The purpose of this project is to take preliminary steps towards the development of a QUAL2Kw model for Silver Bow Creek, MT. These preliminary steps include initial research and familiarization with QUAL2Kw, use of ArcGIS to fill in geospatial data gaps, and integration of QUAL2Kw and ArcGIS. The integration involves improvement of the QUAL2Kw model output through adding functionality to the model itself, and development of a QUAL2Kw specific tool in ArcGIS. These improvements are designed to help expedite and simplify the viewing of QUAL2Kw output data spatially in ArcGIS as opposed to graphically within QUAL2Kw. These improvements will allow users to quickly and easily view the many output parameters of each model run geographically within ArcGIS. This will make locating potential problem areas or ���hot spots��� much quicker and easier than interpreting the QUAL2Kw output data from a graph alone. The added functionality of QUAL2KW was achieved through the development of an excel Macro, and the tool in ArcGIS was developed using python scripting and the model builder feature in ArcGIS.

Revising the National Ambient Air Quality Standards: The integration of science and policy

Under the Clean Air Act, Congress granted discretionary decision making authority to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This discretionary authority involves setting standards to protect the public's health with an "adequate margin of safety" based on current scientific knowledge. The Administrator of the EPA is usually not a scientist, and for the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for particulate matter (PM), the Administrator faced the task of revising a standard when several scientific factors were ambiguous. These factors included: (1) no identifiable threshold below which health effects are not manifested, (2) no biological basis to explain the reported associations between particulate matter and adverse health effects, and (3) no consensus among the members of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) as to what an appropriate PM indicator, averaging period, or value would be for the revised standard. ^ This project recommends and demonstrates a tool, integrated assessment (IA), to aid the Administrator in making a public health policy decision in the face of ambiguous scientific factors. IA is an interdisciplinary approach to decision making that has been used to deal with complex issues involving many uncertainties, particularly climate change analyses. Two IA approaches are presented; a rough set analysis by which the expertise of CASAC members can be better utilized, and a flag model for incorporating the views of stakeholders into the standard setting process. ^ The rough set analysis can describe minimal and maximal conditions about the current science pertaining to PM and health effects. Similarly, a flag model can evaluate agreement or lack of agreement by various stakeholder groups to the proposed standard in the PM review process. ^ The use of these IA tools will enable the Administrator to (1) complete the NAAQS review in a manner that is in closer compliance with the Clean Air Act, (2) expand the input from CASAC, (3) take into consideration the views of the stakeholders, and (4) retain discretionary decision making authority. ^

EPICA Dome C Ice Core 800KYr deuterium data and temperature estimates

A high-resolution deuterium profile is now available along the entire European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica Dome C ice core, extending this climate record back to marine isotope stage 20.2, ~800,000 years ago. Experiments performed with an atmospheric general circulation model including water isotopes support its temperature interpretation. We assessed the general correspondence between Dansgaard-Oeschger events and their smoothed Antarctic counterparts for this Dome C record, which reveals the presence of such features with similar amplitudes during previous glacial periods. We suggest that the interplay between obliquity and precession accounts for the variable intensity of interglacial periods in ice core records. Temperature was estimated after correction for sea-water isotopic composition (Bintanja et al, 2005) and for ice sheet elevation (Parrenin et al, 2007) on EDC3 age scale (Parrenin et al, 2007).