Optimization of molecular and crystalline forms of drugs, agrochemicals, pesticides in relation to activity, bioavailability, patentability and to the fabrication of polymorphs, solvates, co-crystals with green chemistry methods

This doctorate was funded by the Regione Emilia Romagna, within a Spinner PhD project coordinated by the University of Parma, and involving the universities of Bologna, Ferrara and Modena. The aim of the project was: - Production of polymorphs, solvates, hydrates and co-crystals of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and agrochemicals with green chemistry methods; - Optimization of molecular and crystalline forms of APIs and pesticides in relation to activity, bioavailability and patentability. In the last decades, a growing interest in the solid-state properties of drugs in addition to their solution chemistry has blossomed. The achievement of the desired and/or the more stable polymorph during the production process can be a challenge for the industry. The study of crystalline forms could be a valuable step to produce new polymorphs and/or co-crystals with better physical-chemical properties such as solubility, permeability, thermal stability, habit, bulk density, compressibility, friability, hygroscopicity and dissolution rate in order to have potential industrial applications. Selected APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) were studied and their relationship between crystal structure and properties investigated, both in the solid state and in solution. Polymorph screening and synthesis of solvates and molecular/ionic co-crystals were performed according to green chemistry principles. Part of this project was developed in collaboration with chemical/pharmaceutical companies such as BASF (Germany) and UCB (Belgium). We focused on on the optimization of conditions and parameters of crystallization processes (additives, concentration, temperature), and on the synthesis and characterization of ionic co-crystals. Moreover, during a four-months research period in the laboratories of Professor Nair Rodriguez-Hormedo (University of Michigan), the stability in aqueous solution at the equilibrium of ionic co-crystals (ICCs) of the API piracetam was investigated, to understand the relationship between their solid-state and solution properties, in view of future design of new crystalline drugs with predefined solid and solution properties.

The co-evolution of development needs and IOR forms: development by committee in Bosnia

This work highlights opportunities and obstacles to success in four task forces typically found at different times in states of conflict, transition, and development. They include: refugee return, media issues, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and efforts to promote business development. Based on over 180 in-depth interviews and observations of dozens of meetings during five lengthy field research trips to the Bosnian region between 1999 and 2005, this manuscript analyzes how these four task forces differed in terms of context, strategy, organization, and management in an attempt to understand the co-evolution of international development needs and the interorganizational forms that address them.

Decentralized or centralized production : impacts to the environment, industry, and the economy

Since product take-back is mandated in Europe, and has effects for producers worldwide including the U.S., designing efficient forward and reverse supply chain networks is becoming essential for business viability. Centralizing production facilities may reduce costs but perhaps not environmental impacts. Decentralizing a supply chain may reduce transportation environmental impacts but increase capital costs. Facility location strategies of centralization or decentralization are tested for companies with supply chains that both take back and manufacture products. Decentralized and centralized production systems have different effects on the environment, industry and the economy. Decentralized production systems cluster suppliers within the geographical market region that the system serves. Centralized production systems have many suppliers spread out that meet all market demand. The point of this research is to help further the understanding of company decision-makers about impacts to the environment and costs when choosing a decentralized or centralized supply chain organizational strategy. This research explores; what degree of centralization for a supply chain makes the most financial and environmental sense for siting facilities; and which factories are in the best location to handle the financial and environmental impacts of particular processing steps needed for product manufacture. This research considered two examples of facility location for supply chains when products are taken back; the theoretical case involved shoe resoling and a real world case study considered the location of operations for a company that reclaims multiple products for use as material inputs. For the theoretical example a centralized strategy to facility location was optimal: whereas for the case study a decentralized strategy to facility location was best. In conclusion, it is not possible to say that a centralized or decentralized strategy to facility location is in general best for a company that takes back products. Each company’s specific concerns, needs, and supply chain details will determine which degree of centralization creates the optimal strategy for siting their facilities.

Our Lives, Our Thoughts and Our Allegiance: New Immigrants and American Industry in 1914

Through comparative analysis of the immigrant labor forces at work in iron mining in northern Minnesota, coal mining in Illinois, and steel milling in the Calumet region of Chicago and Gary, this paper addresses the forms of social distance separating and marginalizing new immigrants from American society and trade unionism that existed in 1914, the year that marked the end point of mass immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. The “new immigration” was a labor migration that congregated its subjects overwhelmingly in what were called "unskilled" or "semi-skilled" forms of labor. Skilled work was largely, with certain variations, the preserve of "American" or old immigrant workers. This labor gulf separating new immigrants and American workers was hardened by a spatial separateness. New immigrants often lived in what have been called industrial villages—the mining town or location, the factory neighborhood— striking in their isolation and insularity from mainstream society. This separateness and insularity became a major preoccupation for corporate managers, Progressive reformers, and for American trade unions as new immigrants began to engage in major labor struggles leading up to 1914. But among the three industries, only the union of coal miners, the United Mine Workers, enjoyed success in organizing the new immigrants. In the steel mills and the iron mines, the unions were either rooted out or failed to gain a foothold at all. The explanation for these differences is to be found in the different forms of industrial development among the industries studied.

KNOWLEDGE-BASED MANUFACTURING STRATEGY AND METHODS FOR FOUNDRIES

The European foundry business is a traditional less RTD intensive industry which is dominated by SMEs and which forms a significant part of Europe’s manufacturing industry. The efficient design and manufacturing of cast components and corresponding tooling is a crucial success factor for these companies. To achieve this, information and knowledge around the design, planning and manufacturing of cast components needs to be accessible in a fast and structured way.

Integrating structured and unstructured data in a business-intelligence-system

The recent liberalization of the German energy market has forced the energy industry to develop and install new information systems to support agents on the energy trading floors in their analytical tasks. Besides classical approaches of building a data warehouse giving insight into the time series to understand market and pricing mechanisms, it is crucial to provide a variety of external data from the web. Weather information as well as political news or market rumors are relevant to give the appropriate interpretation to the variables of a volatile energy market. Starting from a multidimensional data model and a collection of buy and sell transactions a data warehouse is built that gives analytical support to the agents. Following the idea of web farming we harvest the web, match the external information sources after a filtering and evaluation process to the data warehouse objects, and present this qualified information on a user interface where market values are correlated with those external sources over the time axis.

Design of SOA services: experiences from industry

Because of the unknown usage scenarios, designing the elementary services of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), which form the basis for later composition, is rather difficult. Various design guide lines have been proposed by academia, tool vendors and consulting companies, but they differ in the rigor of validation and are often biased toward some technology. For that reason a multiple-case study was conducted in five large organizations that successfully introduced SOA in their daily business. The observed approaches are contrasted with the findings from a literature review to derive some recommendations for SOA service design.

Business and Public–Private Partnerships for Sustainability: Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility?

This article analyses public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the field of sustainable development from an international relations perspective with insights from the business and ethics literature. We argue that the role of business in these types of arrangements has not been sufficiently explored. After presenting three ways of approaching PPPs to stress the many facets of partnerships across the public–private divide, we discuss the emergence of these novel forms of governance from a demand side and contrast such a functionalist reading with the supply side. Then we look at the micro-economic incentives for corporations to engage in such endeavours. We develop arguments derived from the dominant literature to provide an analytical framework for explaining business participation. Finally, we discuss the role of PPPs in light of input and output legitimacy. We conclude by alluding to the emergence of an expectation-capacity gap and normative issues related to the global PPP architecture.

Professionalisation of sport federations. A multi-level framework for analysing forms, causes and consequences

Research question: International and national sport federations as well as their member organisations (usually sport clubs) are key actors within the sport system and have a wide range of relationships outside the sport system (e.g. with the state, sponsors, and the media). They are currently facing major challenges such as growing competition in top-level sports, democratisation of sports with “sports for all” and sports as the answer to social problems (integration, education, health, unemployment, etc.). In this context, professionalising sport organisations seems to be an appropriate strategy to face these challenges and solve current problems. We define the professionalisation of sport organisations as an organisational process of transformation leading towards organisational rationalisation, efficiency and business-like management. This has led to a profound organisational change, particularly within sport federations, characterised by the strengthening of institutional management (managerialism) and the implementation of efficiency-based management instruments and paid staff. Research methods: The goal of this article is to review the international literature and establish a global understanding of and theoretical framework for how sport organisations professionalise and what consequences this may have. Results and Findings: Our multi-level approach based on the social theory of action integrates the current concepts for analysing professionalisation in sport federations. We specify the framework for the following research perspectives: (1) forms, (2) causes and (3) consequences, and discuss the reciprocal relations between sport federations and their member organisations in this context. Implications: Finally, we derive general methodological consequences for the investigation of professionalisation processes in sport organisations.

Professionalisation of sport federations – A multi-level framework for analysing forms, causes and consequences

Research question: International and national sport federations as well as their member organisations are key actors within the sport system and have a wide range of relationships outside the sport system (e.g. with the state, sponsors, and the media). They are currently facing major challenges such as growing competition in top-level sports, democratisation of sports with ‘sports for all’ and sports as the answer to social problems. In this context, professionalising sport organisations seems to be an appropriate strategy to face these challenges and current problems. We define the professionalisation of sport organisations as an organisational process of transformation leading towards organisational rationalisation, efficiency and business-like management. This has led to a profound organisational change, particularly within sport federations, characterised by the strengthening of institutional management (managerialism) and the implementation of efficiency-based management instruments and paid staff. Research methods: The goal of this article is to review the current international literature and establish a global understanding of and theoretical framework for analysing why and how sport organisations professionalise and what consequences this may have. Results and findings: Our multi-level approach based on the social theory of action integrates the current concepts for analysing professionalisation in sport federations. We specify the framework for the following research perspectives: (1) forms, (2) causes and (3) consequences, and discuss the reciprocal relations between sport federations and their member organisations in this context. Implications: Finally, we work out a research agenda and derive general methodological consequences for the investigation of professionalisation processes in sport organisations.

The Application of Digital Rights Management Systems in the Music Industry - An Empirical Investigation

Technology advances in hardware, software and IP-networks such as the Internet or peer-to-peer file sharing systems are threatening the music business. The result has been an increasing amount of illegal copies available on-line as well as off-line. With the emergence of digital rights management systems (DRMS), the music industry seems to have found the appropriate tool to simultaneously fight piracy and to monetize their assets. Although these systems are very powerful and include multiple technologies to prevent piracy, it is as of yet unknown to what extent such systems are currently being used by content providers. We provide empirical analyses, results, and conclusions related to digital rights management systems and the protection of digital content in the music industry. It shows that most content providers are protecting their digital content through a variety of technologies such as passwords or encryption. However, each protection technology has its own specific goal, and not all prevent piracy. The majority of the respondents are satisfied with their current protection but want to reinforce it for the future, due to fear of increasing piracy. Surprisingly, although encryption is seen as the core DRM technology, only few companies are currently using it. Finally, half of the respondents do not believe in the success of DRMS and their ability to reduce piracy.

Causes, forms and consequences of the professionalization of international sport federa-tions in Switzerland: Conceptual framework and first results

Synopsis: Sport organisations are facing multiple challenges originating from an increasingly complex and dynamic environment in general, and from internal changes in particular. Our study seeks to reveal and analyse the causes for professionalization processes in international sport federations, the forms resulting from it, as well as related consequences. Abstract: AIM OF ABSTRACT/PAPER - RESEARCH QUESTION Sport organisations are facing multiple challenges originating from an increasingly complex and dynamic environment in general, and from internal changes in particular. In this context, professionalization seems to have been adopted by sport organisations as an appropriate strategy to respond to pressures such as becoming more “business-like”. The ongoing study seeks to reveal and analyse the internal and external causes for professionalization processes in international sport federations, the forms resulting from it (e.g. organisational, managerial, economic) as well as related consequences on objectives, values, governance methods, performance management or again rationalisation. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND/LITERATURE REVIEW Studies on sport as specific non-profit sector mainly focus on the prospect of the “professionalization of individuals” (Thibault, Slack & Hinings, 1991), often within sport clubs (Thiel, Meier & Cachay, 2006) and national sport federations (Seippel, 2002) or on organisational change (Griginov & Sandanski, 2008; Slack & Hinings, 1987, 1992; Slack, 1985, 2001), thus leaving broader analysis on governance, management and professionalization in sport organisations an unaccomplished task. In order to further current research on above-mentioned topics, our intention is to analyse causes, forms and consequences of professionalisation processes in international sport federations. The social theory of action (Coleman, 1986; Esser, 1993) has been defined as appropriate theoretical framework, deriving in the following a multi-level framework for the analysis of sport organisations (Nagel, 2007). In light of the multi-level framework, sport federations are conceptualised as corporative actors whose objectives are defined and implemented with regard to the interests of member organisations (Heinemann, 2004) and/or other pressure groups. In order to understand social acting and social structures (Giddens 1984) of sport federations, two levels are in the focus of our analysis: the macro level examining the environment at large (political, social, economic systems etc.) and the meso level (Esser, 1999) examining organisational structures, actions and decisions of the federation’s headquarter as well as member organisations. METHODOLOGY, RESEARCH DESIGN AND DATA ANALYSIS The multi-level framework mentioned seeks to gather and analyse information on causes, forms and consequences of professionalization processes in sport federations. It is applied in a twofold approach: first an exploratory study based on nine semi-structured interviews with experts from umbrella sport organisations (IOC, WADA, ASOIF, AIOWF, etc.) as well as the analysis of related documents, relevant reports (IOC report 2000 on governance reform, Agenda 2020, etc.) and important moments of change in the Olympic Movement (Olympic revenue share, IOC evaluation criteria, etc.); and secondly several case studies. Whereas the exploratory study seeks more the causes for professionalization on an external, internal and headquarter level as depicted in the literature, the case studies rather focus on forms and consequences. Applying our conceptual framework, the analysis of forms is built around three dimensions: 1) Individuals (persons and positions), 2) Processes, structures (formalisation, specialisation), 3) Activities (strategic planning). With regard to consequences, we centre our attention on expectations of and relationships with stakeholders (e.g. cooperation with business partners), structure, culture and processes (e.g. governance models, performance), and expectations of and relationships with member organisations (e.g. centralisation vs. regionalisation). For the case studies, a mixed-method approach is applied to collect relevant data: questionnaires for rather quantitative data, interviews for rather qualitative data, as well as document and observatory analysis. RESULTS, DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS/CONCLUSIONS With regard to causes of professionalization processes, we analyse the content of three different levels: 1. the external level, where the main pressure derives from financial resources (stakeholders, benefactors) and important turning points (scandals, media pressure, IOC requirements for Olympic sports); 2. the internal level, where pressure from member organisations turned out to be less decisive than assumed (little involvement of member organisations in decision-making); 3. the headquarter level, where specific economic models (World Cups, other international circuits, World Championships), and organisational structures (decision-making procedures, values, leadership) trigger or hinder a federation’s professionalization process. Based on our first analysis, an outline for an economic model is suggested, distinguishing four categories of IFs: “money-generating IFs” being rather based on commercialisation and strategic alliances; “classical Olympic IFs” being rather reactive and dependent on Olympic revenue; “classical non-Olympic IFs” being rather independent of the Olympic Movement; and “money-receiving IFs” being dependent on benefactors and having strong traditions and values. The results regarding forms and consequences will be outlined in the presentation. The first results from the two pilot studies will allow us to refine our conceptual framework for subsequent case studies, thus extending our data collection and developing fundamental conclusions. References: Bayle, E., & Robinson, L. (2007). A framework for understanding the performance of national governing bodies of sport. European Sport Management Quarterly, 7, 249–268 Chantelat, P. (2001). La professionnalisation des organisations sportives: Nouveaux débats, nouveaux enjeux [Professionalisation of sport organisations]. Paris: L’Harmattan. Dowling, M., Edwards, J., & Washington, M. (2014). Understanding the concept of professionalization in sport management research. Sport Management Review. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1016/j.smr.2014.02.003 Ferkins, L. & Shilbury, D. (2012). Good Boards Are Strategic: What Does That Mean for Sport Governance? Journal of Sport Management, 26, 67-80. Thibault, L., Slack, T., & Hinings, B. (1991). Professionalism, structures and systems: The impact of professional staff on voluntary sport organizations. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 26, 83–97.

For-profit business safety interventions: A systematic, descriptive review of the literature

The purpose of this research was to determine if principles from organizational theory could be used as a framework to compare and contrast safety interventions developed by for-profit industry for the time period 1986–1996. A literature search of electronic databases and manual search of journals and local university libraries' book stacks was conducted for safety interventions developed by for-profit businesses. To maintain a constant regulatory environment, the business sectors of nuclear power, aviation and non-profits were excluded. Safety intervention evaluations were screened for scientific merit. Leavitt's model from organization theory was updated to include safety climate and renamed the Updated Leavitt's Model. In all, 8000 safety citations were retrieved, 525 met the inclusion criteria, 255 met the organizational safety intervention criteria, and 50 met the scientific merit criteria. Most came from non-public health journals. These 50 were categorized by the Updated Leavitt's Model according to where within the organizational structure the intervention took place. Evidence tables were constructed for descriptive comparison. The interventions clustered in the areas of social structure, safety climate, the interaction between social structure and participants, and the interaction between technology and participants. No interventions were found in the interactions between social structure and technology, goals and technology, or participants and goals. Despite the scientific merit criteria, many still had significant study design weaknesses. Five interventions tested for statistical significance but none of the interventions commented on the power of their study. Empiric studies based on safety climate theorems had the most rigorous designs. There was an attempt in these studies to address randomization amongst subjects to avoid bias. This work highlights the utility of using the Updated Leavitt's Model, a model from organizational theory, as a framework when comparing safety interventions. This work also highlights the need for better study design of future trials of safety interventions. ^

Export-Led Growth and Geographic Distribution of the Poultry Meat Industry in Brazil

This paper includes an examination of the sustainability of recent high growth in the poultry meat industry in Brazil. In addition, an assessment is made of the impact of increased production of poultry meat products on the development of local industries. Comparative studies of leading companies in the United States, Mexico, and Brazil reveal competitive advantages in the low costs of feedstuff and labor as well as disadvantages in the scale of business and management efficiency in the Brazilian poultry sector. Increases in domestic and foreign demand for Brazilian poultry meat have promoted development of the Brazilian poultry sector in local areas. The formation of industrial clusters is observed using regional data related to the location of slaughterhouses and the number of chickens farmed. Statistical analyses support observations made in this paper.