Strategic groups, competitive groups and performance within the U.K. pharmaceutical industry:Improving our understanding of the competitive process

Strategic group research originated in the 1970s and a number of notable studies centered on the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Results were, however, conflicting. This paper explores the nature of strategic groups in the U.K. pharmaceutical industry. The study confirms the presence of between six and eight strategic groups across the period studied, 1998-2002. The study also demonstrates a statistically significant relationship between these strategic groups and performance using three performance measures. The paper then compares strategic groups with competitive groups and concludes that the distinction is important and may explain the contradictory findings in earlier strategic group research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Integrating strategic groups and the resource based perspective:understanding the competitive process

Although the strategic group and resource based perspectives are frequently presented as mutually exclusive, we argue otherwise. The resource based view informs strategic group analysis through a firm's product or service portfolio by offering a richer perspective on strategy and an additional lens for competitive group interpretation. Products act as the locus and bedrock for corporate decisions and form the backbone upon which market strategies are constructed. A "corporate genome" analogy is presented to illustrate how this process occurs within the U.K. pharmaceutical industry. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Current advances on the study of snail-snail interactions, with special emphasis on competition process

Field work research on population dynamic of snails from the regions of Belo Horizonte and Lagoa Santa give much information about interactions among two or more species of mollusks: Pomacea haustrum, Biomphalaria glabrata, B. tenagophila, B. straminea and Melanoides tuberculata. Data ranging from two years to several decades ago suggest that the Pampulha reservoir is like a cemetery of B. glabrata and B. straminea, species that coexist for more than 14 years in a small part of a stream, whereas only B. glabrata lives in all the streams of the basin. In the last ten to twenty years B. tenagophila has coexisted with P. haustrum and M. tuberculata in the Serra Verde ponds and in the Pampulha dam. However these species have not settled in any of the brooks, except temporarily. The data suggest that the kind of biotope and the habitat conditions are decisive factors for the permanence of each species in its preferencial biotope. B. glabrata, natural from streams and riverheads, quickly disappears from the reservoirs and ponds where it coexists with other species for a short time, independently of the competitive process. Competition needs to be better studied, since in Central America and Caribean islands this kind of study has favored the biological control of planorbid species.

Importância da Gestão de Créditos na gestão da Tesouraria das Empresas

A gestão de Crédito é um tema que vem chamando a atenção dos administradores, já que é considerado um instrumento de gestão muito importante no processo competitivo e para o equilíbrio das empresas. O estudo em causa tem como objectivo principal analisar a importância e os impactos da Gestão de Crédito na Tesouraria das empresas, através de um estudo de caso da empresa Electra, SA. Os resultados do estudo mostram que os problemas de tesouraria podem ser de natureza estrutural e conjuntural. A gestão de tesouraria de curto prazo é o mais importante instrumento de gestão financeira que avalia e controla a actividade corrente das empresas, permitindo em tempo oportuno a tomada de decisões, perspectivando uma gestão eficiente, o equilíbrio financeiro e a eficácia organizacional. O tema em estudo pretende realçar a importância que a gestão de créditos tem na gestão da tesouraria de curto prazo, já que este tem como principal função para além da gestão do realizável (créditos), a gestão do disponível, do stock, das dívidas a terceiros a curto prazo. Uma boa gestão de crédito (realizável) permite de uma forma directa ganhos de eficiência a nível da gestão do disponível, na gestão dos stocks e de forma indirecta influencia as decisões a nível da gestão das dívidas a terceiros de curto prazo. Credit management is a subject that has been growing in the administrator’s attention, as it’s considered to be a somewhat important management tool on the competitive process as well as on the company’s balance. The present case study on Electra S.A, aims for the importance and impact analysis of Credit Management on the company’s cashier. The study results demonstrate that the cashier issues can be structure and conjuncture related. The short term cashier management is the most important financial management tool, which assesses and controls the company’s current activity, enabling timely decision making process, foreseeing an efficient management, the financial equilibrium and the organization efficiency. This paper’s main goal is to enhance the credit management importance on the short term cashier management, as the latter’s main goal, apart from the credit management is to administer the availability, the stock and short term third party debts. A good credit management enables a direct efficiency improvement at the availability management level, on the stock management and indirectly influences the decisions taken at the short term third party debt management level.

The empirics of spatial competition: evidence from European regions

The New Economic Geography literature allows detailed analysis of the factors that determine the location decisions of firms in integrated markets. However, the competitive process is modelled in a rather rudimentary way, and the empirical evidence has usually been obtained from reduced-form econometric specifications. This study describes a structural model that takes into account strategic interactions between firms. We investigate the relationship between the degree of perceived competition ¿ not only from local firms but from firms in other regions ¿ and geographic concentration. The preliminary results indicate that, in aggregate terms, local firms present stronger competition than firms in other regions. Moreover, it is confirmed that greater geographical concentration of production reduces market power, due to the intensification of local competition; however, its impact on production costs is unclear.

The empirics of spatial competition: evidence from European regions

The New Economic Geography literature allows detailed analysis of the factors that determine the location decisions of firms in integrated markets. However, the competitive process is modelled in a rather rudimentary way, and the empirical evidence has usually been obtained from reduced-form econometric specifications. This study describes a structural model that takes into account strategic interactions between firms. We investigate the relationship between the degree of perceived competition ¿ not only from local firms but from firms in other regions ¿ and geographic concentration. The preliminary results indicate that, in aggregate terms, local firms present stronger competition than firms in other regions. Moreover, it is confirmed that greater geographical concentration of production reduces market power, due to the intensification of local competition; however, its impact on production costs is unclear.

Co2 na desidrogenação oxidativa do etilbenzeno utilizando catalisadores compostos de óxido de ferro e óxido de alumínio

Materials containing aluminum and iron oxide were synthesized through the preparation of hybrid spheres and tested in the dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene in the presence of CO2. The catalytic results suggest that the high initial ethylbenzene conversion is due to the contribution of basic sites. These results also point to a competitive process between CO2 adsorption and the oxidative dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene for the basic sites (lattice oxygen). In spite of the coke deposition is originating from ethylbenzene and CO2, the amount of carbonaceous deposits was smaller with the presence of CO2, if compared with the dehydrogenation in the absence of CO2.

Energy and raw material consumption analysis of powder bed fusion: case study: CNC machining and laser additive manufacturing

Laser additive manufacturing (LAM), known also as 3D printing, is a powder bed fusion (PBF) type of additive manufacturing (AM) technology used to manufacture metal parts layer by layer by assist of laser beam. The development of the technology from building just prototype parts to functional parts is due to design flexibility. And also possibility to manufacture tailored and optimised components in terms of performance and strength to weight ratio of final parts. The study of energy and raw material consumption in LAM is essential as it might facilitate the adoption and usage of the technique in manufacturing industries. The objective this thesis was find the impact of LAM on environmental and economic aspects and to conduct life cycle inventory of CNC machining and LAM in terms of energy and raw material consumption at production phases. Literature overview in this thesis include sustainability issues in manufacturing industries with focus on environmental and economic aspects. Also life cycle assessment and its applicability in manufacturing industry were studied. UPLCI-CO2PE! Initiative was identified as mostly applied exiting methodology to conduct LCI analysis in discrete manufacturing process like LAM. Many of the reviewed literature had focused to PBF of polymeric material and only few had considered metallic materials. The studies that had included metallic materials had only measured input and output energy or materials of the process and compared to different AM systems without comparing to any competitive process. Neither did any include effect of process variation when building metallic parts with LAM. Experimental testing were carried out to make dissimilar samples with CNC machining and LAM in this thesis. Test samples were designed to include part complexity and weight reductions. PUMA 2500Y lathe machine was used in the CNC machining whereas a modified research machine representing EOSINT M-series was used for the LAM. The raw material used for making the test pieces were stainless steel 316L bar (CNC machined parts) and stainless steel 316L powder (LAM built parts). An analysis of power, time, and the energy consumed in each of the manufacturing processes on production phase showed that LAM utilises more energy than CNC machining. The high energy consumption was as result of duration of production. Energy consumption profiles in CNC machining showed fluctuations with high and low power ranges. LAM energy usage within specific mode (standby, heating, process, sawing) remained relatively constant through the production. CNC machining was limited in terms of manufacturing freedom as it was not possible to manufacture all the designed sample by machining. And the one which was possible was aided with large amount of material removed as waste. Planning phase in LAM was shorter than in CNC machining as the latter required many preparation steps. Specific energy consumption (SEC) were estimated in LAM based on the practical results and assumed platform utilisation. The estimated platform utilisation showed SEC could reduce when more parts were placed in one build than it was in with the empirical results in this thesis (six parts).

Études des notions de compétition et de coopération dans l'oeuvre de Charles Darwin

Dans le domaine de la biologie contemporaine, une attention grandissante est portée aux associations biologiques positives, telles que la symbiose, ce qui vient nuancer la perception traditionnellement « compétitive » de l’évolution. Parallèlement à l’engouement actuel que manifestent les chercheurs pour la coopération biologique, ce mémoire vise à pousser plus avant les recherches historiques concernant l’intégration de tels phénomènes dans l’œuvre de Charles Darwin. Plus spécifiquement, nous souhaitons examiner comment Darwin est parvenu à articuler l’aspect compétitif de l’évolution par sélection naturelle avec l’existence de phénomènes coopératifs. En ce sens, la première partie de ce mémoire aura pour objet le concept darwinien de compétition, et son lien théorique avec la sélection naturelle. La seconde partie concernera l’intégration de la coopération biologique à la théorie de l’évolution par sélection naturelle. Par ces deux moments, nous espérons montrer que Darwin parvient à concilier l’existence d’interactions compétitives et coopératives sans contredire les principes théoriques à la base de l’évolution.

Evidence that indirect inhibition of saccade initiation improves saccade accuracy

Saccadic eye-movements to a visual target are less accurate if there are distracters close to its location (local distracters). The addition of more distracters, remote from the target location (remote distracters), invokes an involuntary increase in the response latency of the saccade and attenuates the effect of local distracters on accuracy. This may be due to the target and distracters directly competing (direct route) or to the remote distracters acting to impair the ability to disengage from fixation (indirect route). To distinguish between these we examined the development of saccade competition by recording saccade latency and accuracy responses made to a target and local distracter compared with those made with an addition of a remote distracter. The direct route would predict that the remote distracter impacts on the developing competition between target and local distracter, while the indirect route would predict no change as the accuracy benefit here derives from accessing the same competitive process but at a later stage. We found that the presence of the remote distracter did not change the pattern of accuracy improvement. This suggests that the remote distracter was acting along an indirect route that inhibits disengagement from fixation, slows saccade initiation, and enables more accurate saccades to be made.

Design and techno-economic evaluation of microbial oil production as a renewable resource for biodiesel and oleochemical production

Experimental results from the open literature have been employed for the design and techno-economic evaluation of four process flowsheets for the production of microbial oil or biodiesel. The fermentation of glucose-based media using the yeast strain Rhodosporidium toruloides has been considered. Biodiesel production was based on the exploitation of either direct transesterification (without extraction of lipids from microbial biomass) or indirect transesterifaction of extracted microbial oil. When glucose-based renewable resources are used as carbon source for an annual production capacity of 10,000 t microbial oil and zero cost of glucose (assuming development of integrated biorefineries in existing industries utilising waste or by-product streams) the estimated unitary cost of purified microbial oil is $3.4/kg. Biodiesel production via indirect transesterification of extracted microbial oil proved more cost-competitive process compared to the direct conversion of dried yeast cells. For a price of glucose of $400/t oil production cost and biodiesel production cost are estimated to be $5.5/kg oil and $5.9/kg biodiesel, correspondingly. Industrial implementation of microbial oil production from oleaginous yeast is strongly dependent on the feedstock used and on the fermentation stage where significantly higher productivities and final microbial oil concentrations should be achieved.

Market clearing sealed-bid auctions for non-identical objects with single-unit demands

We consider a version of the cooperative buyer-seller market game of Shapley and Shubik (1972). For this market we propose a c1ass of sealed- bid auctions where objects are sold simultaneously at a market c1earing price rule. We ana1yze the strategic games induced by these mechanisms under the complete information approach. We show that these noncooperative games can be regarded as a competitive process for achieving a cooperative outcome: every Nash equilibrium payoff is a core outcome of the cooperative market game. Precise answers can be given to the strategic questions raised.

Ciclos clássicos num ambiente de racionalidade limitada

O presente trabalho toma como ponto de partida o modelo macrodinâmico de Richard M. Goodwin, apresentado no clássico artigo A Growth Cycle (1967). Neste modelo a interação entre distribuição de renda e acumulação de capital gera um ciclo de crescimento que oscila em torno de uma trajetória de crescimento equilibrado. O objetivo do presente trabalho é investigar a possibilidade de existência de ciclos goodwinianos com heterogeneidade de salários e de taxas de lucro. Essa análise é realizada considerando o processo de concorrência entre trabalhadores num ambiente de racionalidade limitada. Para formalizar o processo de concorrência entre trabalhadores foram utilizados dois recursos: (i) a alegoria das ilhas , que tem sido amplamente adotada na macroeconomia moderna, a fim de apreender situações de informação imperfeita; e (ii) os instrumentos analíticos desenvolvidos pela teoria dos jogos evolucionários aplicada a ambientes sociais. O modelo construído combina o modelo de Goodwin com uma formalização estilizada do fluxo de trabalho como um processo de imitação num ambiente de racionalidade limitada (dinâmica de replicação num contexto social). Neste modelo demonstra-se a possibilidade de o sistema econômico não convergir para um estado de equilíbrio de longo prazo e a possibilidade do sistema econômico convergir para um ciclo goodwiniano caracterizado por heterogeneidade de salários e de taxas de lucro.

The kaleidoscope of competitiveness

Includes bibliography