Suchergebnisse

The article deals with the problems related to the necessity to strategically manage enterprises basing on the universal principles of strategic management. The issue becomes urgent while solving managerial problems of Klaipėda stevedoring companies. The transition from the planned to market economy, the boom of privatization and entrepreneurship, rapid integration into European economic system as well as a close dependence on Russia and other Eastern countries in the field of raw materials bring to light the problems which are vital to Klaipėda stevedoring companies and to the Lithuanian seaport as a whole. The main method of research is the study of the scientific literature and statistics dealing with Klaipėda seaport. The study has helped to investigate and systemize the issues related to Klaipėda seaport strategic management. This analysis has allowed substantiating the change of practical objectives of enterprise strategic management depending on macro-environmental change dynamics in Lithuania. The article presents a lot of statistical data taken from the author's study "Changes in Seaport Activity in Company Bega Under the Influence of Lithuanian Integration Into the European Union and Globalization" (2003) and the information collected from practical activity (the author is a member of the enterprise "Bega" board).

Clarence Webb (1948) christened Bossier more than a half century ago. Its namesake was the northwestern Louisiana parish where several Bossier sites were located, but it could just as easily been named after Webster, Claiborne, Harrison, Columbia, or other political subdivisions in northwestern Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas, or eastern Texas where its distinctive pottery was found. This is Caddo country, linguistically and ethnically. Bossier is the issue of Caddoan cultural tradition, a culmination of agents, practices, and histories that transpired in the Red River valley and adjoining Pineywoods hills between ca. A.D. 1300 and 1500. Bossier is best known for its pottery. Pottery hoists the load for this examination, but other factors such as presence or absence of mounds and relative geographic location help me contextualize Bossier pottery and contemplate Bossier materiality as the product of human minds and hands. I organize pottery data, new and old, by a simple arithmetic measure, an average index of similarity. I don't see how more robust statistical comparisons could do any better when data come from potsherds picked up from bare spots on the ground but not from underneath the pine straw. Powerful statistics don't create powerful data. They don't create data at all.

In an attempt to maximize cost savings in the rapidly growing services sector, the DoD established a Performance Based Service Acquisition (PBSA) strategy that focuses on evaluating contractor performance based on their ability to meet desired outcomes rather than the means to which the outcomes are obtained. In April 2000, Dr. Gansler, then Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, mandated that 50 percent of all eligible service acquisitions be awarded using PBSA methods by FY 2005. Since then very little research has been focused on USAF implementation of PBSA and the progress and attainment of the PBSA goals. Using multiple years of data this thesis seeks to evaluate and analyze the current and expected future states of PBSA implementation in the USAF. A combination of descriptive statistics, forecasting, contingency tables, and regression were used to analyze the data, draw conclusions, and make recommendations for PBSA implementation improvements. The results conclude that the USAF is not meeting interim PBSA goals and will most likely fall short of the FY 2005 PBSA goal. These results suggest that the goals may not have been reasonable and that the USAF has hit a natural plateau in PBSA use.

National audience ; Based on an analysis of the production and uses of statistics in housing policy in the GDR, the article aims to specify the link between knowledge and power in state socialist regimes. The article demonstrates the importance of taking into account cognitive tools in understanding sociologically the successive shifts in public policy. If this analysis shows the potential of using ordinary concepts and tools of political sociology, it also shows how the specific configuration of the regime and the monopolization of production and uses of statistical knowledge contributed to breaking the circularity between knowledge and action in the 1970's and 1980's. ; S'appuyant sur une analyse de la production et des usages des statistiques dans les politiques du logement en RDA, cette contribution vise à analyser le lien entre savoir et pouvoir dans les régimes communistes. L'article montre l'importance des instruments du savoir dans la compréhension sociologique des tournants successifs des politiques publiques. Si cette analyse montre la fécondité potentielle de l'usage des instruments d'analyse ordinaires de la sociologie politique, elle montre aussi comment la configuration propre au régime et la monopolisation de la production et des usages des savoirs statistiques a contribué à briser la circularité entre le savoir et l'action dans les années 1970 et 1980.

Administrative data on foster carers in New South Wales (NSW) are sadly lacking. Based on research commissioned by the NSW Department of Community Services, this paper uses the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census of Population and Housing and other data to provide up-to-date information on the characteristics of foster carers and the demographic trends that are influencing their numbers. Census data indicate that foster carer families are most likely to contain women aged 35–54 years, not in the labour force. Couples account for two-thirds of all foster carers, with the majority of those couples also caring for birth children. While single parents account for less than one-fifth of all foster carers, they are more likely to foster than couples, either with or without birth children. Higher rates of fostering were found in relatively disadvantaged areas. Projected increases in female labour force participation are expected to contribute to a decline (or to slower growth) in the number of foster carers over the next decade. However, projected increases in sole parent families and couples without children are expected to have the opposite effect. The relative magnitude of these effects was not ascertained.

AbstractUsing the Australian Bureau of Statistics 1998 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers, this study examines the effects of disability on four labour market outcomes: not in the labour force, unemployed, part‐time employed and full‐time employed. The detailed information on health available in the dataset also facilitates investigation of the dependence of effects on the characteristics of the disability, including severity, impairment type and age of onset. Disability is found to have substantial effects on labour force status, on average acting to decrease the probability of labour force participation by one‐quarter for males and one‐fifth for females. For males, the decrease in fulltime employment accounts for almost all of the decrease in labour force participation associated with disability; for females, disability has negative effects on both full‐time and part‐time employment. Analysis of disability characteristics shows that adverse effects on labour force status are increasing in the severity of the disability and are also worse for those with more than one type of impairment and for those who experience disability onset at older ages. There is evidence that the adverse effects of disability are lower for males who completed their education after the onset of the disability.

Methodological problems in the study of illegal migration as defined in this article relate to questions of indicators for illegal migration, with special reference to Germany. It is argued and demonstrated that illegal immigrants are traceable, to some degree, in official statistics and that these can be analyzed for trends. In present-day migration processes, illegal immigration frequently is undertaken with the support of human smugglers. The analysis of the social organization of different forms of smuggling is the other main focus of the article. From a methodological point of view, the literature and public discourse lack adequate concepts for describing and explaining the social organization of human smuggling. The theory of organized crime as a main actor in human smuggling is criticized. The study borrows concepts from market and networks theory and applies these to different forms of human smuggling and illegal migration. The social and technological organization of smuggling is under constant pressure to adapt to new conditions. The dynamism for this change results mainly from an "arms race" between smugglers and law enforcement. Since control over territory and population are central elements of state sovereignty, the state cannot simply withdraw from this race.

Studies of crime at micro places have generally relied on cross‐sectional data and reported the distributions of crime statistics over short periods of time. In this paper we use official crime data to examine the distribution of crime at street segments in Seattle, Washington, over a 14‐year period. We go beyond prior research in two ways. First, we view crime trends at places over a much longer period than other studies that have examined micro places. Second, we use group‐based trajectory analysis to uncover distinctive developmental trends in our data. Our findings support the view that micro places generally have stable concentrations of crime events over time. However, we also find that a relatively small proportion of places belong to groups with steeply rising or declining crime trajectories and that these places are primarily responsible for overall city trends in crime. These findings are particularly important given the more general decline in crime rates observed in Seattle and many other American cities in the 1990s. Our study suggests that the crime drop can be understood not as a general process that occurred across the city landscape but one that was generated in a relatively small group of micro places with strong declining crime trajectories over time.

AbstractIn the spring of 2001, statistics concerning criminality in France, - on the decline over the preceding five years, - showed an increase. The principal measure recommended by a Conference on Interior Security held in January 2001 was the adoption of legislative changes to combat the offences responsible for this increase in criminal activity, which the opposition was using to advantage in anticipation of the coming elections (legislative and presidential elections were slated for the spring of 2002). Thus in March 2001 the French Parliament approved first reading of a new "interior security law." By the time of second reading in October 2001 the issue had become highly emotionally charged because of the events of September 11 in the United States, which resulted in the bill being "fortified" with a chapter "with a view to strengthening the war against terrorism." Thus a link was made in the framework of a legislative text between daily security issues and international terrorism, - petty crime irritants to public order and epic conflicts affecting the entire planet. This link persisted, notably in polemics on security issues launched during the election campaigns, and subsequently in the measures instituted by the new government in May 2002. This paper exposes and criticizes this conflation.

The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) is responsible for developing statistics and indicators on the information society within the framework of the Federal Coordination Group on the Information Society (ISCC). As there is hardly any representative data on the infrastructure and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) throughout Switzerland in the education sector - especially in primary schools - any gaps in data and information should be closed when developing indicators. The Institute for Interdisciplinary Economic and Social Research (IWS) of the University of Applied Sciences Solothurn Northwestern Switzerland has been commissioned to assess this ICT infrastructure and develop corresponding indicators.
The study aims at the following aspects:
- Complete overview of previous surveys on the dissemination of information and communication technologies at primary schools in Switzerland
- Identification of data and information gaps on ICT infrastructure in primary schools in Switzerland
- Identification of key indicators of the ICT infrastructure
- If necessary to close existing data and information gaps, a representative nationwide survey on computer density, type, age and location of computers and financial investments, among other things.
- A meta-analysis based on the data and information researched and collected
- Selection and development of indicators for ICT infrastructure in primary schools in Switzerland

The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) is responsible for developing statistics and indicators on the information society within the framework of the Federal Coordination Group on the Information Society (ISCC). As there is hardly any representative data on the infrastructure and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) throughout Switzerland in the education sector - especially in primary schools - any gaps in data and information should be closed when developing indicators. The Institute for Interdisciplinary Economic and Social Research (IWS) of the University of Applied Sciences Solothurn Northwestern Switzerland has been commissioned to assess this ICT infrastructure and develop corresponding indicators.
The study aims at the following aspects:
- Complete overview of previous surveys on the dissemination of information and communication technologies at primary schools in Switzerland
- Identification of data and information gaps on ICT infrastructure in primary schools in Switzerland
- Identification of key indicators of the ICT infrastructure
- If necessary to close existing data and information gaps, a representative nationwide survey on computer density, type, age and location of computers and financial investments, among other things.
- A meta-analysis based on the data and information researched and collected
- Selection and development of indicators for ICT infrastructure in primary schools in Switzerland

The paper analyses the offshore outsourcing of IT services (OOIT), which have become increasingly important for the global IT industry. Through this rapid process of firm relocation, a new terminology has emerged, which forms the starting point for our paper. We compare wage cost differentials of IT workers in key offshore locations like India to those in the US and Europe, incorporating the hidden costs of offshoring - including long-term risks and opportunities - in order to determine the total cost of offshore outsourcing activities. The debate on the potential future negative employment impacts in the major OECD countries recently became a point of political contention in the US presidential election campaign, reflecting widespread fears in the US and elsewhere that outsourcing will lead to decreased income and job loss. In Europe, policy makers are searching for instruments to guide these developments so that major social disruptions do not lead to disproportionately negative welfare impacts in the short term. The future costs and benefits of outsourcing can currently be assessed only in broad terms due to the lack of adequate data and representative statistics. However, the theory of comparative advantages suggests that overall, offshoring and inshoring countries will gain from the new international division of labour in the long run.

Existing research on electoral politics and financial markets predicts that when investors expect left parties—Democrats (US), Labor (UK)—to win elections, market volatility increases. In addition, current econometric research on stock market volatility suggests that Markov-switching models provide more accurate volatility forecasts and fit stock price volatility data better than linear or nonlinear GARCH (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity) models. Contrary to the existing literature, we argue here that when traders anticipate that the Democratic candidate will win the presidential election, stock market volatility decreases. Using two data sets from the 2000 U.S. presidential election, we test our claim by estimating several GARCH, exponential GARCH (EGARCH), fractionally integrated exponential GARCH (FIEGARCH), and Markov-switching models. We also conduct extensive forecasting tests—including RMSE and MAE statistics as well as realized volatility regressions—to evaluate these competing statistical models. Results from forecasting tests show, in contrast to prevailing claims, that GARCH and EGARCH models provide substantially more accurate forecasts than the Markov-switching models. Estimates from all the statistical models support our key prediction that stock market volatility decreases when traders anticipate a Democratic victory.

This research explores forecasting techniques to estimate the Cost per Flying Hour (CPFH) for Navy rotary aircraft. Three separate forecasting techniques were evaluated to better predict the CPFH for better estimating and budgeting by the U.S. Navy. The process begins by empirically analyzing Operating & Support cost categories for each helicopter. Trends were examined in CPFH. For forecasting purposes, actual CPFH figures were compiled from 1997 to 2003 for the CH-46D, the CH-53D, the MH-53E, the SH-60F, the UH-1N, and the UH-3H helicopters. The forecasting techniques explored were the 3-year moving average, the single exponential smoothing method, and Holt's linear method. These forecasting techniques were used to forecast for FY03 in evaluating the best methodology to forecast the CPFH for FY04. By comparing both the budgeted and forecasted figures for FY00 to FY02 to the actual CPFH figures in the same years, CPFH was more accurately forecasted. Actual, budgeted, and forecasted CPFH were compared for FY03. Holt's linear method was deemed the best forecasting method for 67 percent of the time series analyzed. The analysis was based on summary statistics and calculations. Finally, FY04 CPFH was forecasted for each helicopter using the chosen forecasting method.