Supply chain management in the US and Taiwan: An empirical study

This study uses an empirical survey of middle-line managers in the US and Taiwan to study the association of supply chain management components and organizational performance. Through structural equation modeling, critical components of supply chain management are found to have considerable effects on organizational performance. The findings of the study are summarized as follows:

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Supply chain competencies have positive effects on organizational performance in both the US and Taiwan. Supply chain competencies are developed around quality and service, operations and distribution, and design effectiveness. The goal of supply chain competencies is to satisfy customer requirements.     

AGENDA CONTROL AND RECIPROCITY IN SEQUENTIAL VOTING DECISIONS

We study how reciprocity affects the extent to which a chair can exploit her control over an agenda if a committee votes sequentially on a known series of binary proposals. We show in a parsimonious laboratory experiment that committee members form vote trading coalitions favoring early proposals not only when the sequence of proposals is exogenously given, but also when a chair controls the sequence of proposals. Vote trading occurs even though chairs manipulate the agenda in their favor. Punishment for chairs exploiting agenda control is weak as chairs reciprocate support by others more frequently than nonchairs. (JEL C92, D71, D72)     

The Significance of Race in the Private Sphere: Asian Americans and Spousal Preferences

Using qualitative analysis of narratives of United States-born Asians, this article examines how spousal preferences and views on interracial couples are affected by racial status inequalities. It argues that racial inequality affects those who prefer Whites, those who prefer Asians, those indicating no racial preferences, and those whose preferences changed through the life course. The dynamics of racialized preferences are explained by introducing the concept of racialized relationship capital, specifically the appeal of Euro-American vs. ethnic-racial relationship capital. The paper concludes by questioning the popular notion that high rates of interracial marriage indicate successful assimilation for groups such as Asian Americans.     

The Banking Network as a Transmission Channel of Migrant Remittances: The Case of Greek and Italian Banks in Albania

The paper examines the role of the banking network of foreign banks, namely Greek and Italian banks, on the transfer of remittances of Albanian immigrants. Remittances through the official network that is formed mainly by the banking network, grew much higher in comparison to non-official network during the period 1994–2006. The paper finds that the growth of the amount of remittances conveyed through the official network as part of the total amount of remittances is related to the evolution of branches of Greek and Italian banks in Albania.

Inference on treatment effects for targeted clinical trials under enrichment design

After completion of a human genome project, the disease targets at molecular level can be identified. As a result, treatment modality for molecular targets can be developed. In practice, targeted clinical trials are usually conducted for evaluation of the possibility and feasibility of the individualized treatment of patients. However, the accuracy of diagnostic devices for identification of such molecular targets is usually not perfect. Therefore, some of the patients enrolled in targeted clinical trials with a positive result by the diagnostic device might not have the specific molecular targets and hence the treatment effects of the targeted drugs estimated from targeted clinical trials could be biased for the patient population truly with the molecular targets. Under an enrichment design for targeted clinical trials, we propose to use the EM algorithm and bootstrap method for obtaining the inference of the treatment effects of the targeted drugs in the patient population truly with molecular targets. A simulation study was conducted to empirically investigate the bias and variability of the proposed estimator and the size and power of the proposed testing method. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed estimator is unbiased with adequate precision and the confidence interval can provide satisfactory coverage probability. In addition, the proposed testing procedure can adequately control the size with sufficient power. A practical example illustrates the utility of the proposed method. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Toward an Understanding of the Behavioral Intention to Use an Information System

Organizational investment in information systems is often large and risky given the variety of information requirements placed on systems today. To make more informed decisions and to meet the challenge of developing systems that satisfy these demands, system developers need to achieve a better understanding of factors that ultimately lead to system usage. To enhance this understanding, we posit a holistic framework to examine several constructs suggested in the literature that lead to the behavioral intention to use an information system. Our framework includes situational involvement, intrinsic involvement, argument for change, perceived usefulness, ease of use, prior usage, and attitude constructs. We extend the Davis, Bagozzi, and Warshaw Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which is founded on the Theory of Reasoned Action. A diverse sample from industry is used to test our model. Structural equation modeling is used to examine the entire pattern of intercorrelations among the constructs and to test related propositions. A hierarchical structure is used to compare the explanatory ability of TAM with our extension. Our model explains a large portion of the covariance among the constructs that lead to a user's behavioral intention to use an information system and compares favorably with TAM. The results indicate that (1) the direct effect of situational involvement on behavioral intention as well as attitude is significant in the negative direction, (2) attitude seems to play a mediating role, and (3) intrinsic involvement plays a significant role in shaping perceptions. Finally, we conclude that the user involvement construct needs to be separated into its psychological as well as its participative components for developers to understand its impact on the systems development process.     

Relative Performance Evaluation and Risk Taking in Delegated Investment Decisions*

Providing proper incentives to firm managers is increasingly important in the current competitive environment. Analytical research has suggested that evaluating a manager's performance relative to that of a peer group, in conjunction with standard-based pay, can induce efficient risk-sharing between firm owners and managers while maintaining the latter's incentives to exert effort. To date, direct empirical tests of this proposition have not been reported. This study uses a laboratory experiment to test the effect of relative performance evaluation on the risk-aversion of delegated investment decisions. Project-specific risk is operationalized using operating leverage, in part because the variability of a project's operating profits generally increases with this variable, and in part because many of the new manufacturing approaches held to be important to competitive advantage require significant capital investments and attendant increases in operating leverage. Across two levels of environmental uncertainty, subjects under a relative (as opposed to absolute) performance standard selected investments with significantly higher project-specific risk. Also, as environmental uncertainty increased, subjects under an absolute standard significantly reduced the riskiness of their investments. In contrast, subjects shielded from environmental uncertainty by a relative standard chose investments of about equal riskiness under both low and high uncertainty conditions. If supported by future research, these findings would suggest that relative performance evaluation may reduce managers' reluctance to adopt risky capital investments, especially in firms operating in high-risk economic or technological environments.     

孔子对君子与小人的界定——从《论语》“未有小人而仁者也”的解读说起

本文从《论语》"君子之不仁者有矣夫,未有小人而仁者也"一语之解读难点出发,探讨孔子口中"君子"、"小人"两词的真正意涵。首先论证小人并无道德丑恶的含义,所指仅为胸无大志,目光短浅,关心实际利益的小人物。至于君子,则传统上所谓从位言,从德言的两分法并不允当;孔子所称之君子皆位、德、才三者合言,此为其正名论思想的必然延伸。正名论既要求有其名位者有其实质,自然亦要求作为管治者的君子有管治的才德,即由"君君臣臣父父子子"而"君子君子"。君子、小人的意涵一经厘清,则该话之解读再无窒碍。     

Making the Transition from Welfare to Work: Employment Experiences of CalWORKs Participants in the San Francisco Bay Area

ABSTRACT

This study describes welfare-to-work participants in the San Francisco Bay Area, support services, experiences with the CalWORKs program, and predictors of employment status in the wake of welfare reform. Findings indicate that many are working and more Stayers and Recidivists than Leavers are using food stamps and Medi-Cal. Multivariate analysis reveals that race and financial supports were the significant factors contributing to employability, defined as the ability to secure employment despite the need to supplement earned income with welfare payments. To help people stay off of welfare, case management services are needed to help participants maintain employment and increase job skills. In addition to expanding our understanding of human behavior within the social environment of poverty, implications for practice and policy are identified.     

On the test of liu and chow's procedure for assessing equivalence in variability of bioavailability

Similar to Schuirmann's two one-sided tests procedure for assessment of bioequivalence in average bioavailability (Schuirmann,), Liu and Chow proposed a two one-sided tests procedure for assessment of equivalence of variability of bioavailability. Their procedure is derived based on the correlation between crossover differences and subject totals. In this paper, we examined the performance of their test procedure in terms of its test size and power for various situations where the intersubject variability and the intrasubject variability of the test drug product are relatively larger, similar, and smaller than that of the intrasubject variability of the reference drug product.