Modeling Supply Chain Dynamics: A Multiagent Approach*

A global economy and increase in customer expectations in terms of cost and services have put a premium on effective supply chain reengineering. It is essential to perform risk-benefit analysis of reengineering alternatives before making a final decision. Simulation provides an effective pragmatic approach to detailed analysis and evaluation of supply chain design and management alternatives. However, the utility of this methodology is hampered by the time and effort required to develop models with sufficient fidelity to the actual supply chain of interest. In this paper, we describe a supply chain modeling framework designed to overcome this difficulty. Using our approach, supply chain models are composed from software components that represent types of supply chain agents (e.g., retailers, manufacturers, transporters), their constituent control elements (e.g., inventory policy), and their interaction protocols (e.g., message types). The underlying library of supply chain modeling components has been derived from analysis of several different supply chains. It provides a reusable base of domain-specific primitives that enables rapid development of customized decision support tools.     

Cape queer? A case study of Provincetown, Massachusetts

Cape Queer is a case study that details how sexuality intersects with race, gender, and class in the development of the gay and lesbian resort community, Provincetown, Massachusetts. It asks scholars to pay closer attention to the ways in which methodologies and practices utilizing LGBT studies and queer theory can combine rather than separate to interrogate LGBT and queer histories, politics and communities. In the process, it assesses how the global mechanics of capitalism led to the local queering and eventually un-queering of a gentrified, white, gay and lesbian enclave.     

Shifting Ground(s): Surveying the contested terrain of LGBT studies and queer theory

While queer theory initially grew out of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) studies, there are numerous points of contestation between these two approaches, originating mostly from their disparate positions on (sexual) identity politics. To describe, analyze, and contextualize this contested terrain, we begin this piece by providing some historical notes on LGBT studies and queer theory. Next, we turn to an explication of some enduring tensions to identify the criticisms generated by LGBT scholars toward queer theory approaches and vice versa. What follows is our rationale for producing LGBT Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain. In this section we discuss how this project originated and the specific objectives we hope this volume will meet. The contributions of the individual articles in this volume are identified and summarized next. Finally, in the context of LGBT studies' and queer theory's similar qualities and points of difference, we offer ideas for potential directions of scholarship in the future that would explore three major areas: identity and difference; community and community organizing; and political engagement and social change.     

Identities in Northern Ireland: A Multidimensional Approach

The conflict in Northern Ireland is often described in terms of a clash of identities, national and religious. This study aimed to determine the relative importance of these identities using a multidimensional approach to examine the identity structures of students (N = 216). Analyses revealed that national and religious identities were accorded low salience and centrality relative to other identities. The study also investigated relations between a variety of identity dimensions derived from two identity traditions, social identity theory and identity theory. The differing patterns of relationships to emerge across groups and across identities suggest that the process of identification in Northern Ireland is a complex one. The implications of these findings for the analysis of the Northern Ireland conflict are discussed.     

Critical research and entrepreneurship: A cross-disciplinary conceptual typology

Critical perspectives of entrepreneurship have gained increasing traction over the last two decades. The transformative potential of critical research resides in challenging some of entrepreneurship research's epistemological, ontological and theoretical assumptions, with a view to offering a range of alternatives. Critical research in entrepreneurship has remained fragmented, however, due to its heterogeneous theoretical lineages and compartmentalized and niche interests. Addressing this situation, our objective is to intensify the space of critique in entrepreneurship research by offering a theoretically informed typology that delineates different manifestations of ‘criticalness’. Our overarching contribution is to advance a typology distinguishing four ideal types of critical entrepreneurship research based on evaluative emphases (referred to as ‘valence’) and the meta-theoretical assumptions informing its critical operation (called ‘paradigmatic orientation’). By demonstrating the variegated political, ethical and ideological interests and preoccupations that critical studies serve within different management sub-disciplines, the typology provides a conceptual vocabulary for making sense of and synthesizing critical perspectives across scholarly boundaries. Also, it helps to reposition understandings of critique as gestures of negativity by stimulating a greater appreciation of the generative potential of critique and the theoretical and philosophical possibilities that this can bring to our scholarly community.     

Higher Order Properties of Gmm and Generalized Empirical Likelihood Estimators

In an effort to improve the small sample properties of generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators, a number of alternative estimators have been suggested. These include empirical likelihood (EL), continuous updating, and exponential tilting estimators. We show that these estimators share a common structure, being members of a class of generalized empirical likelihood (GEL) estimators. We use this structure to compare their higher order asymptotic properties. We find that GEL has no asymptotic bias due to correlation of the moment functions with their Jacobian, eliminating an important source of bias for GMM in models with endogeneity. We also find that EL has no asymptotic bias from estimating the optimal weight matrix, eliminating a further important source of bias for GMM in panel data models. We give bias corrected GMM and GEL estimators. We also show that bias corrected EL inherits the higher order property of maximum likelihood, that it is higher order asymptotically efficient relative to the other bias corrected estimators.     

Fertility,gender preference,the Birth Planning Policy and life satisfaction in China

Using data from China Family Panel Studies 2010, we evaluate the role of the Birth Planning Policy (BPP) in altering decisions to have another child by birth parity, and the relationship of life satisfaction with the gender structure of the children of Chinese residents. We find strong positive effects of the BPP on the decision of having an additional child for Chinese residents, particularly if the previous children were girls. In spite of strong son preference in fertility behaviour, residents whose children are all daughters are found to be more satisfied with their lives than with other gender structures. The empirical findings support the view that daughters are more helpful in providing assistance to parents and in mitigating family conflicts hence increasing life satisfaction, while son preferences may be pursued reasons of lineage and hence do not result in more satisfied lives. We also find evidence that the BPP penalty might be a reason why having more sons could reduce life satisfaction.     

Challenging the colonisation of birth: Koori women’s birthing knowledge and practice

Background

The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination for social and cultural development. This fundamental right has been impeded worldwide through colonisation where many Indigenous peoples have had to adapt to ensure continuation of cultural knowledge and practice. In South East Australia colonisation was particularly brutal interrupting a 65,000 year-old oral culture and archives have increasing importance for cultural revival.