Organization for corporate development

In this article the author emphasizes that there is no generally applicable organization for corporate development. Nonetheless, he stresses the need for whatever organization is set up to be staffed by very few very senior people who are willing to be judged by results.     

Integrating a Top‐Down and a Bottom‐Up Approach: Formal and Informal Risk‐Handling Strategies in a Utility Company

In this study, we bring together a top‐down and a bottom‐up approach of risk handling. We do so by conceptualizing and qualitatively and quantitatively measuring formal and informal risk‐handling strategies in a Dutch utility company. We conceive of formal risk handling as regulating, training, and educating safety and enforcing rule compliance, while we distinguish three different informal risk‐handling strategies: discretionary specialization, tacit knowledge, and taking personal responsibility. We show that the formal risk‐handling strategy and the three informal risk‐handling strategies can be measured separately. Hence, we have validated the measurement of all four strategies derived from two different risk‐handling approaches. Moreover, we have demonstrated that the perceived use of the four strategies has different effects on unsafe behavior: formal risk handling and tacit knowledge decrease it, discretion increases it, and taking personal responsibility has no effect on unsafe behavior.     

Zustandsorientierte Maschinenzuordnungs- und Instandhaltungsplanung

Previous research focuses on preventive maintenance strategies which minimize the costs of break downs and of maintenance activities. Deteriorating machine conditions with the consequence of rising scrap rates and declining productivity are mostly neglected. This paper investigates simultaneous optimization of production and maintenance planning by applying the condition-based maintenance strategy with parallel machines and overlapping capabilities. The presented model allows exploitation of machine wear considering optimal order assignments to machines which is illustrated by a numerical example.     

Model weights for model choice and averaging

A method is suggested to estimate posterior model probabilities and model averaged parameters via MCMC sampling under a Bayesian approach. The estimates use pooled output for J models (J>1) whereby all models are updated at each iteration. Posterior probabilities are based on averages of continuous weights obtained for each model at each iteration, while samples of averaged parameters are obtained from iteration specific averages that are based on these weights. Parallel sampling of models assists in deriving posterior densities for parameter contrasts between models and in assessing hypotheses regarding model averaged parameters. Four worked examples illustrate application of the approach, two involving fixed effect regression, and two involving random effects.     

The identity career of the graduate student: Professional socialization to academic sociology

The pathway through graduate school is challenging and difficult. Nearly everyone, at one point or another, confronts the existential question of whether they want to drop out or to continue. Several challenges emerge as key to graduate students’ success in progressing through their programs. p]The first is moving from the secure but sometimes suffocating structure of a core graduate cohort into the role of independent student. This requires navigating an individual pathway into areas of specialization and a mentor. Programs can do no more than make faculty and courses available; from there, students must make connections and decisions on their own. The second critical transition involves moving from absorbing to creating knowledge. Accomplishing this requires that students grasp the conceptual foundation of the perspective (the “sociological eye”), learn how to gather data, to master the challenge of moving from immersion in the specificity of their research to contribute to more abstract theory, and to understand the conventions through which they must present their scholarly work. Along the way there are myriad interpersonal challenges for them to negotiate. Allegiances that they forge are then relinquished to make way for new, more stage-relevant ones. Students often undergo radical changes in their values and consciousness as they progress through their programs. They are bonded into an equalitarian model of evaluation and support in their cohesive, early years in the cohort. But as they forge scholarly accomplishments and turn their eyes increasingly toward the discipline, they recognize that their democratic ideals must yield to the meritocratic reality of the profession.     

Bivariate Longitudinal Model for Detecting Prescribing Change in Two Drugs Simultaneously with Correlated Errors

Bivariate responses of repeated measures data are usually analysed as two separate responses in the literature by several authors. The two responses usually tend to be related in some way and analysing this data jointly presents an opportunity to account for the joint movement, which may impact on the conclusions reached compared to analysing the responses separately. In this paper, a bivariate regression model with random effects (linear mixed model) is used to detect a change if any in the prescribing habits in the UK at the general practice (family medicine) level due to an educational intervention given repeated measures data before and after the intervention and a control group. The message was to increase the prescribing of one drug while simultaneously decreasing the prescribing of another. The effects of modelling a bivariate auto-regressive process are evaluated.     

Analysis of longitudinal data with drop-out: objectives, assumptions and a proposal

Summary. The problem of analysing longitudinal data that are complicated by possibly informative drop-out has received considerable attention in the statistical literature. Most researchers have concentrated on either methodology or application, but we begin this paper by arguing that more attention could be given to study objectives and to the relevant targets for inference. Next we summarize a variety of approaches that have been suggested for dealing with drop-out. A long-standing concern in this subject area is that all methods require untestable assumptions. We discuss circumstances in which we are willing to make such assumptions and we propose a new and computationally efficient modelling and analysis procedure for these situations. We assume a dynamic linear model for the expected increments of a constructed variable, under which subject-specific random effects follow a martingale process in the absence of drop-out. Informal diagnostic procedures to assess the tenability of the assumption are proposed. The paper is completed by simulations and a comparison of our method and several alternatives in the analysis of data from a trial into the treatment of schizophrenia, in which approximately 50% of recruited subjects dropped out before the final scheduled measurement time.     

Das Eignungsfeststellungsverfahren für angehende Hauptfachstudierende der Soziologie

This article presents preliminary experience with a selection procedure for the diploma study course in sociology at the LMU Munich, which was first implemented in the winter term 2004/05. Furthermore, it examines the consequences of this procedure. The selection procedure, which is limited in time, was established due to high discontinuation rates and a remarkable congestion of the scientific personnel who are particularly involved in the foundation courses. Judicial fundament of the procedure is an “experimental clause” in the Bavarian University Act. First of all we point out that the number of newly registered undergraduates remarkably declined. Even the total number of applicants is lower than in the years before the initiation of the selection procedure. Secondly, we consider the dwindling during the process of the selection procedure. Contrary to some apprehensions it is obvious that applicants with a good university-entrance diploma do not choose possible alternatives, but still consider the diploma study course in sociology. Concerning the overall evaluation of the selection procedure’s consequences our results show thirdly, that the procedure is highly accepted by all parties concerned and that it therefore has to be regarded as an efficient solution to lower the discontinuation rates as well as to cope with the capacity overload.