On the effectiveness of cognitive feedback from an interface agent

The objective of this study was to determine the impact of task information (TI) provided by an interface agent during the idea evaluation and integration step of the problem formulation stage of the problem solving process. The effectiveness assessment was based on solving diagnostic decision problems in the domain of complex industrial machinery. Ten domain experts participated in this study. Decision support was provided by a case-based reasoning system. Findings suggest that TI provided by the interface agent had no effect on the decision maker's performance, nor on the associated cognitive effort. However, a verbal protocol analysis revealed that the ten subjects used the interface agent to verify their decision processes. The results and their implications are discussed with respect to current findings in the area of decision support systems.     

One-dimensional optimal bounded-shape partitions for Schur convex sum objective functions

Consider the problem of partitioning n nonnegative numbers into p parts, where part i can be assigned n_i numbers with n_i lying in a given range. The goal is to maximize a Schur convex function F whose ith argument is the sum of numbers assigned to part i. The shape of a partition is the vector consisting of the sizes of its parts, further, a shape (without referring to a particular partition) is a vector of nonnegative integers (n₁,..., n_p) which sum to n. A partition is called size-consecutive if there is a ranking of the parts which is consistent with their sizes, and all elements in a higher-ranked part exceed all elements in the lower-ranked part. We demonstrate that one can restrict attention to size-consecutive partitions with shapes that are nonmajorized, we study these shapes, bound their numbers and develop algorithms to enumerate them. Our study extends the analysis of a previous paper by Hwang and Rothblum which discussed the above problem assuming the existence of a majorizing shape. This research is partially supported by ROC National Science grant NSC 92-2115-M-009-014.     

Determinants of Organizational Flexibility: A Study in an Emerging Economy

This paper examines the processes of organizational adaptation and competitiveness of firms in an emerging economy. The study is set in the Argentinian context of the 1990s when a combination of economic and political change triggered a massive change in the competitive context of indigenous firms. Two highly flexible firms and two less‐flexible firms are studied from the pharmaceutical and edible oil industries and longitudinal data are supplied to explore the determinants of organizational flexibility in those organizations.     

The Blinders of Dominant Logic

This article argues that the dominant logic embedded in an organisation may keep it on the road ahead, but it also acts as a blinder to peripheral vision. It says that managers need to look at beyond the borders of their industries and geographies to find new opportunities and rethink the logic of the business. It refers to corporate examples where shifts in organisations’ dominant logic allowed traditional assumptions about value creation to be reassessed and resulted in successful forays into the periphery.     

A new approach to statistical efficiency of weighted least squares fitting algorithms for reparameterization of nonlinear regression models

We study nonlinear least-squares problem that can be transformed to linear problem by change of variables. We derive a general formula for the statistically optimal weights and prove that the resulting linear regression gives an optimal estimate (which satisfies an analogue of the Rao-Cramer lower bound) in the limit of small noise.