AN EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF CONSTANT AND ADAPTIVE COMPUTER FORECASTING MODELS FOR INVENTORY CONTROL

This study compares the performance of one constant model with two adaptive models. MAD and bias were used as criteria for evaluating performance. The results of testing the adaptive models with the constant model were contrary to the expected better performance of the adaptive models; no significant differences were found between the models over known horizontal, trend, and seasonal demand patterns. However, some of the practical advantages of adaptive forecasting models in business suggest their continued use.     

Public perceptions of castle doctrine and stand your ground cases

Introduction

Stand your ground (SYG) and castle doctrine (CD) laws are presently growing throughout the United States. The present study aims to better understand public perceptions of SYG and CD cases and demographic factors that influence judicial decision making.

Methods

Participants were 204 adults who were randomly assigned one of four vignettes that depicted a CD or SYG scenario and varied by defendant demographics. After reading the vignette, participants completed a questionnaire assessing whether they believed the defendant was guilty of the murder and whether the homicide was justified.

Results

Results indicated participants were more likely to assign a guilty verdict to the SYG scenario, compared to the CD scenario. Additionally, participants assigned to the SYG vignette believed the male defendant was more justified in killing the victim, compared to participants assigned the female defendant.

Conclusion

Results from this study reveal how potential jurors may harbor sex/gender bias in determining justifiable homicide in stand your ground cases.     

Unpaid labour and territorial extraction in digital value networks

Production in knowledge and data-intensive industries is powered by work that can, in theory, be done from anywhere, via cloudwork platforms. Cloudwork platforms govern data value chains in distinct ways to concentrate power and extract value at the global scale. We argue that unpaid labour is a systemic mechanism of accumulation in these digital value networks. In this paper we demonstrate how it is tied to platform business models and facilitated by elements of platform governance including monopsony power, a high degree of spatial flexibility in sourcing labour, regulatory unaccountability and digital enclosure. We draw on a survey of 699 workers on 14 platforms in 74 countries to show that unpaid labour is an engine of South–North value extraction, and workers in the global South perform more unpaid labour than counterparts in the global North. Our findings have important ramifications our understanding of the changing international division of labour and platform capitalism.     

Progress of the social service professions in South Africa's developmental social welfare system: Social work,and child and youth care work

This paper examines the progress of the social service professions delivering developmental social welfare in South Africa, a subject we have followed closely over the last 20 years. Being policy-driven, developmental social welfare stemmed from expert social analyses that resulted in technically oriented solutions, including the broadening of social service professions. Twenty years on, it is hard to see developmental social welfare, as envisaged in government policy, in action, since the practice reality does not differ drastically from the prior apartheid system with the government's heavy reliance on social security as a poverty-alleviation measure. The expanded social security budget has led to underfunded services and a crisis for social service professionals. This paper focuses on the regulated professions of social workers, and child and youth care workers. Our examination of critical issues for these occupational groups revealed that South Africa still has a long way to go in building a strong social service workforce.