Firm-level correlates of emergent green supply chain management practices in the Chinese context

Greening the supply chain is increasingly a concern for many business enterprises and a challenge for logistics management in the 21st century. Of particular concern is how to arouse organizational environmental awareness and put environmental activities into practice in the logistics activities of their supply chains. This paper investigates the correlation of two major factors, organizational learning and management support, with the extent of adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices in Chinese manufacturing firms, where their inbound and outbound logistics activities are potential polluters to the environment. Organizational and operational learning was derived from the firm's experience with programs such as total quality management and environmental management systems. Management support included support for GSCM ideas and practices from top and middle-level management and cooperation across organizational functions. We find significant positive relationships between organizational learning mechanisms, organizational support and the adoption of GSCM practices, after controlling for a number of other influences including regulations, marketing, supplier, cost pressures, industry levels of the relevant practice and organizational size. Implications of our findings on logistics management are discussed.     

Elevating the role of medical informational officer

Consider the reasons why a chief medical informatics officer should be part of the senior management team of a health care organization.     

Foster care placement breakdown in the Netherlands and Flanders: Prevalence,precursors, and associated factors

Family foster care is the option of choice for children in need of out‐of‐home care in Flanders and the Netherlands. Foster care is however a vulnerable intervention, and questions can be raised as to its efficacy. Although the literature on placement breakdown has made significant progress during the last years, empirical knowledge regarding breakdown in Flanders and the Netherlands remains scant. Consequently, this study aimed at investigating prevalence and precursors of breakdowns in long‐term foster care, the duration of placement before breakdown, and the association of child and placement characteristics with breakdown. Case files of 271 Dutch and 309 Flemish foster children were analysed with a coding scheme designed for this study. After 6 years, 398 placements had terminated: 169 placements broke down and 229 placements ended positively. Placements broke down mainly because of behavioural problems of the foster child, foster parents' parenting problems, and conflicts between birth and foster parents. Foster children with behavioural problems, older foster children, foster children denied treatment, and foster children in care because of sexual abuse were more at risk of breakdown. Assessing these factors is important when evaluating the appropriateness of a family foster care placement.     

Verification in biometric systems: problems and modern methods of their solution

The paper deals with the problem of electronic verification of people on the basis of measurement information of a fingerprint reader and new approaches to its solution. The offered method guaranties the restriction of error probabilities of both type at the desired level at making a decision about permitting or rejecting the request on service in the system. On the basis of investigation of real data obtained in the real biometrical system, the choice of distribution laws is substantiated and the proper estimations of their parameters are obtained. Using chosen distribution laws, the normal distribution for measurement results of characteristics of the people having access to the system and the beta distribution for the people having no such access, the optimal rule based on the Constrained Bayesian Method (CBM) of making a decision about giving a permission of access to the users of the system is justified. The CBM, the Neyman–Pearson and classical Bayes methods are investigated and their good and negative points are examined. Computation results obtained by direct computation, by simulation and using real data completely confirm the suppositions made and the high quality of verification results obtained on their basis.     

Stockouts and Restocking: Monitoring the Retailer from the Supplier’s Perspective

Suppliers and retailers typically do not have identical incentives to avoid stockouts (lost sales due to the lack of product availability on the shelf). Thus, the supplier needs to monitor the retailer’s restocking efforts with the available data. We empirically assess stockout levels using only shipment and sales data that is readily available to the supplier. The model distinguishes between store stockouts (zero inventory in the store) and shelf stockouts (an empty shelf but some inventory in other parts of the store), thereby identifying the cause of the stockout to be either a supply chain or a restocking issue. We find that, as suspected by the supplier, the average stockout rate is much higher than published averages. In addition, stockout rates vary widely between stores. Moreover, almost all stockouts are shelf stockouts. The model identifies stores that may have restocking issues.     

The Development and Initial Validation of a Psychoanalysis Use/Non-Use Scale among a Sample of Hong Kong Helping Professionals.

ABSTRACT

This article reports on the construction and initial validation of the Psychoanalysis Use/Non-Use scale (PUNU) and the complementary Conflicts with Hong Kong Chinese Culture scale (CHKCC), developed for assessing the penetration of psychoanalysis among counseling professionals in Hong Kong. A total of 217 Hong Kong social workers, psychologists, and counselors were surveyed to assess the scales' internal psychometric properties. Factor analysis confirmed a four-factor structure for the PUNU, and a unidimensional structure for the CHKCC, with 17 and 9 items, respectively. Internal reliability of both scales was good and discriminative validity was supported by comparisons with background information. These scales could help to identify factors that affect the understanding of psychoanalysis among professionals and could be useful for educational purposes.     

Prediction of accrual closure date in multi-center clinical trials with discrete-time Poisson process models

In a phase III multi‐center cancer clinical trial or a large public health study, sample size is predetermined to achieve desired power, and study participants are enrolled from tens or hundreds of participating institutions. As the accrual is closing to the target size, the coordinating data center needs to project the accrual closure date on the basis of the observed accrual pattern and notify the participating sites several weeks in advance. In the past, projections were simply based on some crude assessment, and conservative measures were incorporated in order to achieve the target accrual size. This approach often resulted in excessive accrual size and subsequently unnecessary financial burden on the study sponsors. Here we proposed a discrete‐time Poisson process‐based method to estimate the accrual rate at time of projection and subsequently the trial closure date. To ensure that target size would be reached with high confidence, we also proposed a conservative method for the closure date projection. The proposed method was illustrated through the analysis of the accrual data of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project trial B‐38. The results showed that application of the proposed method could help to save considerable amount of expenditure in patient management without compromising the accrual goal in multi‐center clinical trials. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Screening for Alcohol Problems Among 4-Year Colleges and Universities

Abstract

Objective: To assess the use of alcohol screening tools across US colleges. Participants: Directors of health services at 333 four-year colleges. Methods: An online survey was conducted regarding the use of alcohol screening tools. Schools reporting use of formal tools were further described in terms of 4 tools (AUDIT, CUGE, CAPS, and RAPS) that the authors judged to be the most favorable based on prior empirical comparative studies. Results: Forty-four percent of colleges reported use of at least 1 formal alcohol screening tool and nearly all of these used a tool appropriate for college students. However, less than half of the 44% of colleges that used a screening tool used 1 of the 4 most favorable tools. Conclusions: Continued efforts are needed to encourage colleges to use the most effective available screening tools to identify alcohol-related problems that require intervention among students.