Studies in MBO effectiveness.

Management by objectives (MBO) is a popular management approach the efficacy of which has been seriously questioned recently. I have analyzed 185 studies for the effects of MBO on employee productivity and/or job satisfaction. Research support for MBO was found to be inversely related to the degree of research design sophistication. Although the five well-controlled experiments leaned toward finding MBO to be ineffective, it appears a contingency approach to MBO is more appropriate than a definitive affirmation or rejection of MBO effectiveness.     

The Child Well-Being Scales: a field trial.

The Child Well-Being Scales [Magura and Moses 1986] were developed to evaluate programs of child welfare services. Although appealing in format, the scales have lacked adequate validation. For the field trial reported here, 17 of the scales were extracted and used to form measures of physical and psychological care of children. A comparison between families identified as neglectful and low-income control families yielded differences in the predicted direction. The composite indices showed good internal consistency. The concurrent validity of this segment of the scales was supported. The scales yielded three factors that reliably classified families externally verified as neglectful and nonneglectful control families.     

Integration of quality assessment and physician incentives

The ultimate challenge in dealing with any type of risk incentive system is to be able to integrate the quality of care and the cost of care into an equitable system and to monitor the system and detect either barriers to care or the withholding of appropriate services. We believe it is possible to do this and have based our incentive model upon this premise. At U.S. Healthcare, we have been successful in developing some measures of quality in the ambulatory setting and have tied the measurements to our payment mechanism.     

倒立摆小车系统的数学模型和主要参数的确定

倒摆系统参数测定的精确与否对控制质量有较大影响。本文从整个小车系统出发推导了求取该系统主要参数(M_0、F_0、G_0)的公式。证明了该系统可等同于一个惯性环节与一个积分环节相串联的结构形式,并导出了该结构形式下系统参数β_1、β_2和小车拖动系统参数M_0、F_0的G_0的关系式。文中还介绍了测取β_1、β_2的一种实用方法。     

Multivariate analysis of a reference collection of elm leaves

SUMMARY Analysis of leaf measurements of a reference collection of elm leaves suggests that the leaves, collected from trees which were selected by R. H. Richens as spanning the range of elm in Europe, fall into two primary groups. The first of these groups is made up of the representatives of the Wych elm (Ulmus glabra), which is known to be a distinct species. The second, larger, group is made up of an assemblage of subgroups that represent English elm (Ulmus procera), Ulmus minor and hybrids between Ulmus minor and Ulmus glabra. A minimum variance cluster analysis suggests that these subgroups are reasonably distinct, and discriminant analysis, logistic regression and a genetic algorithm are used to help identify the subgroups.