Scenarios in Europe—Who uses them and why?

The authors of this article describe a study of European companies the aim of which was to review the extent of multiple scenario analysis in company planning. They describe the differences in planning between users and non-users of the system, and analyse the benefits and drawbacks of using the system.     

The Effect of Firm and Host Country Characteristics on the Choice of Entry Mode: Empirical Evidence from Spanish Firms

When investing abroad firms must choose betweengoing alone or with a partner – the so-calledownership structure decision. Additionally,firms can enter a new country by acquisitionsor by greenfield investments – the foreignestablishment mode decision. These twodecisions have traditionally been analyzedseparately in the literature on entry mode.What is more, this literature has much lessanalyzed hybrid entry modes, like partialacquisitions. The aim of this paper is toanalyze how the different factors analyzed inprior research influence the choice of entrymode when jointly taking into account fouralternative entry modes: greenfield whollyowned subsidiaries, greenfield joint ventures,full acquisitions and partial acquisitions. Theempirical analysis was carried out byestimating a multinomial logit model over asample of FDIs made by Spanish firms. Ourresults also contribute to the knowledge ofspecific patterns in the choice of entry modeby firms from late investor countries, likeSpain.     

An Empirical Analysis of Monitoring Behaviour and Private Benefits of Investors in the Spanish Market

The objective of our study is to look for anequilibrium among three factors: the privatebenefits that main shareholders can obtain fromthe firm, the social benefits derived from acertain ownership structure (such assupervision and alignment of interests) and thecosts derived from ownership concentration(such as loss of liquidity and riskdiversification). Our empirical analysis allowsus to conclude that the supervisory role ofownership is more intense in firms where thepotential conflict of interest betweenshareholders and managers is greater, andtherefore the value of the firm can beincreased through a specific composition of itsshareholders.     

A Corporate Culture Pattern to Manage Business Ethics

Within the general frame of proposals for an adequate management of business ethics, this paper is based on the vision of corporate culture as a pattern to achieve such purpose. If we consider ethics as a specific value of corporate culture, we may resort to the mechanism of cultural change and implementation in order to manage ethics. Despite the difficulties it entails in terms of time and money investment, this procedure is one of the safest ways to reach ethical values which are known, shared and then practiced by all the members of a corporation, whatever the category. From this central standpoint, and basing ourselves on our own proposal for the management of culture, we shall describe which specific steps must be taken in order to achieve a set of ethical values which are both realistic and furthermore shared by all collaborators of an organization. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Lessons from the ‘made in Switzerland’ study: What makes a world-class manufacturer?

Many executives are currently striving to develop world-class manufacturing operations to ensure that they remain competitive in increasingly global markets. To do this, they are adopting a range of practices, from organisational changes such as empowerment and teamwork to the use of techniques such as pull production. Their goal is to substantially improve performance: faster cycle times, reduced manufacturing costs and greater customer satisfaction.The question of how far companies have moved towards world-class manufacturing is at the heart of the ‘Made in Switzerland’ project, a major benchmarking study of Swiss manufacturing practice and performance. The study was carried out in 1995 by IMD faculty and researchers working with consultants from IBM Switzerland. It is part of the internationally-based ‘Made in Europe’ project comprising similar studies in the UK, Germany, The Netherlands and Finland.The central hypothesis of the studies is that the adoption of best practice leads to high performance. The objective is to establish a benchmarking database for participating manufacturers around the world. The studies, which are highly structured, examine six areas of manufacturing practice and performance in detail and assess the relationship between them at individual plants. The areas covered in the study are quality, organisation and culture, concurrent engineering, logistics, lean production and manufacturing systems.Plants in each country are grouped according to their position on the practice and performance indices and then studied in order to pinpoint the issues and challenges facing the manufacturers within that group. Less than three per cent of the 800 plants currently on the ‘Made in Europe’ database are considered ‘world-class’. Yet for manufacturers striving to reach this level of performance, this small minority can provide some valuable insights for the way ahead.This article discusses many of the issues raised by the analysis described above, with particular reference to the ‘Made in Switzerland’ study. In the first section, it looks at the key lessons arising from the Swiss study and what insights these can provide for manufacturers, not only in the Swiss market, but across Europe. In the second section, it looks at how the study can be used for benchmarking and provides manufacturers with some general recommendations to help them focus their improvements and move closer to becoming world-class.     

A new approach in vocational rehabilitation in Iceland: preliminary report

The lack of vocational rehabilitation in Iceland inspired the Janus Rehabilitation initiative in the year 2000. The team currently consists of two occupational therapists, a social worker, a physiotherapist, a psychologist, and a physician. Janus uses resources from local education establishments and is located at the Reykjavík Technical School. A client-centred approach is used, enabling a flexible rehabilitation timeframe. The aim is to help the client back to employment/education. Advantage is taken of the facilities of the school where integration between education and rehabilitation takes place. Forty individuals have been admitted, with a mean time from work of 2.9 years, (range: 0-11 years). Seventeen (43%) have returned to employment/education. Twenty-three of those entering the programme are still on invalidity pension. The Canadian Occupational Performance Measurement (COPM) shows improvement in occupational performance and satisfaction. The Icelandic Quality of Life measurement also shows improvement. The results have been promising. However, a larger group is needed in order to draw clear unequivocal conclusions.     

The relationship between fishermen's health and sleeping habits

This article describes research on fishermen's health and sleeping habits in Iceland. It presents the first findings of the project that were presented in October 2002 at a conference that was organized during Seamen Safety Week in Iceland. It covers physical and mental stress symptoms, sleep disturbance, and obesity, as well as fishermen's own reaction to their health and well-being. Take notice that the findings that are presented in this article can be found in a report presented in August, when the whole study will be finished. Finally, it is concluded how successful the response has been and how the project can be used positively with other studies. It is also noted that, in fact, these findings will be used for further studies linked to safety on board.     

Managing skunkworks to achieve ambidexterity: The Robinson Crusoe effect

Literature on ambidexterity emphasizes the need for both exploration and exploitation. Large firms usually choose to implement structural ambidexterity to separate both activities. We here focus on an extreme case of such structural partitioning implemented as a secret skunkworks project in a large French automotive company. A qualitative survey using both primary and secondary data shows that the major basic and initial characteristics of a skunkworks (i.e. secrecy, urgency, and autonomy) created favorable conditions for the technological exploration. However, exploitation failed due to precisely those same characteristics coupled with the fact that the project did not respond to a specific market demand: The skunkworks suffered from what we call the "Robinson Crusoe effect." We therefore contribute to the literature on skunkworks, which have remained understudied in the academic literature, as well as on ambidexterity, by showing how the interrelation between different factors is crucial for structural ambidexterity to be successful     

Exploring the characteristics of rotating electric machines with factor analysis

Applications of multivariate statistics in engineering are hard to find, apart from those in quality control. However, we think that further insight into some technological cases may be gained by using adequate multivariate analysis tools. In this paper, we propose a review of the key parameters of rotating electric machines with factor analysis. This statistical technique allows not only the reduction of the dimension of the case we are analysing, but also reveals subtle relationships between the variables under study. We show an application of this methodology by studying the interrelations between the key variables in an electric machine, in this case the squirrel-cage induction motor. Through a step-by-step presentation of the case study, we deal with some of the topics an applied researcher may face, such as the rotation of the original factors, the extraction of higher-order factors and the development of the exploratory model. As a result, we present a worthwhile framework to both confirm our previous knowledge and capture unexplored facts. Moreover, it may provide a new approach to describing and understanding the design, performance and operating characteristics of these machines.     

A comparison of classification models to identify the Fragile X Syndrome

The main models of machine learning are briefly reviewed and considered for building a classifier to identify the Fragile X Syndrome (FXS). We have analyzed 172 patients potentially affected by FXS in Andalusia (Spain) and, by means of a DNA test, each member of the data set is known to belong to one of two classes: affected, not affected. The whole predictor set, formed by 40 variables, and a reduced set with only nine predictors significantly associated with the response are considered. Four alternative base classification models have been investigated: logistic regression, classification trees, multilayer perceptron and support vector machines. For both predictor sets, the best accuracy, considering both the mean and the standard deviation of the test error rate, is achieved by the support vector machines, confirming the increasing importance of this learning algorithm. Three ensemble methods - bagging, random forests and boosting - were also considered, amongst which the bagged versions of support vector machines stand out, especially when they are constructed with the reduced set of predictor variables. The analysis of the sensitivity, the specificity and the area under the ROC curve agrees with the main conclusions extracted from the accuracy results. All of these models can be fitted by free R programs.