EMPIRICAL INVENTORY SIMULATION: A CASE STUDY*

An empirical simulation was used to investigate the economics of minimum-buy policies in the U.S. Army management of spare-parts inventory. An empirical simulation makes use of historical data as direct input to the simulation rather than randomly generated data based on a characterization of the historical data. Empirical simulation alleviates the drawbacks of characterizing historical data with a theoretical distribution; however, because steady-state conditions are not reached, a methodological problem arises in the evaluation of inventory assets at the end of the simulation. Our solution was to minimize this problem by use of a cyclic approach.     

Recycling in multi-family dwellings: Increasing participation and decreasing contamination

This study explored the promotion of recycling in multi-family dwellings. An experimental design investigated four behavior change techniques: biweekly postcards giving specific feedback to each dwelling unit as to quantity and contamination of the recyclables, newsletters giving general information on recycling and the amount recycled by the city as a whole, written pledges committing households to recycle for a specified period, and volunteer coordinators who distributed information and answered questions from residents. The effectiveness of these techniques was compared against that of a control group. The findings suggest that volunteer coordinators are not an effective intervention technique in multi-family dwellings, and that feedback and commitment techniques are useful mainly for managing contamination in medium sized complexes. The data also suggest that the size of a multi-family dwelling complex significantly affects the amount of recyclables collected and the level of contamination. Smaller complexes with less than ten units recycled up to three times the amount on a per unit basis as complexes with more units. Smaller units also had fewer problems with contamination in their recyclables. Several explanations are offered for the poor participation and performance in larger complexes.     

Barriers to finding and maintaining open employment for people with intellectual disability in Australia

Everyone has the right to employment. Work is important for health, well-being, and social, economic, and financial inclusion. However, it is often difficult for people with intellectual disability to find and maintain work, especially in the open labour market. Policy challenges remain about who can access open employment (also sometimes called competitive or supported employment) and how often people with intellectual disability do so. Greater understanding about the barriers that people with intellectual disability encounter when they try to find and keep work in open employment is needed. Drawing on research with 51 people with intellectual disability in Australia, this paper examines the systemic barriers they report to finding and maintaining work in open employment. The findings highlight that the barriers they experience stem from narrow, dismissive, and discouraging attitudes to their work in open employment and from a spectrum of experiences of stigma and discrimination in open workplaces. The paper thus provides new knowledge about reasons that people with intellectual disability may either reject or not continue in open employment and take up less inclusive work options. The paper discusses the implications of the findings, including the need for policy development for attitudinal change, designing more varied roles for employees with intellectual disability, ensuring access to industrial relations protections, and increasing and better regulating and funding requirements on support to people with intellectual disability who are seeking work in open employment.     

Are rural development programmes socially inclusive? Social inclusion,civic engagement,participation, and social capital: Exploring the differences

Considerable importance is attached to social exclusion/inclusion in recent EU rural development programmes. At the national/regional operation of these programmes groups of people who are not participating are often identified as ‘socially excluded groups’. This article contends that rural development programmes are misinterpreting the social processes of participation and consequently labelling some groups as socially excluded when they are not. This is partly because of the interchangeable and confused use of the concepts social inclusion, social capital and civic engagement, and partly because of the presumption that to participate is the default position. Three groups identified as socially excluded groups in Northern Ireland are considered. It is argued that a more careful analysis of what social inclusion means, what civic engagement means, and why participation is presumed to be the norm, leads to a different conclusion about who is excluded. This has both theoretical and policy relevance for the much used concept of social inclusion.     

Understanding and (dis)trusting food assurance schemes: Consumer confidence and the ‘knowledge fix’

This paper uses evidence from focus groups with consumers in England to consider how consumers understand and evaluate a range of proxies or intermediary organisations that offer assurance about food and consumer products, particularly voluntary certification schemes. This addresses the current concern in developed economies about providing information in order to reconnect consumers with food producers and to support moves towards more local, fairly traded and sustainable production. However, we show that such a ‘knowledge fix’ approach of providing information may not reconnect consumers so easily. Participants found it particularly difficult to work out what certification involved and what kinds of organisations were providing assurance. They built vernacular typologies and comparative judgements that did not necessarily identify or prioritise ‘independent’ third-party certification as the gold standard, not least because of the practical difficulties of monitoring complex supply chains, and expressed confusion and scepticism about how well food assurance schemes could work in practice. Our results therefore problematise the knowledge fix urged in the literature and emphasise instead the need to better understand how consumers make sense of assurance information in different contexts.     

Invoking Cleopatra to examine the shifting ground of leadership

This essay argues that the understanding of leadership is not independent of the power relations within a given cultural context. These shape how ‘leadership’ comes to be ‘known’ — defined and identified. Drawing from cultural studies, it examines the interacting dynamics of power, difference and context in shaping our knowledge of leadership. So whereas we currently identify leadership in Cleopatra, this is due to shifts in the contemporary ground of knowledge that constitutes ‘leadership’. Specifically, the essay focuses on manifestations of gendered power that elicited changes in her appraisals. The analysis examines historical writing (Plutarch), literature (Shakespeare), art (Egyptian Revival) and film (Hollywood) to illustrate gendered paradoxes — criteria that had traditionally defined ‘leaders’ from ‘followers’, but which have become ambiguous. These include queen–lover (embodiment), public–domestic (sphere of work and influence), sage–child (intellect), white–black (racialized identity) and Rome–Egypt (international leadership). In closing, the essay reflects on the implications for leadership studies.