Vereinsmanagement in Zeiten der Veränderung

Associations and unions are under high optimisation pressure because of fewer public money and general changes in society. Many try to cope with this hard situation by looking for business management instruments. Quick solutions are however not easy to get. These organisations are for their members, to a high degree, social communities as well as political action communities and economic or services communities. These three different forms of communities constitute subsystems in associations with their own very specific organisatinal logic. If one of those subsystems get out of balance it would affect the two others. Modern management instruments are useless in changes projects handling changes, as long as the managing committee doesn’t initiate broad and extensive internal discussions about the future direction of the association. Project handling changes have only a chance to succeed, if they equally take into consideration all three subsystems.     

Bindungsdimensionen und Studieneinstellungen

Hazan &; Shaver (1990) relate the emotional attachment and the working attitude of adults to the effects of emotional attachment and exploration experiences in early childhood.The present study analyses this question and relates the emotional attachment dimensions of anxiety and avoidance (Grau, 1994) to education oriented attitudes, e.g. interest in studies contents, satisfaction and priority in and of studies vs. private life and career orientation. 126 teaching profession and psychology students answered a questionnaire including the following concepts: Attachment dimensions, attachment types, study related attitudes and life-orientation. Attachment dimensions and attachment types showed the expected convergent validity. Results confirm most — bot not all — of the predicted relations between relationship’s dimensions and study oriented attitudes.     

Organisiert sein. Was Gremien aber so langweilig macht

Committee meetings and conferences build an everyday communication network in associations and organisations. The author investigates the generelly perceived experiences of emotional emptiness, boredom and monotony in committee meetings and shows that the different factors on which this dynamics is based are both cultural and structural in nature. She establishes that the institutional and interaction aspects in committee meetings have to be understood and handled like the two sides of a medal to allow committee meetings and conferences to be animated and used successfully.     

Nonsense regressions due to neglected time-varying means

Regressions of two independent time series are considered. The variables are covariance stationary but display time-varying although not trending means. Two prominent examples are level shifts due to structural breaks and seasonally varying means. If the variation of the means is not taken into account, this induces nonsense correlation. The asymptotic treatment is supplemented by experimental evidence. This work was carried out while visiting Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Financial support from the European Commission through the Training and Mobility of Researchers programme is gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version was circulated as Universidad Carlos III working paper 99-78. I am grateful to Artur da Silva Lopes for comments that improved the presentation.     

Entwicklung einer Checkliste als Einstiegsinstrument beim Konfliktcoaching

Zusammenfassung  Diese Arbeit stellt die „Checkliste für das Konfliktcoaching“ (CKC) vor. Sie wurde als Einstiegsinstrument für das Konfliktcoaching entwickelt und soll den Klienten auf die bevorstehende Beratung einstimmen und den Coach bei seinen Vorfeldanalysen unterstützen. Die erstellte Checkliste basiert auf Theorien zum Konfliktmanagement (Regnet 1992; Glasl 1997) und der Beratungsform Coaching (Looss 1997; Rauen 2000) sowie der Etablierung eines Beratungssystems (Rappe-Giesecke 1999; Schein 1987). Dagmar Fuchs, Dipl.-Psych., Trainerin, Moderatorin, Coach, Freie Mitarbeit bei Mensch & Organisation im Wandel, Leiterin des Personalservicebüros der Berliner Stadtreinigungsbetriebe.     

A winner determination problem of tendering transportation services

Summary  For the tendering of long-term transportation contracts in the bulk industry, shippers use bidbooks that specify for each lane the load location, the destination, the product and the volume that has to be transported over the next so many years. Bidbooks are sent out to a preselected group of carriers, who subsequently quote a price for each of the lanes. After the return of the bidbooks, the shipper determines the winning carriers. The winner determination problem is the problem of finding an allocation of the lanes to the carriers so as to minimize total transportation costs. The winner determination problem is NP-hard in the strong sense. We model the winner determination problem as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem and try and solve the model by use of CPLEX, a state-of-the-art ILP solver. It turns out, that the model can solve problems optimally with no more than 270 lanes. We also develop a fast randomized heuristic, and we show that it performs remarkably well, with a gap of no more than 0.8% from optimality.

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Zusammenfassung  Zum Abschluss langfristiger Transportvertr?ge in der Massengüterindustrie bedienen sich die Spediteure bestimmter Angebotsbücher, in denen für jede Tour die Ladestation, der Zielort, sowie die zu transportierende Produktart und deren Volumen für die n?chsten Jahre spezifiziert werden. Die Angebotsbücher werden an eine ausgew?hlte Gruppe von Transportunternehmen geschickt, die dann für jede Tour einen Preis angeben. Auf dieser Grundlage bestimmt der Spediteur dann die Transportunternehmen, die die Zuteilung der Touren erhalten. Dabei wird die Verteilung der Touren auf die Transportunternehmen in der Weise vorgenommen, dass die gesamten Transportkosten minimiert werden. Das Auswahlproblem ist NP-hard in strengem Sinne. Wir modellieren das Auswahlproblem als ganzzahliges lineares Programmierungsproblem (ILP) und testen bzw. l?sen es mit Hilfe mit CPLEX, einem Standardl?sungsansatz für ganzzahlige lineare Programmierung. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Modelle bis zu 270 Touren optimal gel?st werden k?nnen. Zugleich wird auch eine Heuristik entwickelt und vorgestellt, deren L?sung nur unwesentlich von der Optimall?sung entfernt liegt.

     

Comment on J. Berkson's paper “in dispraise of the exact test”

This paper rejects the preference expressed by Berkson for the heuristic test statistic T_N with standard normal distribution testing equality of two binomial probabilities in favour of Fisher's conditional exact test statistic T_E. Conditioning upon k₁ + k₂ = k shows that T_N admits too large first kind error probabilities. But also unconditionally T_N is systematically too large compared to T_E, giving too small critical levels at given experimental outcomes and power which is misleadingly too large. This is mainly due to the fact that T_N is not suitably corrected for continuity (at small sample sizes).     

On the non-existence of generalised Hadamard matrices

The determinant of a generalized Hadamard matrix over its group ring factored out by the relation Σ_gεG G = 0 is shown to have certain number theoretic properties. These are exploited to prove the non-existence of many generalised Hadamard matrices for groups whose orders are divisible by 3, 5 or 7. For example the GH(15, C₁₅), GH(15, C₃) and GH(15, C₅) do not exist. Also for certain n and G we find the set of determinants of the GH(n, G) matrices.     

Vanishing senses—restoration of sensory functions by electronic implants

Is the endeavour to restore perceptive brain functions by electronic implants the first step on the way to create bionic cyborgs? Can we augment or multiply our senses by directly contacting computer chips to the brain? Will bio-implants influence and permanently change human psyche?Almost 50 years ago, the foundation of the new field of neuroprosthetics propelled research aimed at devising a seamless connection between the human nervous system and microelectronic implants.The complexity of sensory perception often renders the task of assessing efficacy and side effects of a sensory implant impossible when computer simulation and animal experimentation alone are employed. Historical development in this field has shown that some of the evaluation has to be done in investigations performed directly in the human.The consequences of such a technology will not be confined to medicine alone. This paper describes its development, state of the art, limiting factors, and future possibilities. It offers an introduction into the elementary prerequisites of neural interfacing as a basis for argumentation in the upcoming public debate.The advancement of sensory implants for the restitution or augmentation of impaired brain function requires a moral and ethical position not only of the scientist involved, but of all the society, similar to the fields of psychopharmacology and stem cell research.