Global supplier development considering risk factors using fuzzy extended AHP-based approach

Global supplier development is a multi-criterion decision problem which includes both qualitative and quantitative factors. The global supplier selection problem is more complex than domestic one and it needs more critical analysis. The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss some of the important and critical decision criteria including risk factors for the development of an efficient system for global supplier selection. Fuzzy extended analytic hierarchy process (FEAHP) based methodology will be discussed to tackle the different decision criteria like cost, quality, service performance and supplier's profile including the risk factors involved in the selection of global supplier in the current business scenario. FEAHP is an efficient tool to handle the fuzziness of the data involved in deciding the preferences of different decision variables. The linguistic level of comparisons produced by the customers and experts for each comparison are tapped in the form triangular fuzzy numbers to construct fuzzy pair-wise comparison matrices. The implementation of the system is demonstrated by a problem having four stages of hierarchy which contains different criteria and attributes at wider perspective. The proposed model can provide not only a framework for the organization to select the global supplier but also has the capability to deploy the organization's strategy to its supplier.     

Social Capital, Satisfaction and Quality of Life in the Workplace

This article is an empirical analysis of the relationship between social capital and satisfaction and quality of life in the workplace in Spain. Social capital has been defined as the set of cooperative relationships between social actors that facilitate collective action. This concept has been measured based on five dimensions: trust, social relations, commitment, communication and influence. An analysis has been carried out applying regression and causal models to determine the influence on satisfaction and quality of life at work of social capital dimensions and of characteristics of the worker, work environment and company or organization. The data is based on Spain's 2001 Quality of Life at Work Survey. The results of the analysis indicate that the models applied are significant, which confirms the examined propositions. Higher levels of social capital imply greater levels of satisfaction and quality of life at work. Social capital is a better predictor of quality of life at work and job satisfaction than the characteristics of the worker, the company or organization, and the work environment.     

Immigrants’ economic performance across Europe – does immigration policy matter?

Drawing on panel data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), we compare the economic performance of immigrants to Great Britain, West Germany, Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Austria to that of the respective indigenous population. The unit of analysis is the individual in the household context. This allows us to define immigrants state of integration into the host society at the family level taking into account issues such as immigrant/native intermarriage. Economic performance is measured in terms of the country-specific pre-government income position and change in the relative income position due to redistribution processes within the respective tax and social security systems. Our work is based on the premise that countries may be categorized – similarly to existing categorizations based on the type of welfare regime – according to the nature of their immigration policy. From an economic point of view, a successful and integrative immigration policy should result – at least when controlling for background characteristics such as education – in a non-significant differential between the economic performance of immigrants and that of the indigenous population. At first glance, our results indicate that this ideal is not attained in all of the countries analysed, particularly not in Germany and Denmark, where the economic performance of immigrants is much lower than that of the indigenous population. However, results from GLS random-effects models show that immigrants to these countries improve their economic situation rapidly with increasing duration of stay in the host country. This implies that these countries also do fairly well in fostering in the economic integration of immigrants. Our empirical results further reveal that the substantial cross-country differences in the immigrant/native-born performance differential persist even when controlling in detail for socioeconomic characteristics of the household and for indicators of the state of the immigrants integration, such as years since migration and immigrant/native intermarriage. This suggests that not only the conditions of entry to a country impact on immigrants economic performance, but also country-specific institutional aspects such as restrictions on access to the labour market and parts of the social security system that are related to citizenship or immigrant status. There still is a great deal of heterogeneity across EU member states in this respect. This should be taken into account when working towards the harmonization of national EU immigration policies.This paper benefited substantially from discussions at the EEA 2003 Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, and the EPUNet 2003 Conference in Colchester, UK. We also acknowledge very helpful comments resulting from the reviewing process     

Understanding the role of organizational integration in developing and operating Software-as-a-Service

While previous research has mostly studied Software-as-a-Service from a client perspective or focused on downstream activities of vendors, an in-depth understanding of the coordination and communication between software development and software operations is still missing. In order to fill this gap, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates extant literature on the constituent characteristics of services and on organizational integration. Guided by this framework and based on a multiple-case study of six software vendors, we identify five types of challenges and opportunities of organizational integration between Software-as-a-Service development and operations. The challenges include ensuring awareness and continuity between operations and development, as well as considering customers’ business activities in scheduling updates. The opportunities relate to the ability to leverage a direct feedback channel and innovate with higher velocity. In addition, service mindset, technical harmonization, and company size emerged as three contingency factors that enable or inhibit organizational integration. The study contributes to existing literature by providing a better understanding of the activities that require coordination and communication when developing and operating Software-as-a-Service. Moreover, this study adds to previous research by linking the integration of organizational subunits to constituent characteristics of services. Decision makers learn about challenges and opportunities when offering Software-as-a-Service that go beyond providing a technical infrastructure.     

Scheduling and packing malleable and parallel tasks with precedence constraints of bounded width

We study the problems of non-preemptively scheduling and packing malleable and parallel tasks with precedence constraints to minimize the makespan. In the scheduling variant, we allow the free choice of processors; in packing, each task must be assigned to a contiguous subset. Malleable tasks can be processed on different numbers of processors with varying processing times, while parallel tasks require a fixed number of processors. For precedence constraints of bounded width, we resolve the complexity status of the problem with any number of processors and any width bound. We present an FPTAS based on Dilworth’s decomposition theorem for the NP-hard problem variants, and exact efficient algorithms for all remaining special cases. For our positive results, we do not require the otherwise common monotonous penalty assumption on the processing times of malleable tasks, whereas our hardness results hold even when assuming this restriction. We complement our results by showing that these problems are all strongly NP-hard under precedence constraints which form a tree.     

The role of the voluntary,community and social enterprise sector in Early Help: Critical reflections from embedded social care research

The independent review of children's social care (2022) has proposed a radical reset of England's children's services, shifting a remote, assessment heavy system towards one that works alongside communities to help prevent statutory interventions. However, notions around the harnessing of community resources to deliver Early Help are often underpinned by assumptions regarding the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector and the ease with which such organizations can be integrated into preventative strategies. This paper reports findings from embedded research within a unitary authority in Southwest England during remodelling of its Early Help service to work more collaboratively with local VCSE organizations. The study generated data from ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 95 participants, including local parents, service providers, VCSE organizations and Council leaders. The findings illustrate that families value the compassionate, responsive and flexible support available within many VCSE settings. However, differences in practice cultures, regulatory pressures on statutory providers, the need to (re)build trust in communities and sensitivities around power-sharing and resourcing meant negotiating VCSE sector integration was fraught with complexities. Few studies have gained such privileged access to a Local Authority's remodelling of Early Help services, and this paper has significant insights for the debates surrounding the independent review of children's social care (2022) and its recommendation to bring services ‘closer to communities’.     

Hierarchy cost of hierarchical clusterings

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization - The hierarchy cost of a hierarchical clustering measures the quality of the induced k-clusterings compared to optimal k-clusterings. It is defined as the...     

Corporeal Interactions in VRChat: Situational Intensity and Body Synchronization

Erving Goffman's work on interaction in everyday life focuses on joint spatio-temporal and face-to-face situations and denies the constitution of social situations via mediatized interaction. In contrast, we argue that shared immersive media such as Social Virtual Reality enable intense, delocalized forms of co-present interactions that constitute closeness and intimacy. By discussing Goffman in the context of current works that open up his perspective for mediatization, we present an understanding of social situations that focuses on intensity and synchronized embodiment—physical, digital, and corporeal. On the Social VR platform VRChat, synchronized bodies allow for intimate corporeal practices, such as cuddling, dancing, or cybersex. Virtual Reality technology facilitates delocalized forms of affective-bodily interaction, thereby contributing to the social negotiation of mediatized closeness and intimacy—despite physical distance. Our findings are based on a digital ethnographic analysis of lifeworlds and practices of enthusiast VRChat-users, combined with qualitative semi-structured interviews.