An analytical management framework for new product development processes featuring uncertain iterations

This paper presents an analytical framework for effective management of projects with uncertain iterations. The framework is based upon: (1) the combination of two complementary techniques, one focused on improving iterative process architectures, the Design Structure Matrix, and one focused on predicting project performance, the Graphical Evaluation Review Technique; and (2) the introduction of an activity set-based criticality measure. The intent of the framework is to help project managers and researchers identify and evaluate alternative process architectures, in order to help them determine the alternative which best balances risk and other project performance parameters, as illustrated through an example application.     

Optimal unconditional critical regions for 2 2 2 multinomial trials

Analysing a 2 2 2 table is one of the most frequent problems in applied research (particularly in epidemiology). When the table arises from a 2 2 2 multinomial trial (or the case of double dichotomy), the appropriate test for independence is an unconditional one, like those of Barnard (1947), which, although they date from a long time ago, have not been developed (because of computational problems) until the last ten years. Among the different possible versions, the optimal (Martín Andrés & Tapia Garcia, 1999) is Barnard's original one, but the calculation time (even today) is excessive. This paper offers critical region tables for that version, which behave well compared to those of Shuster (1992). The tables are of particular use for researchers wishing to obtain significant results for very small sample sizes (N h 50).     

An Index of Child Health in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa

In this article we present a new composite index of child health, applied to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa, one of the areas of the planet most castigated by poverty. Our index has been constructed attending to the variables defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P₂ distance method for the year 2008, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates variables of child health that permit a territorial ordering of the LDCs of Africa, in terms of those partial indicators.     

Model Averaging Using Fractional Polynomials to Estimate a Safe Level of Exposure

Quantitative risk assessment involves the determination of a safe level of exposure. Recent techniques use the estimated dose-response curve to estimate such a safe dose level. Although such methods have attractive features, a low-dose extrapolation is highly dependent on the model choice. Fractional polynomials, basically being a set of (generalized) linear models, are a nice extension of classical polynomials, providing the necessary flexibility to estimate the dose-response curve. Typically, one selects the best-fitting model in this set of polynomials and proceeds as if no model selection were carried out. We show that model averaging using a set of fractional polynomials reduces bias and has better precision in estimating a safe level of exposure (say, the benchmark dose), as compared to an estimator from the selected best model. To estimate a lower limit of this benchmark dose, an approximation of the variance of the model-averaged estimator, as proposed by Burnham and Anderson, can be used. However, this is a conservative method, often resulting in unrealistically low safe doses. Therefore, a bootstrap-based method to more accurately estimate the variance of the model averaged parameter is proposed.     

Ungleichheit und Vorurteil

The authors take a look at how established sociological research in Germany deals with two distinct subjects: migrants in the German school system and New Fascists. The article highlights surprising, contrary feeling rules social scientists active in these two research areas develop regarding their objects of investigation. As it turns out in both cases social disintegration serves as an explanatory research frame. But feeling rules derived from this frame point in opposite directions. New Fascists are cast in the roles of victims of social change and institutional failure, thus calling for empathy and/or sympathy as the feeling to be directed towards them. Migrants, in contrast, are blamed for their situation, which invokes indifference and antipathy as a feeling rule. Comparing both research areas reveals how they connect to each other. Together they establish a dichotomous emotional regime which traces the lines of simultaneous inclusion in and exclusion from the German society.     

Socioeconomic and Gender Health Disparities in Diabetes: The Lower Middle Income Case of Ghana

While literature theorizing the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and health outcomes is robust in high‐income countries, there is less scholarship examining how SES affects men and women in lower middle income countries (LMICs). Focusing on the LMIC case of Ghana, I use Wave 1 of the World Health Organization Study on Global Aging and Adult Health (SAGE) to examine the relationship between SES and diabetes among Ghanaian women and men. Specifically, I examine how key SES measures such as educational attainment, employment status, and income singly and collectively predict the odds of diabetes for Ghanaian men and women. I also examine the explanatory value of the reversal hypothesis, which posits that those of high SES experience higher rates of non‐communicable diseases. Overall, I find that while Ghanaian men experience increased odds of diabetes with increased education, Ghanaian women have higher odds of diabetes compared to men regardless of educational attainment. Understanding health patterns in LMICs like Ghana is important for sociological inquiry on health disparities seeking to incorporate more global perspectives.     

Dynamic Marketing Capabilities: Toward an Integrative Framework

In recent years, the dynamic capabilities view has attracted attention in the management literature, and theoretical papers note many research challenges. Currently, one of the most significant issues is the role of the marketing function in the development of dynamic capabilities, and some recent discussions have even introduced the new term ‘dynamic marketing capabilities’. The main area of interest is how to achieve a well‐integrated framework to serve as the starting point for empirical papers. Although the most recent research proposes a wide range of processes as possible dynamic marketing capabilities, it is difficult to find consensus among these proposals. To resolve this difficulty, this paper seeks to define the dynamic marketing capabilities construct based on accepted components in the generic dynamic capabilities view. More specifically, it defines the role of dynamic marketing capabilities through absorptive capacity and knowledge management. By identifying these components and relating them in an integrative model, the authors propose to explain how dynamic marketing capabilities work and precisely which marketing processes promote both components.     

The Features of Development in the Pacific Countries of the African,Caribbean and Pacific Group

In this article we present a new proposal for the measurement of development, applied to the Pacific Countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP), conditional on their insularity, and with privileged relations with the European Union. Our index has been constructed attending to the criteria defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P₂ distance method for the year 2007, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates socio-economic variables that permit a territorial ordering of the Pacific ACPs, in terms of those partial indicators.     

Travelling from New Spain to Mexico: Mapping Practices of Nineteenth-Century Mexico

James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth‐Century Chesapeake (1994), xv + 461 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, $60.50).

Marguerite W. Dupree, Family Structure in the Staffordshire Potteries, 1840–1880 (1995), xx + 405 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, £48.00).

David B. Copian, In the Time of Cannibals: The Word Music of South Africa's Basotho Migrants (1994), xxi + 300 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, $55.00, paperback $18.95).

Ellen Meiksins Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (1995), 300 (Cambridge University Press, London, £35.00).