The Distinctive Patterns of Dynamic Learning and Inter‐firm Differences in the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

Technological or institutional change has proven to be a major cause of the failure of established firms, and history is full of examples. In a globalized world the capability of a firm to reconfigure existing competencies and create new knowledge for innovation has emerged as a dynamic capability to succeed. I examine the learning processes involved in the development of innovative R&D capabilities in Indian pharmaceutical firms as a response to the strengthening of patent law. The strong patent law represented a major institutional change for Indian firms which had grown in a weak patent era. The analysis shows that the development of new capabilities involved the removal of rigidities and the acquisition of new knowledge, and reveals that Indian firms are adopting strategies such as hiring of Indian scientists educated or working overseas in pharmaceutical R&D and collaborative R&D to acquire innovative R&D capabilities. It further points out the inter–intra firm heterogeneity in learning processes and suggests that the move from basic to advance level capabilities is neither linear nor automatic. It requires a deliberate effort and investment by firms in different mechanisms of learning. The Indian pharmaceutical firms' responses provide important insights for firms from other developing countries.     

Fisher''s inequality for designs on regular graphs

Let G=(V,E) be a regular graph of valency d. A (v,k,λ,μ)-design over G is a pair , where is a family of k-subsets of V (blocks) such that for any distinct vertices x and y, the number of blocks containing {x,y} is equal to λ if {x,y} is an edge and is equal to μ if {x,y} is not an edge. We will prove that the number of vertices does not exceed the number of blocks (Fisher's Inequality) under the following condition: (r−μ)/(μ−λ) is not a multiple eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of the graph (r is the replication number of the design). We also give examples showing that this restriction is essential.     

On some special birth processes in biology

This paper presents some theorems on distributions associated with some special birth processes in biology.     

Ethics and human resource management and development in a global context: case study of an Indian multinational

A firm's orientation to ethics is influenced largely by its national and organizational culture. Research shows that a growing number of Indian firms place a distinct emphasis on long-term orientation to business strategy with a social mission, underpinned by firm commitment to core organizational values, employee development and welfare. Through a case study of a large Indian multinational conglomerate, this article provides preliminary evidence of how some emerging economy firms are successfully mixing and matching indigenous business and people management strategies with the Western emphasis on meritocracy and professionalism to compete in the contemporary global economy. It further shows how the human resource development (HRD) discipline can play a pro-active role in embedding ethics and values throughout the organizational and HR architecture. The HRD professionals in the case study firm also face several structural and cultural challenges in discharging their ethics-driven HR mandate, such as management's ethnocentric attitude to global staffing and clash of work cultures.     

Letter to the Editor

The social work profession has a long standing commitment to human rights and social justice, bridging the divide between national and international interests. There is a call for social workers to understand the global community that awaits our service. Yet international experiences are not within the grasp of nor embraced by all. Students of color are underrepresented participants in the growing trends of internationalization. Through addressing participation barriers, this article uses a case study approach that emphasizes how a social work program at Howard University designed a mission-guided international service learning model that resulted in increased participation for students of color through multiple strategies, while giving primacy to human rights and social justice.     

A Culture-Centered Approach to Listening: Voices of Social Change

Drawing on an understanding of marginalization as intrinsic to mainstream communication theorizing and research, this essay argues that exploitation is rooted in the denial of the communicative capacity of the margins and in the co-optation of the margins as the subjects of top-down communication directed at the margins by experts. The distributions of communicative infrastructures map out the inequities in distributions of economic resources, reifying the unequal distribution of resources by perpetuating values embedded in the interests of the power elite. Listening offers an opening for interrogating the inequities in the global landscape of distribution of power, by attending to the unvoiced assumptions and principles underlying the logics of concentration of power in the hands of the transnational elite. Drawing from postcolonial and Subaltern Studies theories, I engage with the culture-centered approach to outline key tenets of listening as entry points to addressing the global inequities that are produced by neoliberal globalization. Listening through inversion, incompleteness and imagination works in solidarity with the margins to co-construct theory rooted in the ontologies, epistemologies, and values of the margins.     

A computerized cash concentration system

The Standard Oil Company of Ohio generates revenues at a large number of geographically dispersed retail outlets. These funds are initially deposited with local banks and are subsequently transferred to the Company's major bank accounts in Cleveland. This paper reports on a computerized system developed to introduce efficiency in this transfer process. The core of this new system is a modified inventory model which is used to issue transfer orders. The model captures the essential features of the process and at the same time is simple enough to be used in conjunction with a large commercial data processing system that contains the necessary data. The new system is a decision support system which allows management to intervene in the procedure for determining parameters of the decision model.     

Tests of hypotheses for reliability functions in two-parameter exponential models

This paper derives a test procedure for testing hypotheses about the reliability function of the two-parameter exponential model. The exact distribution of the test statistic is obtained and it is shown that the test is UMP invariant. Applications to problems in quality control are also considered.     

A minimized-rule based approach for improving data currency

Repairing obsolete data items to the up-to-date values faces great challenges in the area of improving data quality. Previous methods of data repairing are based on either quality rules or statistical techniques, but both of the two types of methods have their limitations. To overcome the shortages of the previous methods, this paper focuses on combining quality rules and statistical techniques to improve data currency. (1) A new class of currency repairing rules (CRR for short) is proposed to express both domain knowledge and statistical information. Domain knowledge is expressed by the rule pattern, and the statistical information is described by the conditional probability distribution corresponding to each rule. (2) The problem of generating minimized CRRs is studied in both static and dynamic world. In the static world, the problem of generating minimized CRR patterns is proved to be NP-hard, and two approximate algorithms are provided to solve the problem. In dynamic world, methods are provided to update the CRRs without recomputing the whole CRR set in case of data being changed. In some special cases, the updates can be finished in \(O(1)\) time. In both cases, the methods for learning conditional probabilities for each CRR pattern are provided. (3) Based on the CRRs, the problems of finding optimal repairing plans with and without cost budget is studied, and methods are provided to solve them. (4) The experiments based on both real and synthetic data sets show that the proposed methods are efficient and effective.     

Socio-demographic Correlates of Subjective Well-being in Urban India

This study aimed to explore subjective well-being (SWB) in an urban Indian sample. Adults (n = 1099) belonging to two wards in the city of Bangalore in South India, responded to a study-specific questionnaire. This paper is based on data generated as part of an ongoing larger study looking at correlates of SWB. Almost equal number of men and women responded to the study and their age ranged from 20 to 81 years (mean age 37 years). Majority of them were married, Hindus, from middle socio-economic status, had studied above pre-university level and more than half were earning. The mean scores on positive affect (40.9), negative affect (27.6) and life satisfaction (24) suggested above average levels of SWB. Higher age, being married, having higher education, higher income and working in a full time job seemed to improve life satisfaction and decrease negative affect. Religion was also significantly associated with negative affect. Step-wise regression analysis suggested that only education and income were important predictors of positive affect, while negative affect was better predicted by age, income, work status and religion. Life satisfaction was predicted by income, age and education. The important correlates of SWB for men and women were somewhat different. Overall, sociodemographic variables have minimal effect on SWB in urban India and research needs to explore other predictors of SWB.