The Impact of Culture on Equity Sensitivity Perceptions and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Five-Country Study

This paper examines the relationships between equity theory, equity sensitivity, and organizational citizenship behavior. Several issues are investigated: whether individuals from different cultures differ in their equity sensitivity orientations; whether individuals from different cultures differ in preference for benevolent, equity sensitive, and entitled situations involving a case scenario; and whether cultural differences impact organizational citizenship behavior.     

SPC—a team effort for process improvement across four Area Control Centres

This paper describes an innovative application of statistical process control to the online remote control of the UK's gas transportation networks. The gas industry went through a number of changes in ownership, regulation, access to networks, organization and management culture in the 1990s. The application of SPC was motivated by these changes along with the desire to apply the best industrial statistics theory to practical problems. The work was initiated by a studentship, with the technology gradually being transferred to the industry. The combined efforts of control engineers and statisticians helped develop a novel SPC system. Having set up the control limits, a system was devised to automatically update and publish the control charts on a daily basis. The charts and an associated discussion forum are available to both managers and control engineers throughout the country at their desktop PCs. The paper describes methods of involving people to design first-class systems to achieve continual process improvement. It describes how the traditional benefits of SPC can be realized in a 'distal team working', and 'soft systems', context of four Area Control Centres, controlling a system delivering two thirds of the UK's energy needs.     

SPC—a team effort for process improvement across four Area Control Centres

This paper describes an innovative application of statistical process control to the online remote control of the UK's gas transportation networks. The gas industry went through a number of changes in ownership, regulation, access to networks, organization and management culture in the 1990s. The application of SPC was motivated by these changes along with the desire to apply the best industrial statistics theory to practical problems. The work was initiated by a studentship, with the technology gradually being transferred to the industry. The combined efforts of control engineers and statisticians helped develop a novel SPC system. Having set up the control limits, a system was devised to automatically update and publish the control charts on a daily basis. The charts and an associated discussion forum are available to both managers and control engineers throughout the country at their desktop PCs. The paper describes methods of involving people to design first-class systems to achieve continual process improvement. It describes how the traditional benefits of SPC can be realized in a 'distal team working', and 'soft systems', context of four Area Control Centres, controlling a system delivering two thirds of the UK's energy needs.     

Assessing gender inequality in the Turkish pension system

Abstract   Since the 1990s, the welfare regime in Turkey has become more market-oriented. The introduction of the Individual Pension System (IPS), a privately managed defined contribution scheme, is part of this process. This paper uses an autoregressive stochastic model in order to show the total effect of specific disadvantages, such as a shorter working life, less earnings, longer life expectancy, real wage growth, administrative cost and risk aversion, on the retirement benefits of women in Turkey. Using an actuarial model, the article aims to contribute to the literature by investigating the gender gap in the Turkish defined contribution scheme.     

河北省经济增长中物质资本与人力资本的作用核算

选取了河北省1978～2002年间生产要素的时间序列数据,通过定量的实证分析,描述了物质资本、人力资本在经济增长中的作用与贡献。在此基础上,从要素投入的角度对制约河北经济增长的原因进行了剖析,并提出相应的政策建议。     

Cox regression analysis in presence of collinearity: an application to assessment of health risks associated with occupational radiation exposure

This paper considers the analysis of time to event data in the presence of collinearity between covariates. In linear and logistic regression models, the ridge regression estimator has been applied as an alternative to the maximum likelihood estimator in the presence of collinearity. The advantage of the ridge regression estimator over the usual maximum likelihood estimator is that the former often has a smaller total mean square error and is thus more precise. In this paper, we generalized this approach for addressing collinearity to the Cox proportional hazards model. Simulation studies were conducted to evaluate the performance of the ridge regression estimator. Our approach was motivated by an occupational radiation study conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to evaluate health risks associated with occupational radiation exposure in which the exposure tends to be correlated with possible confounders such as years of exposure and attained age. We applied the proposed methods to this study to evaluate the association of radiation exposure with all-cause mortality.     

Moderators of Stress in Salvadoran Refugees: The Role of Social and Personal Resources1

Refugee research has tended to focus exclusively on the mental health consequences of migration with little attention being devoted to factors that facilitate adjustment. Recently, several cross‐cultural researchers have suggested that the growing literature on moderators of stress may elucidate why some migrants experience adverse effects whereas others remain relatively unscathed. This study examines the moderating effects of social and personal resources on the relationship between stress and subjective well‐being in 60 recently‐arrived and 60 established Salvadoran refugees in Canada. The participants completed a questionnaire that included scales pertaining to stress (life events, hassles, migration‐related events), resources (social support, locus of control, self‐esteem) and well‐being (quality of life, life satisfaction). Varying results were found for both groups. For Recent Refugees, personal resources were found to moderate migration stress. In particular, locus of control buffered the relationships between migration stress and quality of life and life satisfaction, whereas self‐esteem buffered the migration stress‐quality of life relation. For Established Refugees, social support and self‐esteem moderated the relationship between life events and life satisfaction. In addition, social support buffered the effects of hassles on quality of life. The findings underscore the relevance of integrating more firmly the study of refugee adjustment with current developments in stress research.     

A GIS-Based Framework for Hazardous Materials Transport Risk Assessment

This article presents a methodology for assessment of the hazardous materials transport risk in a multicommodity, multiple origin-destination setting. The proposed risk assessment methodology was integrated with a Geographical Information System (GIS), which made large-scale implementation possible. A GIS-based model of the truck shipments of dangerous goods via the highway network of Quebec and Ontario was developed. Based on the origin and destination of each shipment, the risk associated with the routes that minimize (1) the transport distance, (2) the population exposure, (3) the expected number of people to be evacuated in case of an incident, and (4) the probability of an incident during transportation was evaluated. Using these assessments, a government agency can estimate the impact of alternative policies that could alter the carriers' route choices. A related issue is the spatial distribution of transport risk, because an unfair distribution is likely to cause public concern. Thus, an analysis of transport risk equity in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario is also provided.     

Risk Analysis, Systems Analysis, and Covey's Seven Habits

This article relates problem solving to the common approaches of the gestalt-holistic philosophies of systems analysis, risk analysis, and Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Guiding principles developed on the basis of these philosophies provide the foundations for methodological frameworks that build on a plethora of theory, methods, tools, and techniques. Although systems analysis and risk analysis differ in their historical evolution and technical maturity, both study and solve problems using methodological frameworks that share a holistic vision.     

Solving the part families problem in discrete-parts manufacture by simulated annealing

In the production planning and control of discrete-parts manufacture, aggregation of parts into families, on the basis of similarity, is carried out to ease both long-horizon planning and short-horizon scheduling. Additional advantages are related to those of group technology (GT), such as simplifying the flow of parts and tools and reducing both set-up and production costs. The problem of formally forming part families is presented and discussed. Previous work is reviewed and assessed. Two solution approaches, one based on a location model, the other on simulated annealing, are presented and compared along with test results. The location formulation, which results in an integer programming model solved by Lagrangian relaxation, proved capable of producing solutions of excellent quality, but only for relatively small problem instances. In contrast, simulated annealing, which is a general heuristic approach to combinatorial optimization, produced solutions of comparable quality and could handle realistically large problem instances. However, careful design of the simulated annealing algorithm is crucially important. An effective design is presented.