Town Centre Management: Outlook from Portugal

In the last two decades, the Portuguese Government has responded to the decline of centres of commerce. In this paper, we analyse the three different experiences of town centre management (TCM) schemes developed in Portugal since the turn of the millennium. The first two stages were developed using public sector initiatives and their impacts were limited. The third stage is still under way and is composed of private projects created by local business owners. Taking Lisbon as a case study for this third stage we conclude that these projects have become a pro-active means of intervention in Portuguese town centres.     

Room for manoeuvre: User participation in water resources management in Burkina Faso

Participation in natural resources management is widely promoted in sub‐Saharan Africa, but faces mounting criticism from social science scholars who rarely engage with it in practice. We use the notion of room for manoeuvre to reflect on a multi‐level participatory approach designed to support the Burkinabè Integrated Water Resources Management policy and propose ways of engaging constructively with local users and policy‐makers. Within an “invited space” of participation, water users’ room for manoeuvre was enhanced through the acquisition of new knowledge on the legal Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) framework. This allowed them to interact with decision‐makers and to extend their networks. Power imbalances were discussed, but this did not lead to modifying existing power structures that hinge on broader societal dynamics.     

高职院校体育教学ISO质量管理主体意识的现状与提升研究

本文指出高职体育教学ISO质量管理主体意识的提升是实现高职体育教学的科学、标准化和规范化的基础。     

内蒙古畜牧业龙头企业带动模式管理中存在的问题及对策

畜牧业产业化是内蒙古畜牧业发展的必由之路,龙头企业带动模式是畜牧业产业化发展的重要形式之一,在内蒙古畜牧业的发展过程中发挥着重要作用。但畜牧业龙头企业带动模式管理中存在着种种问题,解决这些问题,改善畜牧业龙头企业带动模式管理,对内蒙古畜牧业持续快速发展具有重要意义。     

运用案例教学法改革《管理学》教学

以教师为中心,以单向灌输为主要形式的传统教学模式,已经不能适应当前培养创新型人才的大学教学发展要求。大力加强实践教学,切实提高大学生的实践能力,是高等学校坚持传授知识、培养能力、提高素质、协调发展,实现人才培养根本目标的重要途径。运用案例教学法把管理实践中的典型案例进行处理后引入课堂,让学生根据案例背景资料进行阅读、思考、分析、讨论和交流,寻求解决实际问题的方案,这将给课堂教学带来新的生机,推动学生更加积极主动地学习,并将对整个《管理学》课程的教学产生积极影响。     

Some Cautions on the Measurement of User Information Satisfaction*

User information satisfaction (UIS) is important because of its potential effects on MIS department goals, quality of user work life, and extent of voluntary usage of systems. Reliable measurement of UIS is important for providing evaluative information for both researchers and practitioners. This study used 92 managers and executives as subjects to compare the test/retest reliability of a widely used, 13-scale UIS instrument together with four summary questions under experimental and control conditions. The summary questions behaved more reliably than the detailed questions for all groups, perhaps because of problems with scale units and origins and with item heterogeneity. This suggests that researchers need more reliable measures of UIS and that practitioners need to exercise caution when collecting and interpreting UIS scores.     

Efficient Heuristics for MRP Lot Sizing with Variable Production/Purchasing Costs*

Two heuristics based on branch and bound (B&B) are developed to solve closed-loop material requirements planning (MRP) lot-sizing problems that have general product structures and variable costs. A “look ahead method'’(LAM) heuristic allows for variable production/purchasing costs and uses a single-level B&B procedure to rapidly improve lower bound values; thus, LAM efficiently uses computer-storage capacity and allows solution of larger problems. The “total average modification'’(TAM) heuristic uses B&B, applied level by level, and modified setup and carrying costs to solve the variable production/purchasing costs MRP lot-sizing problem. LAM and TAM are tested on problems and compared to heuristics in the literature. TAM may be used to solve large MRP lot-sizing problems encountered in practice.     

Lowering Inventory Systems Costs by Using Regression-Derived Estimators of Demand Variability*

Scientific techniques for inventory management typically are applied to systems containing many items. Such techniques require an estimation of the demand variance (and mean) of each item from historical data. This research demonstrates a significant potential for improvement in system cost performance from using least-squares regression fits of a variance-to-mean functional relation instead of the standard statistical variance estimate. Even when there is a moderate degree of heterogeneity among items and when the form of the variance-to-mean relation is misspecified, substantial cost savings may be realized. The cost of statistical uncertainty may be reduced by half. The research also provides evidence that system cost is fairly insensitive to the number of items used to fit the regression. This paper provides the underlying reason why a regression-derived variance estimator yields lower cost: it is less variable than the usual individual item variance estimator.     

On the Joint Lot-Sizing Problem with Zero Setup Costs

In a recent paper, Pinto and Mabert [5] presented a lot-sizing rule and an improvement procedure for the joint lot-sizing problem with zero setup costs. We show that this procedure often yields infeasible schedules. We also present and discuss two interesting properties of the joint lot-sizing problem with zero setup costs. A numerical example to illustrate the second property is provided.