Impact of support networks for breastfeeding: A multicentre study

Background

The rates of breastfeeding worldwide are slowly improving since 1996. Europe is still trailing behind the global breastfeeding incidence and prevalence rates. Thus, breastfeeding promotion, protection, prolongation and support have become an important challenge as breastfeeding sharply decreases in the first six months of life.

Examples of practice: an intercultural approach to translate Romanian children’s folklore into Spanish

Due to the great number of Romanian pupils in Spanish public school, the local administration organises extra-curricular Romanian courses in order to preserve the Romanian language and culture. This is a way to contribute to build and consolidate a bicultural and bilingual profile of the young people. Besides, it is also an opportunity to align with plurilingual and pluricultural competence established by The Common European Framework of References for Languages (2002). Based on the premise that “children's literature is an intercultural instrument”, I choose as corpus the Romanian children's folklore represented by games, formula-songs, recital-stories, household words, incantations, riddles and lullabies to translate into Spanish. After the translations, Romanian children had to find similarities and differences between the Romanian and Spanish children's songs, in order to augment the knowledge about both cultures.     

中、日、韩中小企业发展促进体系比较

中小企业是国民经济中最具活力的组成部分,日本和韩国作为亚洲中小企业发展较早的国家,在其政策措施、技术创新、融资担保、培训咨询、社会化服务体系方面都有独到之处;而我国中小企业的发展需要有高强度的政府政策来扶持,完善的政策法规和多样的融资政策为支撑,以产业集群为载体,搭建技术创新服务平台,扶持和巩固现有的中小企业培训机构,建立全方位的社会化服务体系。     

Federated searching and usability testing: Building the perfect beast

With the ubiquity of federated search tools as viable solutions for students and researchers to search across external sources and internal repositories, users have become more sophisticated in their application of this technology. With the goal of optimizing the user experience of its newly introduced federated search offering, Endeavor Information Systems employed usability testing to gain insights into the critical requirements of librarians and information professionals for this solution. The results of this analysis, conducted in concert with market research and customer focus groups, and their relevance to Endeavor's federated search technology are the focus of this article.     

Language,Identity and Empowerment

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between language and identity and language and power. Language is viewed as an important vehicle through which empowerment can occur in society and through which social workers can contribute to the empowerment of dual language individuals and communities. Language suppression is viewed through the framework of bilinguaphobia, a term coined by Faltis and Coulter in 2004. Because of the long and unique history of Spanish in Southwestern communities, the authors suggest that true empowerment must overcome the prevalent discourse of fear of bilingualism. This article suggests that the present status and identity of Latinos in the Southwestern United States would be enhanced and affirmed by the healthy co-existence of two tongues and two cultural frameworks and that social workers should recognize and advocate for the power of bilingual discourses.     

集群式中小企业现状与发展对策研究——以武汉城市圈为例

中小企业在一个特定的区域聚集，形成集群式企业，会极大地推动区域增长。通过对武汉城市圈的抽样调查表明，企业规模、创新能力、政府服务、资金与人才等是限制集群式中小企业进一步发展的障碍因素。建议通过构建区域合作机制，创新金融体制，推动区域创新体系建设，加强服务型政府建设，优化整合人力资源等措施以实现集群式中小企业可持续发展。     

How to make e-Procurement viable for SME suppliers

Due to their common role as suppliers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are especially challenged by today's turbulent business conditions. In order to meet this challenge, short-term WWW-based enterprise cooperations are regarded as an appropriate way to enhance the competitive strength of SMEs. Hence, the Institute of Machine Tools and Industrial Management (IWB) operates three so-called competence networks for engineering (www.engineering-net.de), rapid prototyping (www.rp-net.de) and manufacturing (www.produktionsnetz.de) services. For the purpose of an applied research project, more than 80 participating SME suppliers have been included in these specialized virtual markets, which are based on the core competencies of the cooperating SMEs. Additionally, the platform (www.virtueller-markt.de) enables customers to configure their specific supply chains via the above-mentioned competence networks. The presented paper depicts how to establish and operate these competence networks as well as how to configure supply chains via these virtual markets.     

Knowledge sharing for innovation performance improvement in micro/SMEs: an insight from the creative sector

Abstract

As economies become more reliant on innovative, knowledge-intensive firms, understanding the interaction between knowledge and improving innovation performance is increasingly important. Although most UK businesses are micro, small or medium-sized enterprises (micro/SMEs), knowledge management research has tended to focus on large companies Knowledge sharing can be critical for innovation performance, especially for smaller players with limited resources. Our study presents an insight from micro/SMEs operating in the highly knowledge-intensive and innovative games/entertainment software development sector. Using a mixed method approach, we investigate knowledge sharing and its contribution to firm innovation performance improvements. Our findings suggest that micro/SMEs are at the forefront of the creative sector precisely because of their smaller size. Our study reveals evidence of knowledge donation but limited evidence of knowledge collection in the knowledge sharing process. We develop a model highlighting the importance of industry context, individual knowledge and organizational size in knowledge sharing for innovation performance.     

我国中小企业国际化成长相关因素的实证分析

选取深圳证券交易所中小企业71家上市公司为样本，考察了我国中小企业国际化成长的影响因素。研究结果显示我国中小企业国际化成长与企业创业时间无关，与企业高管层的国际化知识经验水平及企业外资背景正相关，与企业资本／劳动比率和技术水平负相关。劳动密集型企业的国际化进程要优于资本密集型和高技术型企业。我国中小企业应提升高管层的国际化知识和经验水平，充分发挥“新生学习优势”，从国际化的过程中增强对国际市场机会的判断和利用能力；同时，利用外资开展内向国际化，是提高外向国际化水平的有效途径。     

中小企业学习代理机制研究

学习代理是企业通过学习代理人从外部知识源获取知识,并在组织内部分享知识进而改变组织知识基以获取竞争优势的过程.文章首先归纳了中小企业三类关键的学习代理人,即企业家个体、精英、群体;其次,结合企业实际分别给出企业在知识获取阶段和知识分享阶段中不同类型的学习代理模式,并构建了学习代理的两阶段过程模型;深入剖析了学习代理人获取知识以及组织内部分享知识的内在机制.研究结论表明,中小企业要想通过学习代理进一步提升组织的学习绩效,必须在学习代理的不同阶段及时推动学习代理人角色的转化以及知识的转移.