Personal identity versus national identity among Hong Kong youths – personal and social education reform after reunification

This paper examines the use of Chinese traditions for the formation of a felt Hong Kong identity and a national identity among students in the personal and social education curriculum before and after reunification with China in 1997. This paper argues that the addition of China elements to the curriculum after reunification contributes to the continuous ambiguous identity of students, which is consistent with the results of various poll surveys about the civic identity of Hong Kong people in a larger context. This is because the personal and social education reform after reunification assumed a simple correlation between the patriotic feelings of students and their knowledge of China. It does not question how the promotion of an intensely unifying ‘cultural identity’ as political commitment is differentiated from the day-to-day ‘cultural experiences’ of students.     

Will to love,will to fear: the emotional politics of illegality and citizenship in the campaign against birthright citizenship in the US

Anti-immigration activists argue that the broad inclusivity of the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment is a national security concern that enables criminalized migrant mothers to give birth to citizens who can later harm the US through violence and resource consumption. Seeing this argument as representative of the problem of inclusivity inherent to citizenship in a liberal democracy, this essay asks how the children of undocumented and temporary migrants are constructed as what Mae Ngai calls ‘alien citizens.’ Drawing from Sara Ahmed's affective economy of emotion, I find that affect and emotion figure prominently in how citizens are made ‘alien.’ Specifically love and fear function as pivot points in the anti-birthright citizenship argument, wherein the ‘real citizen’ is ‘willed’ to love and be loved by the nation and to fear the nation's Others. Moreover, the emphasis on national feelings does not evacuate white supremacy or heteronormativity from its imagination of citizenship, but instead displaces these loci of power into feeling and affect. Thus, this essay claims that the birthright citizenship argument illustrates how national love and fear work in tandem to uphold, naturalize, and expand the racial and sexual exclusions inherent to citizenship in a nation-state.     

论我国高等教育运行机制的过渡与转换

本文认为,我国现阶段的高教运行机制正处于过渡与转换的初始阶段,机制转换的完成需要经历一个较长的过渡时期.为了顺利平稳地完成机制转换,必须构建相应的过渡性目标模式,以此作为从适应产品经济到适应有计划的商品经济的高教运行机制模式转换的中介。因此,今后—个时期高教改革的基本思路就不应只朝一个方向努力,而应以国家职能转变为契机,在国家、社会和学校三方面同时展开,并辅之于教育市场的不断培育和竞争机制的逐步加强。     

规划调整决策任务分解、认知限制与决策支持

规划调整决策问题(PCDPs-Program and Control Decision Problems)都比较宏观综合,涉及面广且结构性差,决策支持需求不易确定。本论文将通过决策任务分解说明决策认知过程,并在知识分类的基础上论述完成决策任务中的认知限制,进而从扩展决策者的认知能力出发给出了决策支持基本功能设计和开发规划调整决策支持系统(PCDSS)的三层结构。     

Top management departures in cross-border acquisitions: Governance issues in an international context

This study examined top management team departures in U.S. manufacturing firms acquired by a foreign multinational during the six-year period following acquisition. Results indicated that greater cultural distance between the United States and the home country of the foreign multinational, higher levels of international integration in the target industry, and poor preacquisition performance in the U.S. target company were related to greater postacquisition top management departures. These effects were moderated significantly by the foreign acquirer’s international business and U.S. acquisition experience and showed different patterns over the short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term. Implications for future research on top management teams involved in cross-border acquisitions are discussed.     

Fostering Risk Taking in Research and Development: The Importance of a Project's Terminal Value

Large firms face a conflict in managing a portfolio of high-risk projects. When an ongoing project is thought to have a low likelihood of success, project team members take risks to improve its chances of success. However, upper-level managers who allocate resources tend to withhold resources from a project with a low likelihood of success in favor of others in the portfolio that look more promising. Because this paucity of resources influences project team members to avoid risk, the total effect of success likelihood on risk taking is conflicted. The influence on risk taking of a project's terminal value—defined as the value that remains in the firm in the event of project failure—is unequivocally positive, because both senior management resource allocation and project team risk-taking propensity are encouraged by terminal value. Thus, firms can override the ambivalent effect of likelihood of success on project decision making by focusing attention on a project's terminal value.     

Causal Linkages in Supply Chain Management: An Exploratory Study of North American Manufacturing Firms

In this paper we investigate the key causal linkages in supply chain management. We propose a conceptual framework and test this framework on data from 215 North American manufacturing firms using structural equation modeling techniques. Three major research issues are addressed in this study: Do sourcing decisions affect the degree to which firms achieve manufacturing goals of cost, flexibility, dependability, and quality? Does the degree of manufacturing goal achievement lead to higher customer responsiveness? Does the degree of manufacturing goal achievement lead to higher internal manufacturing performance? The study examines the relationship among sourcing decisions, manufacturing goals, customer responsiveness, and manufacturing performance. The results support the notion that an integrated supply chain involves aligning sourcing decisions to achieve manufacturing goals that are set to respond favorably to the needs of customers.     

Reconfiguring the Supply Network Using Current Performance Data

Reconfiguration of the supply chain network from time to time is essential for businesses to retain their competitive edge. This paper presents a methodology for reconfiguration of an existing supply chain network. The methodology is characterized by two decision levels. In the first level, the current network performance is evaluated and efficient practices are identified. In the next level, a model that incorporates efficient practices is developed to reconfigure the network. This integrated methodology allows for decision maker (DM) input throughout the process. The methodology has been implemented and tested in the reconfiguration of an outbound petroleum supply chain network for CountryMark Cooperative, Inc. In this case study, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to analyze current operations and an integer programming (IP) model that incorporates efficiency metrics is developed for selection of distribution facilities and allocation of resources to the facilities. Use of this methodology can lead to improved operations and reduced operating expenses.     

Learning by Objectives for Adaptive Shop-Floor Scheduling*

Effective production scheduling requires consideration of the dynamics and unpredictability of the manufacturing environment. An automated learning scheme, utilizing genetic search, is proposed for adaptive control in typical decentralized factory-floor decision making. A high-level knowledge representation for modeling production environments is developed, with facilities for genetic learning within this scheme. A multiagent framework is used, with individual agents being responsible for the dispatch decision making at different workstations. Learning is with respect to stated objectives, and given the diversity of scheduling goals, the efficacy of the designed learning scheme is judged through its response under different objectives. The behavior of the genetic learning scheme is analyzed and simulation studies help compare how learning under different objectives impacts certain aggregate measures of system performance.