OPTIMAL PROJECT SEQUENCING WITH RECOURSE AT A SCARCE RESOURCE

We develop a dynamic prioritization policy to optimally allocate a scarce resource among K projects, only one of which can be worked on at a time. When the projects' delay costs differ, the problem (a “restless bandit”) has not been solved in general. We consider the policy of working on the project with the highest expected delay loss as if the other project was completely finished first (although recourse is allowed). This policy is optimal if: (1) the delay cost increases with the delay regardless of the performance state, (2) costs are not discounted (or, discounting is dominated by delay costs), (3) projects are not abandoned based on their performance state during processing at the scarce resource, and (4) there are no stochastic delays. These assumptions are often fulfilled for processing at specialized resources, such as tests or one‐off analyses.     

Unsettling connections: transnational networks,development and African home associations

With the transnational turn in the social sciences attention has now turned to ‘global civil society’, ‘transnational civil society’, ‘transnational networks’ and, most recently, ‘migrant’ or ‘diasporic civil society’. Claims are being made about the developmental potential of these new configurations of civil society, and the global connections forged by migrant and diaspora associational life have been reified into things called ‘networks’ for the purpose of enrolling them into development policy. In this article, we challenge the network model through an analysis of transnational Cameroonian and Tanzanian home associations. The idea of a network suggests an overly robust and ordered set of linkages for what are in effect often loose and transient connections. African home associations draw attention to the historically‐embedded and mundane ways in which forms of associational life can be ‘transnational’ outside the formalized structures and Eurocentric development hierarchies created by international NGOs and other development institutions. Although they form largely invisible connections operating outside these hierarchies, African home associations unsettle assumptions about the geography of civil society and its relationship with development. Close attention to the histories and geographies of African home associations reveals that power and agency more often lie with migrants and elites within Africa than with the transnational diaspora.     

THE EFFECT OF LEARNING ON THE MAKE/BUY DECISION

By including the effects of learning over time on both the production of components and their integration into complete products, we develop an engineering‐based model of outsourcing. This model provides an alternative explanation for much of what other outsourcing theories predict, as well as making several new predictions. In particular, we show that outsourcing decisions can create a path‐dependent outsourcing trap in which a firm experiences higher long‐run costs after an immediate cost benefit. We also describe conditions under which outsourcing a small fraction of component production may dominate either complete insourcing or complete outsourcing. Finally, we show that, with discounting, there is a convex, curvilinear relationship between the optimal outsourcing fraction and the rate of technological change.     

Graduates Construction Systems and Career Development

The paper draws on the Chicago School'sconceptualization of career and on Personal ConstructPsychology to examine the relationships betweengraduates construction systems and patterns of careerdevelopment during the first 4 years of employment. Itseeks to identify differences in trends of constructiverevision between successful and less successfulgraduates. The study is based on 33 graduates whocompleted repertory grids on entering employment (T1), 6months later (T2), and 4 years later (T3), re-elicitingconstructs each time. The results show some significantchange in the nature of the constructs elicited by graduates over the 4 years; in particular,graduates made greater use of constructs related toachievement, cynicism, and organizational politics.Graduates whose career was more successful (i.e., who experienced one or two promotions during the 4years of the study and felt generally satisfied withtheir careers) were more likely to use constructsrelated to social behavior and flexibility at T1, while graduates whose career was less sucessful(i.e., no promotion and felt dissatisfied with theircareers) were more likely to construe themselves interms of achievement and work competence at T1. Fouryears on, successful graduates tended to rely more onconstructs related to achievement and flexibility, whileless successful graduates were more likely to useconstructs related to social behavior. The significance and implications of these results fororganizational recruitment and development practices arediscussed.