当代设计之文化生态阐释

作为人类一项重要的创造性活动和文化的具体生存状态,设计始终贯穿于人的生产、生活当中。文章从文化生态的视角思考当代设计,寻求设计和文化生态的相适共生,旨在在全球化、多元化的文化语境里有更多人来关注中国当代设计的文化生态问题,使其在世界趋同中更具深层的内涵。     

法国里昂商会中国考察园于1895-1897年对云南的考察

19世纪末,西方殖民列强为了争夺亚洲的殖民地和海外市场,纷纷向中国及其周边地区派出考古探险团、商务考察团、地理考察团、政治军事考察团等。1895-1897年间,法国里昂商会共邀请其他12家商会,对中国西南部的云、贵、川以及广西、广东和香港地区作了商务考察,其考察成果于1898年在法国里昂出版。成果主要涉及云南的进出口产品,如矿物、鸦片、皮货、麝香、丝绸等。该考察团还调查了缅甸与中国邻省及缅甸和印度支那的贸易关系。     

分析社会交换理论在小组社会工作中的应用

小组工作之所以存在是交换的结果,即组织者和参与者之间达成了交换;同时,在小组内组员之间也存在一定的交换,且交换在小组各阶段均存在。     

Linking Work Design to Mass Customization: A Sociotechnical Systems Perspective*

Mass customization has gained increasing importance in recent years due to its ability to provide customized products efficiently and effectively, and manufacturing companies are continuously searching for ways to develop their mass‐customization ability. Despite extensive literature focusing on mass customization, few studies have systematically examined the impact of work‐design practices on a company's mass‐customization ability. Using the Sociotechnical Systems theory as a foundation, we link work‐design practices with mass‐customization ability, specifically identifying ten work‐design practices and examining their impact on mass‐customization ability using survey data and empirical research methods. The results support our hypothesized links and suggest that work‐design practices that manage both the technical and the social dimensions for achieving organization success have significant impact on a company's ability to achieve mass customization.     

Limits to Concurrency*

In the global race to bring new products to market, many firms have adopted concurrent engineering as a technique to shrink development lead time. Due to the many concurrent engineering success stories in the business and engineering literature, a common misconception has grown that more concurrency is always better. The major contribution of this paper is a rigorous demonstration that limits to concurrency exist even in the simplified situation in which concurrency is modeled as the number of design modules to be executed in parallel. As complexities such as communication linkages between modules are layered onto our basic model, we show that the expected project completion time is minimized at a finite number of modules, a number that decreases with increasing problem complexity. In general, the more complex the project, the stricter the limits to concurrency. This strongly suggests that project managers should be cognizant of the potentially adverse effects of pushing concurrency too far.     

Effects of Source and Participant Anonymity and Difference in Initial Opinions in an EMS Context*

This laboratory experiment studied the effects of source and participant anonymity, and differences in initial opinions in an electronic meeting system (EMS) context. Results indicated that (a) inhibition to participate did not mediate the effect of anonymity on participation as suggested in prior deindividuation and EMS literature; and (b) the effect of anonymity on participation, satisfaction, and postdiscussion agreement depended on the level and type of anonymity involved and whether initial opinions among group members were similar or different. A mechanism that suggests that anonymity may cause participants to focus more on their task by turning attention away from other participants partly accounts for the effects of source and participant anonymity on participation in this study. Future work should focus on determining how different types and levels of anonymity influence process and outcomes in different types of groups.     

Managing Delphi Surveys Using Nonparametric Statistical Techniques*

Information systems researchers have often turned to a variant of the Delphi survey technique to support their research of key issues in their field. Two particular weaknesses of past studies using this approach have been a lack of a definitive method for conducting the research and a lack of statistical support for the conclusions drawn by the researchers. In this paper, the author presents a method, based on nonparametric statistical techniques, to conduct ranking-type Delphi surveys, perform analysis, and report results. The author takes this one step further by illustrating an actual analysis of a Delphi survey. The analysis is compared to results that were presented without the benefit of the author's approach. This paper shows that use of the advocated approach can streamline and strengthen studies, improve the validity of results, and thus better serve the consumers of the research findings. Since the ranking-type Delphi is so popular among information systems researchers, a consistent method is needed to apply to their data collection, analysis, and reporting of results. This paper provides such a method in concise form and illustrates the use of the method in a manner affording comparison between it and previous practice.     

A Virtual Cellular Manufacturing Approach to Batch Production*

In this paper, Virtual Cellular Manufacturing (VCM), an alternative approach to implementing cellular manufacturing, is investigated. VCM combines the setup efficiency typically obtained by Group Technology (GT) cellular manufacturing (CM) systems with the routing flexibility of a job shop. Unlike traditional CM systems in which the shop is physically designed as a series of cells, family-based scheduling criteria are used to form logical cells within a shop using a process layout. The result is the formation of temporary, virtual cells as opposed to the more traditional, permanent, physical cells present in GT systems. Virtual cells allow the shop to be more responsive to changes in demand and workload patterns. Production using VCM is compared to production using traditional cellular and job shop approaches. Results indicate that VCM yields significantly better flow time and due date performance over a wide range of common operating conditions, as well as being more robust to demand variability.     

论刘裕北伐后秦与南北对峙的形成——兼论弃守关中之原因

东晋权臣刘裕北伐后秦之战取得了巨大的成功,刘裕由此积累了巨大的威望,得以成功地代晋建宋。此役改变了北方的政治格局与民族势力的分布,为北魏统一北方提供了战略机遇,在此基础上,中国历史开始向南北对峙的方向演进。对于刘裕而言,弃守关中的首要原因在于刘穆之猝然逝世导致京口集团内部发生力量变动。考虑到东晋的实力和战略全局,放弃关中是有利的战略选择。     

Identifying and Explaining Different Poverty Trajectories Using a Group‐based Trajectory Analysis – A Case Study of South Korea

In this study, we propose a group‐based trajectory analysis to examine why and how people fall into and out of poverty despite spiralling public expenditure on anti‐poverty policies. By analyzing the poverty experiences of 1,001 low‐income households between 1999 and 2008 in Korea, we identify five groups based on their poverty trajectories: exiting, declining, slowly rising, rapidly rising and chronic. Household members in each group demonstrate heterogeneous labour market experiences, educational levels and demographic factors. The exiting group has a high proportion of full‐time workers, high school graduates, and younger and male‐headed households, whereas the chronic group has more part‐time workers, high school dropouts, and older and female‐headed households. Among the declining, slowly rising and rapidly rising groups, educational background, age and sex are factors that differentiate the poverty dynamics of household members. Lastly, a number of social policies for helping low‐income households to leave and stay out of poverty are proposed.