Joining forces,fortunes, and futures: Restructuring and adaptation in nonprofit hospice organizations

Nonprofit organizations operate in tumultuous times characterized by constrained funding, increased competition, and greater demand for social services. Existing bases of intangible and tangible assets often are insufficient to fulfill service missions. These organizations appear to be responding by joining forces and restructuring to better accommodate diminished resources. Relatively little is known about the reorganization strategies being employed. The study described in this chapter examined the phenomenon of organizational restructuring among nonprofit hospice organizations. In particular, it identified the factors that propel nonprofits to pursue restructuring as a strategic solution, the elements that impede such restructuring efforts, and how organizations that pursue and implement restructuring differ from those that do not. The study found that an organization's relative placement along a continuum of political and economic strength is determinative in the outcome of its restructuring efforts. Those that take affirmative steps operate from a position of economic strength and exhibit independence in governance and decision making; those that do not are impeded by internal political factors.     

Dynamic booking rules for flights with an intermediate stop

A feasible model has been developed to find the optimal decision rule for allocating seats to passengers seeking to fly on the long or short span of a flight with an intermediate stop from which no boarding rights exist to take passengers to the terminal stop. The model is feasible from the point of view of estimating the data and of computer calculation and memory capacity and is implementable under real life conditions. A computer program was written and a short sample problem was calculated to show the differences in computation time and memory requirements vs the loss of revenue in comparison with a complicated and thus unfeasible higher order model.