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Means, medians and SD for available socio‐economic status (SES) black‐white differences are here substituted for those of IQ in a between‐groups model published by the author over a decade ago. The goodness of fit of the SES variables used is compared with that for the earlier IQ data. Even when SES variables are relatively successful this can be viewed as additional evidence of the importance of IQ differences to black‐white differences in delinquency.

There has been growing interest in recent years in modelling various poverty‐related issues. However, there have not been many attempts at empirical estimation of best‐fit income distribution functions with an objective of subsequent use in poverty focused models. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by empirically estimating best‐fit income distribution functions for different household income groups and computing poverty and inequality indices for Sri Lanka.

The authors empirically estimated a number of popular distribution functions found in the income distribution literature to find the best‐fit income distribution using household income and expenditure survey data for Sri Lanka and subsequently estimated various poverty and inequality measures.

The results show that the income distributions of all low‐income household groups follow the beta general probability distribution. The poverty measures derived using these distributions show that among the different income groups, the estate low‐income group has the highest incidence of poverty, followed by the rural low‐income group.

According to the best of the authors' knowledge, empirical estimation of income distribution functions for South Asia has never been attempted. The results of this study, even though based on Sri Lankan data, will be relevant to most developing countries in South Asia and will be very useful in developing poverty alleviation strategies.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

The paper sets out to test relationships between performance improvements and the three classical manufacturing strategy paradigms of fit, best practices, and capabilities defined by Voss.

Regression analyses are carried out on an international sample of 697 manufacturers of fabricated metal products, machinery, and equipment.

The results indicate that capability learning and best practices are positively related to performance improvements in quality, flexibility, and dependability, whereas internal fit appears to be negatively related to flexibility improvements.

The study reinforces the need for research to explore the nature and role of the three paradigms jointly rather than in isolation. In particular, more research is needed to assess the merits of maintaining fit between operations structure and processes.

Improving performance in areas such as quality, flexibility, and delivery can be achieved through building capabilities and/or adopting best practices, but not apparently by maintaining internal fit between operations structure and processes.

The study validates two of the three classical paradigms of manufacturing strategy and makes the case for research to further specify and test the merits of maintaining internal fit between operations structure and processes.

Delivering negative feedback to employees is highly problematic for managers. Negative feedback is important in generating improvements in employee performance, but likely to generate adverse employee reactions. However, if managers do not address poor performance, good performers may become demoralized or exit the organization. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how managers communicate negative feedback and the factors that drive their choice of tactic.

The authors use interview data from practicing line managers with experience in delivering negative feedback to learn whether their tactic choices are consistent with Implicit (“best practice”) or Contingency (“best fit”) theory.

The authors identify five negative feedback tactics: evidence, emotive and communication tactics are foundation tactics while evidence + communication and evidence + emotive tactics are bundles of the foundation tactics. Managers apply a “best fit” approach from a set of “best practice” negative feedback options. The choice of negative feedback tactic is driven by the manager’s assessment of the “best fit” with the employee’s personality.

Most of the managers believed that their negative feedback tactic had been effective. Future researchers should investigate which negative feedback tactics employees regard as most effective.

A best fit approach to the delivery of negative feedback requires organizations to give managers discretion in the delivery of negative feedback. Managers may mis-assess fit which can undermine the effectiveness of the appraisal process.

The authors focus on how negative feedback is communicated by managers. Existing research focusses on reactions to negative feedback without taking into account how it is delivered.

The paper aims to trace the challenges that multinational companies (MNCs) face as they grow out of their national borders into foreign countries and how they attempt to transfer human resource management (HRM) policies and practices across their subsidiaries for a best-fit HRM model.

The paper uses the dilemma theory (involving two opposing values which doing one without the other creates a disadvantage but both cannot be done together) as the main analytical tool and reviews scholarly literature on MNCs’ HRM transfers for the assessment of the transfer challenges.

It is found that MNCs face a dilemma as to how to find best-fit between home-country HRM requirements and host-country demands. In the face of this dilemma, MNCs attempt to build synergy between home-country requirements and host-country demands for a best-fit HRM that is beneficial to both the parent company and their foreign subsidiaries. Despite the best-fit HRM practices to diffuse the tension, parent company has greater influence in the final synergy product which is the trade-off between home-country HRM label and host-country contextual demands, thereby advancing the dominant HRM option of the dilemma.

MNCs should be aware of the possible challenges as they internationalise and should equally be aware that though they may build a synergy (a blend of workable headquarters and subsidiary HRM), the final product will continue to favour headquarters’ HRM policies and practices.

The paper generates theoretical implications into the issues and challenges that arise with HRM transfers within multinational firms by examining how the dilemma theory sheds light on the transfer process and challenges from the dominant-contextual tension till the fight for best-fit HRM. It also contributes to the development of cycle of cross-border HRM dilemma, cross-border HRM transfer framework and Synergy-Dominant theory.

Cloud computing services gained huge attention in recent years and many organizations started moving their business data traditional server to the cloud storage providers. However, increased data storage introduces challenges like inefficient usage of resources in the cloud storage, in order to meet the demands of users and maintain the service level agreement with the clients, the cloud server has to allocate the physical machine to the virtual machines as requested, but the random resource allocations procedures lead to inefficient utilization of resources.

This thesis focuses on resource allocation for reasonable utilization of resources. The overall framework comprises of cloudlets, broker, cloud information system, virtual machines, virtual machine manager, and data center. Existing first fit and best fit algorithms consider the minimization of the number of bins but do not consider leftover bins.

The proposed algorithm effectively utilizes the resources compared to first, best and worst fit algorithms. The effect of this utilization efficiency can be seen in metrics where central processing unit (CPU), bandwidth (BW), random access memory (RAM) and power consumption outperformed very well than other algorithms by saving 15 kHz of CPU, 92.6kbps of BW, 6GB of RAM and saved 3kW of power compared to first and best fit algorithms.

The proposed multi-objective bin packing algorithm is better for packing VMs on physical servers in order to better utilize different parameters such as memory availability, CPU speed, power and bandwidth availability in the physical machine.

Outsourcing is recognized as one of the critical factors for efficient execution of pharmaceutical supply chain management (PSCM), and many pharmaceutical companies engage in international outsourcing of services (IOS) to survive in global highly competitive business. Since the key success factors for both domestic & international alliances are partnership characteristics and strategic fit management, but there is no empirical research on this issue in Thai pharmaceutical partnership offshore outsourcing. Therefore, this survey of Thai and foreign companies, both contract providers (CPs) and contract manufacturers (CMs), seeks to indicate significant relationships among both outsourcing strategic fit and partnership types, including outsourcing performance outcome. This research is two-fold. First, the partnership types (Type I, II, & III), the strategic fit types (low fit, moderate fit, and good fit), and their correlations are analyzed. And second, their outsourcing performance (company revenues and growth rates) are presented. The results showed that the most of the Thai pharmaceutical outsourcing manufacturing are classified as the partnership Type II, as well as the moderate strategic fit, and strongly support the relationship between the two models. Both of the companies’ revenue and growth rate could predict the companies’ performances outcome for each of partnership and strategic fit types. However, it is not necessary that the most integrative type of partnership, Type III, will be always the best, because it depends also on the strategic fit between each pair of partners as well.

Consists of a series of nine articles under the same title. Each article provides a different slant on the hiring process. Outlines the legal position when hiring employees and concentrates on providing a framework for managers. Covers areas including job analysis and descriptions, where to advertise and recruit, selection criteria, the interview, testing, negotiating the offer of employment and references. Briefly describes trends in employment practices and ways to minimize potential litigation through best practice.