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Learning rarely happens without mistakes being made. In some trial and error situations, the mistakes form an integral part of the learning process. A simple example is making an unfamiliar journey without a map. Some guesses have to be made; inevitably, some wrong turnings are taken with consequent retracing of steps once the error is discovered. If the journey has to be repeated some time later, fewer wrong turnings will be taken as the corrections originally made are remembered. The older the traveller, however, the less likely is he to adopt the proven correct route. He is more likely to repeat his original mistakes.

There are multiple perspectives of divestiture and its performance that require reconciliation. While research finds a positive market response to divestment announcement, divestiture of prior acquisitions are generally viewed negatively. The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test different explanations for the divestment of prior acquisitions.

This research employs event study to capture market reaction at acquisition announcement and subsequent divestments in a sample of 69 public US high-technology acquisitions between 2003 and 2008 that were divested by 2015. Only initial acquisitions involving public firms were included from the Thomson One Banker SDC database. Public press releases and companies’ SEC filings were reviewed to track divestitures back to prior acquisitions. Ordinary least squared regression was used to estimate coefficients.

Results indicate a positive relation between acquisition and divestiture performance around announcement dates. This finding rejects the correction of mistake explanation, suggesting that a negative stigma surrounding divestments is largely unwarranted and that investors reward capable acquirer’s divestiture decisions.

Investors do not treat all information signals at divestiture equally. For example, acquisitions made by larger and more profitable firms, or acquisitions paid for with stock, are associated with lower return upon divestiture announcement.

This study finds that investors view divestiture as a proactive strategy, suggesting firms can improve performance by actively managing acquisitions and divestments to optimize their portfolio of businesses.

Taints of corruption in public procurement (PP) exist in both developed and developing countries alike- though in different scales and with different characteristics and impacts. Attempts to achieve a taint-free procurement regulation have failed even in the most robust and mature jurisdictions due to an inherent complexity and difficulty given the paradigms used. PP systems today remain fragile to various shocks2 coming mainly from markets and corruption. This paper proposes a paradigm shift in the way in which a PP System (PPS) should be designed and practiced rendering it as “antifragile”3 as possible to benefit from shocks, stresses and disorder. Antifragile PPS design revolutionizes not only the regulations but also the frameworks and institutional setups and the whole practice of the public procurement profession in a manner that permits growth and evolution at times of stress or distress. This paradigm shift is based on a design of the PPS as a complex system.

Markets for public contracting are in the process of transition. Various public/private partnership arrangements replace conventional purchasing, especially within the local and regional government area. Municipal entities may not be in a position to define their needs up-front because they would not have the overview of what the market may have to offer. So one should ask: Is the traditional ban-on-negotiations in mandatory tender procedures (sealed bidding) - such as it is in EU public procurement law - counter-effective to genuine best value for public money? The article displays significant differences between European Union (EU) law, U.S. law and other regimes such as United Nations Model law, The World Trade Organisation’s Government Procurement Agreement (WTO/GPA), The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). New avenues for public/private demand a new agenda and the recent EU 2004 directive scheme attempts to respond to the market challenges. The author accepts that the new directive on public contracting facilitates a more smooth approach than in current EU law with regard to high-tech complicated contract awards, but questions whether the ’competitive dialogue’ really can afford tailor-made solutions to cope with long-term public/private partnership arrangements of the kind now spreading all over Europe

Focuses on large corporates’ expectations of service delivery from their bank(s). Identifies some of the constituent elements of quality operational service, and assesses their significance in the large corporate segment. First, the literature on marketing of financial services in business‐to‐business markets, service quality and relationship management is discussed. Glaserian orthodox grounded theory was used in a pilot study to identify the key elements of perceived service quality on behalf of the large corporates. This formed the basis of the research methodology. A number of elements of operational quality service are identified. They can be grouped as reliability, assurance, empathy, responsiveness and proactivity. Concludes that banks must monitor and manage functional elements of service delivery in relationship seeking accounts. They should also divide their products into relationship specific weightings.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate how cross-cultural elements such as cultural difference and stereotype are integrated into collaborative modes and actions and to explore their corresponding effectiveness.

The sample of the quantitative content analysis is drawn from the posts with the topic of China on Quora. A collaborative case, where two users have a question-and-answer interaction, is taken as the unit of analysis. The effectiveness of collaboration is operationalized as the extent to which a collaboratively produced answer is visited and favorably reviewed, using the feedback index (the number of upvotes*1,000/views). One of the sampled collaborative cases is further analyzed qualitatively to see how cultural differences, stereotypes and other factors are incorporated into users' interaction.

This content analysis reveals nine modes of collaborative production of knowledge on Quora: initial questioning, pointed answering, raising doubts, responding to others, agreeing with others, correcting mistakes, enriching content, further questioning and extending issues. Diversity of the cross-cultural acts of collaborative production, particularly two of often-used collaborative actions, correcting stereotypes and supplementing cultural differences, helps to enhance overall collaborative effectiveness.

This paper offers new perspectives and ideas for strategies to change socially problematic stereotypes, e.g. to correct stereotypes where necessary and use more convincing resources such as reliable images as collaborative actions to bridge cultural differences. It also calls on social Q&A website developers to create more international users-friendly design by providing various channels for users with diverse cultural backgrounds to interact with each other.

This study is one of the first to investigate online collaborative knowledge production within a broader cross-cultural context. Specifically, cultural factors and cross-cultural collaborative actions have been innovatively integrated into this research, enriching the dimensions that can be used for collaboration classification. It is helpful for users from different countries to actively adopting different strategies to overcome cultural differences, preconceptions and other negative factors that are not conducive to communication and knowledge acquisition.

Although enough has been written about users’ behaviour in information search, experiences with regard to their conduct within the library are very scarce. Many of the aspects are closer to psychology than to librarianship: but to improve services, it is necessary to know the client reactions, specially in situations related to the use and yield of the available resources. Among librarians a broad answer is to offer many electronic tools, all types of equipment, and qualified robots for any kind of task. Turning the library into a science‐fiction film can be attractive, but is not always the best solution: readers are not "androids". This paper tries to analyze who comes to the library and why; thus we will accompany them and see what their problems and their reactions are in order to obtain a global vision that points to possible solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to present a classification of students according to their hemispheric‐related cognitive stile.

Reviewing of former studies and correction of conceptual mistakes in a reviewed former study.

The required classification is possible, and a battery of tests has been developed.

This research is applicable for choosing for each individual student the teaching approach most suiting this student.

The suggested classification method is new. It may prevent learning problems like dyslexia and dyscalculia, and it may increase the learning level of the entire population.

Classical transaction cost theory is not applicable to decisions on HRM or organizational design. This article overcomes such a fruitless situation. First on an operative level the two types of HRM and separately organizational transaction costs will be analyzed and then linked together in a substitutive or cumulative way. Second, transaction cost analysis is extended to the higher level of strategic HRM and organization design. There both types of transaction costs are linked again. Furthermore, they control types and size of HRM and organizational transaction costs on the operative level. As a decision base consequently both levels and both types of transaction cost should be analyzed and determined simultaneously.