Search results

Josh Williams is a Student at the NAU who has driven buses on campus and wants to improve the transportation on campus. He is convinced that purchasing a new type of bus that is more fuel efficient, has larger capacity, better designed for boarding, and has a longer life is worth the higher purchase cost. He sets out to prove it by creating a discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis. Since many of the estimates for the DCF analysis are uncertain, he decides to perform a Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) analysis. Students are asked to step into Josh’s role and perform the analysis.

Josh Williams was a Student in the authors’ MBA program. Both authors teach in this program and one author was the Advisor for Net Impact and worked with Josh to present his idea to the university administration. The authors have changed a name or two but otherwise, the case describes a real situation in a real organization without disguise.

The authors have used this case in a first semester MBA-Applied Management course, Decision Modeling and Simulation. Students already have experience with DCF analysis and have been introduced to MCS. With this case, students apply MCS at the conclusion of a three-week module on predictive analytics. Students have run at least two MCS models and have become comfortable with the software. The case would also be appropriate for a senior-level undergraduate course such as business analytics or management science. It might also be useful for other courses that include the MCS modeling technique learning objectives such as project management.

This case provides an opportunity for students to perform an MCS analysis. MCS is useful when many of the inputs to a DCF analysis (or any model) have been estimated and the modeler is concerned that the estimates are uncertain and could perhaps be a range of values. MCS can be used to understand the effect of this uncertainty on NPV which in turn may affect the decision. The case could also be used without MCS focusing just on the DCF analysis with deterministic sensitivity analysis.

There are very few Black children in programs for gifted children when both historical and contemporary research indicate that such environments contain elements very similar to those described as advantageous for Black children. Presented here is an overview of the research regarding Black children’s learning styles, multiple intelligences, and cultural expectations around adult-child interactions and a comparison to characteristics of gifted (and potentially gifted) children. In addition, the evolution and refinement of the definition of giftedness is outlined along with the impact of those definitions on Black children. The identification, assessment, and testing processes used to place students in gifted programs are outlined along with policies (e.g., universal screening) and practices (e.g., more multicultural education and gifted education in teacher in-service and pre-service education) that can transform gifted programs into diverse and inclusive learning environments where gifted Black students learn, grow, and thrive. Finally, classroom practices that cultivate the genius and giftedness of Black children are presented – practices that give teachers an opportunity to add to their repertoire of strategies and pedagogy in order to increase their ability to create more inclusive learning environments that benefit all children in general and Black children in particular.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the role played by three archetypal constructs pertaining to the individual sustainability-oriented entrepreneur, namely prior knowledge, sustainability orientation and sustainability intention, in legitimation behavior and explores their strategic utility.

The author studies legitimacy-seeking behavior in the case of ten sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs. A qualitative case study approach is used, capturing evidence of legitimation behavior in the startup phase through interviews, participant observation and documentation analysis.

Prior knowledge and sustainability orientation appear to offer little value beyond their role as necessary factors in maintaining legitimacy. Both appear to have limited strategic value for legitimation in comparison to sustainability intention. Intention as a construct embodies the “paradox” of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship, and learning to successfully overcome this paradox to strategically utilize intention in legitimation is crucial for these entrepreneurs.

Knowledge of these factors could assist sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs in strategically utilizing these factors as agency when dealing with diverse stakeholder expectations to achieve their enterprising goals. Strengthening knowledge on factors important for legitimacy is pertinent in supporting this shared value approach to entrepreneurship.

Little theoretical or empirical attention has been paid to the complexity of strategic legitimation behavior of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs. This paper provides novel empirical insight into what role these archetypal factors play in legitimation behavior and how they can be strategically utilized.

Prevailing explanations of the US secession crisis trace the latter’s origins to slavery and slaveowners’ interests. The central problem with all such explanations, however, is that the Whig Party, the party of the largest slaveowners, opposed secession until the mid-1850s. Why did southern Whigs and their planter base resist secession through the political crisis over slavery only to fold by 1861? Drawing on archival electoral returns by precinct, party newspapers, speeches, and personal correspondence from antebellum Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, I argue for an institutional and sequential approach to the secession crisis that does not take social actors’ individual interests as given, but rather as naturalized and denaturalized in the back and forth struggle of political parties to advance competing solutions to the problem of preserving slavery.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY may seem to many to be as dry as dust and I must admit to having subscribed to that view about some bibliographies in the past. This is one, for a number of reasons, about which I feel differently. For me, after nearly a quarter of a century's involvement in a particular area of librarianship, browsing through the pages is an evocative experience, like a meeting with friends. Some whose work is recorded here I never knew but reading about them and studying their writings over the years has produced an illusion of their being old and close companions; and there are those who were friends whose voices can still be heard in memory. Some authors cited I hope yet to meet because their views and ideas are challenging and awaken a sympathetic response or make me want to start an argument. Still others are former colleagues from whom I learnt much and whose example has been inspirational, and then there are those who are staunch friends, without whose support and co‐operation my professional existence would be very dull indeed.

Inconsistencies and contradictions in the US government's story of hijackers and their masterminds are examined to account for what happened on 9-11. A little-known initial FBI list of 19, scrutinized for four names not on its final list, calls into question the FBI naming process. We discovered 11 of the FBI-named finalists could not have been on those planes, with 10 still alive and another's identity improvised by a double. The Dulles videotape, essentially the government's case that hijackers boarded the 9-11 flights, is found to have serious problems including authentication, as does the so-called bin Laden “confession” video.

Were “hijackers” known to be in the US before intelligence alleges it knew? Evidence is examined which shows that they were closely monitored by agencies which denied this knowledge; in particular, an undercover FBI agent lived with them the prior year.

Noting government refusal to disclose evidence called for by investigators, we find some pieces altered or fabricated and others confiscated or destroyed. Other revelations point to hijackers with national security overrides, protection in their alternate roles as drug traffickers, and deep political connections with government elites. We investigate patterns, reminiscent of historical intelligence involvement, revealing the presence of a covert intelligence operation disguised as an outside enemy attack.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the perceived enjoyment that is derived from spectators observing other spectators’ dysfunctional behavior during a game.

Using four forms (i.e. fighting, verbal assault, disrupting play and throwing missiles) of spectators dysfunctional behavior (SDB), two experiments (N = 252 for Study 1 and N = 92 for Study 2) were conducted in which video clips corresponding to the four types of SDB were used as experimental stimuli.

The findings indicate that participants enjoyed viewing spectators running onto the field of play significantly more than the other forms of SDB (i.e. fighting, verbal assaults and throwing missiles). The results also show no significant difference between how much spectators enjoyed the actions of fighting, verbal assault and throwing missiles.

The novelty of this study include the usage of a multidimensional approach to the concept of SDB and testing for a positive outcome pertaining to SDB that has largely, if not fully, been examined using negative inputs and outputs.

I HAVE learned, with considerable relief, that the Library Association is taking no notice whatever of the peculiar suggestion in NLW's editorial last month that they rush not to appoint a new Secretary to succeed Mr Hilliard in September.

THE new library building has been open for six months now. It is pleasantly situated in an area of new buildings, and occupies a prominent island site just on the edge of the shopping centre. The old library was in the middle of a shopping area, and it has been interesting to note that our removal from that site has had a more considerable effect on the traffic pattern than one would have thought.

THE first number of a new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD offers an occasion for brief retrospect and reflection. For seventeen years the magazine has appeared regularly, untrammelled by official connexion and presenting a catholic view of libraries and the library profession. It began its career at a time when discussions of methods such as open‐access, classified cataloguing, and even library bulletins, created an excitement which they rarely create now; and in these and all subsequent discussions THE LIBRARY WORLD has endeavoured to keep level with, or even in advance of, the best opinion of the day. The leading men in the profession—both living and dead—have contributed to these pages; and altogether the magazine has stood consistently for progress, for advanced methods, and for the importance and dignity of the librarian's office.