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In a typical apparel plant, there may be hundreds of machines, hundreds of employees and thousands of bundle subassemblies all simultaneously active. It is the responsibility of the manager to optimise through‐put and/or make efficient use of employee and machine resources and/or keep work‐in‐process inventory levels low. Ideally, to be able to deal with this complexity of scheduling, a manager would like to be presented with a handful of numbers which indicate how the plant is operating. A set of performance metrics which provide a manager with information concerning plant performance are identified and quantified. A mathematical analysis of many factors which concern plant performance are presented. The metrics enable a large amount of information to be condensed to summary form so that performance of an operational plan can be easily understood and lead to swift evaluation of that plan. The set contains about 70 metrics which the manager is free to interpret according to his/her operational goals.

Fieldwork is one of the hallmarks of anthropology. Almost all students of anthropology have geographical and cultural specializations, ranging from a small group to a nation. Their interest areas are often identified or marked by real or putative boundaries; and it is within these boundaries that anthropologists have “founded” their own villages and tribes — “my village”, “my tribe.”

Focuses on measuring changes in productivity related to ergonomic improvements. Although most ergonomic studies focus on health benefits, describes a project which used a “real‐time shopfloor control system” to collect objective data to determine what effect, if any, the use of ergonomically designed chairs have on the productivity of apparel‐manufacturing employees. Subjective (interview) and objective data were collected in two apparel plants over a period of several months. Both “before” and “after” data were analysed to discover if fatigue or other factors related to productivity were changed.

Performance of an automated storage and retrieval system such as a carousel depends upon the way it is loaded. Commonly a carousel will be loaded with cases of items that will be removed in groups. A group is a specified number of items of each type. For example, a group might constitute the collection of parts needed to manufacture one garment. Typically the storage system operator wants to retrieve as many groups as possible without running out of items of any type. We present a fast algorithm that prescribes how many cases of each item type should be loaded, yielding a maximal number of groups.

This study examines the relationship between managerial overconfidence and corporate financing decisions by constructing proxies for managerial overconfidence based on the track records of earnings forecasts in Japanese listed firms. We find that managers have the stable tendency to forecast overly upward earnings compared to actual ones and that their upward bias decreases the probability of issuing equity in the public market by about 4.7 percent per one standard error, which economically has the strongest impact on financing decisions. This tendency is observed when we employ alternative measures for managerial overconfidence and other model specifications. However, in private placements, the choice to offer equity is not always avoided by managers. This implies that managers place private equity with the expectation of the certification effect

Asil Nadir stands accused of fraud and theft. The sums involved are massive. He is openly accused of the misappropriation of about £371 million. In private, the figure is thought to be substantially greater. However, contradictory views are promoted to account for this situation and his ultimate downfall. For example, (i) the regulatory administrators allege that Nadir is a criminal who misappropriated company funds; (ii) Nadir's conspiracy theory counterclaims the accusations of fraud and theft with a claim of conspiracy based on the actions of the establishment (the Inland Revenue, the VAT Office, the Serious Fraud Squad, banks and pressure groups), which was bent on his downfall; and (iii) the alternative view is that Nadir was an accident waiting to happen. His cultural background, characteristics and traits are entrepreneurial in nature, but ultimately these proved dysfunctional given the structural development of his company.

In this paper, I demonstrate an alternative explanation to the development of the American electricity industry. I propose a social embeddedness approach (Granovetter, 1985, 1992) to interpret why the American electricity industry appears the way it does today, and start by addressing the following questions: Why is the generating dynamo located in well‐connected central stations rather than in isolated stations? Why does not every manufacturing firm, hospital, school, or even household operate its own generating equipment? Why do we use incandescent lamps rather than arc lamps or gas lamps for lighting? At the end of the nineteenth century, the first era of the electricity industry, all these technical as well as organizational forms were indeed possible alternatives. The centralized systems we see today comprise integrated, urban, central station firms which produce and sell electricity to users within a monopolized territory. Yet there were visions of a more decentralized electricity industry. For instance, a geographically decentralized system might have dispersed small systems based around an isolated or neighborhood generating dynamo; or a functionally decentralized system which included firms solely generating and transmitting the power, and selling the power to locally‐owned distribution firms (McGuire, Granovetter, and Schwartz, forthcoming). Similarly, the incandescent lamp was not the only illuminating device available at that time. The arc lamp was more suitable for large‐space lighting than incandescent lamps; and the second‐generation gas lamp ‐ Welsbach mantle lamp ‐ was much cheaper than the incandescent electric light and nearly as good in quality (Passer, 1953:196–197).

This paper examines the determinants of corporate dividend policy in Jordan. The study uses a firm‐level panel data set of all publicly traded firms on the Amman Stock Exchange between 1989 and 2000. The study develops eight research hypotheses, which are used to represent the main theories of corporate dividends. A general‐to‐specific modeling approach is used to choose between the competing hypotheses. The study examines the determinants of the amount of dividends using Tobit specifications. The results suggest that the proportion of stocks held by insiders and state ownership significantly affect the amount of dividends paid. Size, age, and profitability of the firm seem to be determinant factors of corporate dividend policy in Jordan. The findings provide strong support for the agency costs hypothesis and are broadly consistent with the pecking order hypothesis. The results provide no support for the signaling hypothesis.

This paper aims to investigate the association among trustee board diversity (TBD), corporate governance (CG), capital structure (CS) and financial performance (FP) by using a sample of UK charities. Specifically, the authors investigate the effect of TBD on CS and ascertain whether CG quality moderates the TBD–CS nexus. Additionally, the authors examine the impact of CS on FP and ascertain whether the CS–FP nexus is moderated by TBD and CG quality.

The authors use a number of multivariate regression techniques, including ordinary least squares, fixed-effects, lagged-effects and two-stage least squares, to rigorously analyse the data and test the hypotheses.

First, the authors find that trustee board gender diversity has a negative effect on CS, but this relationship holds only up to the point of having three women trustees. The authors find similar, but relatively weak, results for the presence of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) trustees. Second, the authors find that the TBD–CS nexus depends on the quality of CG, with the relationship being stronger in charities with higher frequency of meetings, independent CG committee and larger trustee and audit firm size. Third, the authors find that CS structure has a positive effect on FP, but this is moderated by TBD and CG quality. The evidence is robust to different econometric models that adjust for alternative measures and endogeneities. The authors interpret the findings within explanations of a theoretical perspective that captures insights from different CG and CS theories.

Existing studies that explore TBD, CG, CS and FP in charities are rare. This study distinctively attempts to address this empirical lacuna within the extant literature by providing four new insights with specific focus on UK charities. First, the authors provide new evidence on the relationship between TBD and CS. Second, the authors offer new evidence on the moderating effect of CG on the TBD-CS nexus. Third, the authors provide new evidence on the effect of CS on FP. Finally, the authors offer new evidence on the moderating effect of TBD and CG on the CS–FP nexus.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the correlation between rates of food‐poisoning in England and Wales due to the bacterium, Campylobacter, and the frequency of doorstep delivery of milk. Thermophilic campylobacters, particularly C. jejuni continue to be the most common cause of acute bacterial enteritis in the Western world.

Data relating to the frequency of milk doorstep delivery in the UK were compared to data on laboratory reports of Campylobacter isolated from faecal material in England and Wales and expressed graphically.

There does not appear to be any visible correlation between a falling rate of doorstep delivery of milk and Campylobacter food‐poisoning.

These data may indicate that although bird‐pecked milk is a recognized epidemiological risk factor for the acquisition of campylobacteriosis, the frequency and significance of this means acquiring the infection may not be as common as has been previously suggested.