Search results

Scrutinizes Russia’s capital markets and the state of the economy. Recounts the establishment of the US‐Russian Capital Markets Forum in 1996 and the reforms they recommended making. Looks also at banking, equities, trading equities, mutual funds, tapping foreign capital markets, government securities, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and corporate bonds – and the role they can all play in helping Russia’s economy to recover. Concludes that, in some areas, Russia has made tremendous progress. Recommends that investors need to think carefully about investment decisions before acquiring Russian securities.

Outlines Hong Kong’s financial system during the pre‐unification era. Looks at recent issues, regulatory changes and its development as an international financial centre. Considers banking, the stock market, the bond & futures market, the gold market, regulatory bodies and monetary and currency policies. Contrasts these with the pre‐unification system in China. Outlines the way that these two systems propose to exist together, looking at the potential benefits and problems this may bring.

Representatives of six prominent library system vendors—Joseph R. Matthews (Inlex), Mike Monahan (Geac), Kelvin Browne (Utlas), Carl Lee (VTLS), Michael J. Mellinger (Data Research) and Stephen R. Salmon (Carlyle)—address the key issues related to system performance. From their experiences and perspectives as vendors, they address the issues of 1) designing, configuring and sizing systems, 2) the establishment of performance criteria, 3) the use of benchmark and acceptance tests, 4) the risks of miscalculations, 5) the roles of the vendor, consultant and library, and 6) related topics.

This paper is based on seminar, workshop and lecture materials presented at national and international conferences, and follows an invitation to cover this topic as part of a one‐day conference on mental health issues in autism spectrum disorders (Staufenberg, 2005; 2007). The paper will seek to a) outline a review of the current evidence base and clinical approaches to the appraisal of risk behaviour or aggressive conduct in general and forensic psychiatric practice, before b) reviewing the current issues in the clinical risk appraisal in individuals with complex neurodevelopmental syndromes of the high functioning autism spectrum, and in particular Asperger's syndrome.References based on clinical and structured instrument‐based risk appraisal will also introduce the pertinence of assessing personality traits in individuals with Asperger's syndrome, with specific reference to forensic neuropsychiatry‐based expertise and case vignettes. A discussion of potential research directions and collaborations will conclude this introductory guide to the emerging field of forensic developmental neuropsychiatry.

College instructors are entering a new frontier of teaching in the 21st century. Millennial students are bringing to university classrooms different experiences regarding the ways they learn and engage in critical thinking. As online universities gain more popularity across the country, higher education institutions are offering more hybrid and distance-learning courses on the Internet match the demand for using technology for teaching and learning. This action research study evaluates how the Annenberg Media digital simulation The Constitutional Convention of 1787 effected student engagement in an undergraduate history course at a community college in a metropolitan region of the Southeast. Practical suggestions are provided for college level history instructors to adapt digital simulations for teaching curricular and content skills that foster critical thinking, digital literacy, and engaged learning.

Personality profiling in today’s business world has become an essential organisational development practice targeted at identifying a set of employees' traits, which differentiate an employee from one another. Given the assumption that personality traits form an essential indicator of developing the potential of an individual workforce, possible to establish how employees function in a certain job role and their suitability for the particular tasks in an organisation. This study aims to explore the relationship between personality traits, assessment centres (ACs) quality and management development in Nigeria telecommunication organisation among its managers.

The study employed multi-stage sampling techniques and further stratified the hierarchy of the management and finally used a simple random sampling strategy on each stratum. A combination of 482 managers in Nigerian telecommunication organisations participated in this study. The study investigated 12 hypotheses and 1 mediating postulation. Multiple scales were adapted to measure dimensions of endogenous and exogenous variables along the path of mediating variables of the study. The study employed a cross-sectional survey approach to administering the research instrument across all the departments among the managers of the organisations. A structural equation model of assessment was used to analyse the data collected from managers of the telecoms organisations.

The outcome of the study was significant, 10 of the postulated hypotheses were found to be significant while 3 were not significant. The study revealed that a combination of openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness and extraversion personality have no significant relationship with the AC. Also, employees who are high in neuroticism like being emotionally unstable did not find a significant relationship with the AC. In a similar situation, the combined effect of all the big-five personalities was not significant in management development among the managers of the telecommunication industry. The AC is discovered to mediate between personality traits and management development. Individually, the big-five model finds a significant relationship with AC and management development, respectively.

The study is restricted to managers of the Nigerian telecoms industry alone and not all the entire workforce. It adopted cross-sectional analysis to make an inference on all the managers of the organisations. The implication is that the period of the view of a particular point in a sequence of the event may not be representative. Another implication is that the results from the cross-sectional design are for the relationship, and they do not indicate causation.

In practice, this study has shown that personality profiling is important to managing organisational behaviour to highlight a set of traits of employees suitable for peculiar roles. This study implies that personality elements constitute a vital signal of the potential development of the workforce. It helps to illuminate an individual functioning style in a certain task situation, therefore determining both professional and managerial suitability in performing a given role.

This study seeks to examine the mediating role of mental health issues in the workplace (MHIW) in explaining the complex relationship between person-organization-fit (P.O-fit) dimensions and workers' productivity (WP) variance during COVID-19 in the Egyptian soap and detergents industry.

Using a cross-sectional survey, the authors collected data from 373 frontline workers and supervisors working at ARMA soap and detergents (ASD) factories. In-depth interviews were conducted with 14 production-lines and quality-control supervisors. The hypothesized model was analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modeling technique.

The authors found a significant, high P.O-fit level among ASD workers. The need-supplies-fit and supplementary-fit controlled MHIW. The need-supplies-fit and supplementary-fit alongside MHIW explained the growth in WP during COVID-19. The MHIW mediated the relationship between P.O-fit dimensions and WP during the pandemic.

Limited attention was paid to investigating how the P.O-fit dimensions enable frontline workers to remain productive despite the MHIW associated with COVID-19. This study bridges the aforementioned research gap by elucidating how the supplementary-fit, demand-abilities-fit and need-supplies-fit manipulate MHIW and maintain WP growth during the pandemic.

The findings provide clear guidelines for the first-line supervisors to foster the P.O-fit dimensions, control MHIW and sustain WP growth during COVID-19.

This study is among the first to add significant information on how MHIW (as mediator) explains the relationship between P.O-fit and WP growth during the pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of a hospital nursing unit that has evaluated and approved a two‐bin “e‐kanban” replenishment system based on passive high frequency radio‐frequency identification (RFID) technology.

The case study analysis is based on both qualitative and quantitative data that were collected using semi‐structured interviews, on‐site observations and experience from previous implementations. The data and simulation analysis presented in this paper were validated by key respondents thereby increasing their reliability.

Results indicate that implementing the e‐kanban RFID solution in conjunction with the redesign of the ward floor and of the roles and functions can substantially improve business and operational performance. The most important benefits for the hospital are derived from the time saved from non‐value‐added activities that can be transferred to patient care activities and the significant reduction of on‐hand inventory at distributed storage locations. The solution is considered an alternative that requires less initial investment than RFID‐enabled cabinets used in the replenishment of consignment and high‐value supplies in operating rooms and cardiac catheterization laboratories.

There is a need to conduct further research on RFID supply chain management (SCM) applications in the healthcare sector as this area holds a great potential for performance improvements. Additionally, there is a need to conduct more in‐depth research into the isolated impact of RFID technology in comparison to the change management and process redesign that it generates. One key limitation of this research is the case study approach based on a single case. This paper, therefore provides direction for practitioners on how to assess RFID's potential impact in the healthcare supply chain.

While most of the research on RFID in healthcare sector focuses on active RFID technology for asset management, this research presents a novel RFID application and contributes to our understanding of RFID's potential in intra‐organizational SCM processes.

Evaluating warfighter lethality is a critical aspect of military performance. Raw metrics such as marksmanship speed and accuracy can provide some insight, yet interpreting subtle differences can be challenging. For example, is a speed difference of 300 milliseconds more important than a 10% accuracy difference on the same drill? Marksmanship evaluations must have objective methods to differentiate between critical factors while maintaining a holistic view of human performance.

Monte Carlo simulations are one method to circumvent speed/accuracy trade-offs within marksmanship evaluations. They can accommodate both speed and accuracy implications simultaneously without needing to hold one constant for the sake of the other. Moreover, Monte Carlo simulations can incorporate variability as a key element of performance. This approach thus allows analysts to determine consistency of performance expectations when projecting future outcomes.

The review divides outcomes into both theoretical overview and practical implication sections. Each aspect of the Monte Carlo simulation can be addressed separately, reviewed and then incorporated as a potential component of small arms combat modeling. This application allows for new human performance practitioners to more quickly adopt the method for different applications.

Performance implications are often presented as inferential statistics. By using the Monte Carlo simulations, practitioners can present outcomes in terms of lethality. This method should help convey the impact of any marksmanship evaluation to senior leadership better than current inferential statistics, such as effect size measures.

Marksmanship data is a staple of military and law enforcement evaluations. This ubiquitous nature creates a critical need to use all relevant information and to convey outcomes in a meaningful way for the end users. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how simple simulation techniques can improve interpretations of marksmanship data.

This study uses three simulations to demonstrate the advantages of small arms combat modeling, including (1) the benefits of incorporating a Markov Chain into Monte Carlo shooting simulations; (2) how small arms combat modeling is superior to point-based evaluations; and (3) why continuous-time chains better capture performance than discrete-time chains.

The proposed method reduces ambiguity in low-accuracy scenarios while also incorporating a more holistic view of performance as outcomes simultaneously incorporate speed and accuracy rather than holding one constant.

This process determines the probability of winning an engagement against a given opponent while circumventing arbitrary discussions of speed and accuracy trade-offs. Someone wins 70% of combat engagements against a given opponent rather than scoring 15 more points. Moreover, risk exposure is quantified by determining the likely casualties suffered to achieve victory. This combination makes the practical consequences of human performance differences tangible to the end users. Taken together, this approach advances the operations research analyses of squad-level combat engagements.

For more than a century, marksmanship evaluations have used point-based systems to classify shooters. However, these scoring methods were developed for competitive integrity rather than lethality as points do not adequately capture combat capabilities. The proposed method thus represents a major shift in the marksmanship scoring paradigm.