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This paper aims to explore the design of management teams when the critical task facing individual managers is monitoring the performance of worker teams and producing performance measures under uncertain information environments.

The authors use a multi-agent LEN framework – linear contract, exponential utility and normal density – to model the incentive provision and organizational design.

The main lesson is that the use of performance measures under uncertainty is greatly affected by the potential for free-riding in the very monitoring activities which generate the measures to begin with. Accordingly, the value of having a management team, that is the incremental benefit of having a second manager, depends on the monitoring technology. Of particular importance are the potential free-riding in monitoring effort among multiple managers and synergies gained from having more than one manager, such as correlation among the performance measures produced or improvement due to splitting workers pool into separate groups for each manager to monitor separately.

The paper pushes this line of research further by explicitly modeling the endogenous process of signal generation within a rich economic environment. In this environment, number of workers being evaluated and number of managers who produce the signals are both endogenous. Furthermore, both workers and managers are subject to moral hazard problem. In particular, the managers suffer from potential free-riding problems but may benefit from synergistic forces due to team monitoring.

Details a cross‐cultural study to expose the extent to which public concern regulates sexual‐eroticism and withdraws it from public attention; identifies a propensity towards the ideal of sexual constraint within US society, reflected by a high degree of regulation and criminalization of sexuality ‐ ranging from strict policies on sexual‐harassment to the restriction of explicit images, even for sex education purposes. Compares with the more liberal attitudes exhibited in Germany. Develops an empirical model to establish cultural differences in attitudes to sexual issues; confirms that Germans are less likely to stigmatize sexual eroticism than their American contemporaries. Concludes that Germans exhibit emotions that typify sexual emancipation, compared with the sexually constrained emotions of Americans; suggests a link between the repression of sexual emotions and violence in society.

Efforts to recruit and train ethnic minorities for the nursing profession have been slow. The barriers to diversity in nursing education can be grouped into three categories: negative perceptions of nursing as a career, use of traditional recruitment approaches, and the presence of aversive academic environments. National nursing or ganisations such as Sigma Theta Tau International, the Federal Division of Nursing, and the American Association of Colleges (AACN) agree that recruiting under‐represented groups into nursing as a priority. In response to the need for diversity in nursing education and practice, a framework for viewing nursing within the broader context of ethnic diversity in health professions is crucial. The Leadership Enhancement and Development (LEAD) for Minority Nurses in the New Millennium model provides a contemporary framework for increasing ethnic diversity and leadership in nursing.

This study aims to propose the use of time series autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models to predict gas path performance in aero engines. The gas path is a critical component of an aero engine and its performance is essential for safe and efficient operation of the engine.

The study analyzes a data set of gas path performance parameters obtained from a fleet of aero engines. The data is preprocessed and then fitted to ARIMA models to predict the future values of the gas path performance parameters. The performance of the ARIMA models is evaluated using various statistical metrics such as mean absolute error, mean squared error and root mean squared error. The results show that the ARIMA models can accurately predict the gas path performance parameters in aero engines.

The proposed methodology can be used for real-time monitoring and controlling the gas path performance parameters in aero engines, which can improve the safety and efficiency of the engines. Both the Box-Ljung test and the residual analysis were used to demonstrate that the models for both time series were adequate.

To determine whether or not the two series were stationary, the Augmented Dickey–Fuller unit root test was used in this study. The first-order ARIMA models were selected based on the observed autocorrelation function and partial autocorrelation function.

Further, the authors find that the trend of predicted values and original values are similar and the error between them is small.

The enormous success of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in becoming globally accepted accounting standards leads to challenges in the future. The purpose of this paper is to outline challenges that arise from political influences and from the pressure to sustain a successful path in the development of standards. It considers two strategies for future growth which the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) follows: the work on fundamental issues and diversification to private entities.

The development of IFRS is discussed and evaluated against insights gained from accounting theory. In particular, results from information economics illustrate potential difficulties of the development of a new conceptual framework for international accounting standards.

The main findings are: the growth strategies adopted by the IASB are risky; the conceptual framework does not sufficiently take into account the diverse objectives of financial reporting; stewardship, prudence, and aggregation can be desirable characteristics of accounting information; and standards that are developed for listed companies need not be well suited for private entities.

The paper suggests that skepticism is warranted about the viability of a consistent framework that applies globally, and that there are benefits to constrained competition among different standards.

The paper reviews academic research that has implications for standard setting and identifies key issues in developing global accounting standards.

The moral hazard problem which obstructs external equity financing of farm businesses is studied using the principal‐agent framework. We assume that the supplier of external equity capital (the principal) cannot directly observe the farmer’s (agent’s) effort, but can observe the random outcome of the effort. We solve for the optimal farm income‐sharing rule that includes an extra share to the agent. The extra share is dependent on the random outcome and is provided to induce optimal effort from the agent. Results show a farmer’s effort is inversely related to the level of risk aversion and the riskiness of the project. Thus, an investor must share more income when a farmer is more risk averse or a project is more risky.

The purpose of this paper is to perform two-dimensional numerical simulation involving fluid-structure interaction of flexible filament. The filament is tethered to the bottom of a rectangular channel with oscillating fluid flow inlet conditions at low Reynolds number. The simulations are performed using a temporal second-order finite volume-based immersed boundary method (IBM). Further, to understand the relation between different aspect ratios i.e. ratio of filament length to channel height (Len/H) and fixed channel geometry ratio, i.e. ratio of channel height to channel length (H/Lc) on mixing and pumping capabilities.

The discretization of governing continuity and Navier–Stokes equation is done by finite-volume method on a staggered Cartesian grid. SIMPLE algorithm is used to solve fluid velocity and pressure terms. Two cases of oscillatory flow conditions are used with the flexible filament tethered at the center of bottom channel wall. The first case is sinusoidal oscillatory flow with phase shift (SOFPS) and second case is sinusoidal oscillatory flow without phase shift (SOF). The simulation results are validated with filament dynamics studies of previous researchers. Further, parametric analysis is carried to study the effect of filament length (aspect ratio), filament bending rigidity and Reynolds number on the complex deformation and behavior of flexible filament interacting with nearby oscillating fluid motion.

It is found that selection of right filament length and bending rigidity is crucial for fluid mixing scenarios. The phase shift in fluid motion is also found to critically effect filament displacement dynamics, especially for rigid filaments. Aspect ratio, suitable for mixing applications is dependent on channel geometry ratio. Symmetric deformation is observed for filaments subjected to SOFPS condition irrespective of bending rigidity, whereas medium and low rigidity filaments placed in SOF condition show severe asymmetric behavior. Two key findings of this study are: symmetric filament conformity without appreciable bending produces sweeping motion in fluid flow, which is highly suited for mixing application; and asymmetric behavior shown by the filament depicts antiplectic metachronism commonly found in beating cilia. As a result, it is possible to pin point the type of fluid motion governing fluid mixing and fluid pumping. The developed computational model can, thus, successfully demonstrate filament-fluid interaction for a wide variety of similar problems.

The present study uses a temporal second-order finite volume-based IBM to examine flexible filament dynamics for various applications such as fluid mixing. Also, it highlights the relationship between channel geometry ratio and filament aspect ratio and its effect on filament sweep patterns. The study further reports the effect of filament displacement dynamics with or without phase shift for inlet oscillating fluid flow condition.

This paper investigates the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on the spatial dispersion of FDI. Using a gravity model, we find that geographic distance remains negative for bilateral FDI activities and ICT advances in source countries have no statistically significant impact on outward FDI. However, ICT advances in host countries have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between distance and FDI. In other words, although ICT does not change the regional orientation of MNEs, it has increased the ability for a country to attract FDI by increasing its attractiveness as an FDI destination in a region.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

As a kind of NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem, pipe routing design (PRD) is applied widely in modern industries. In the offshore oil and gas industry, a semi-submersible production platform is an important equipment for oil exploitation and production. PRD is one of the most key parts of the design of semi-submersible platform. This study aims to present an improved ant colony algorithm (IACO) to address PRD for the oil and gas treatment system when designing a semi-submersible production platform.

First, to simplify PRD problem, a novel mathematical model is built according to real constraints and rules. Then, IACO, which combines modified heuristic function, mutation mechanism and dynamical parameter mechanism, is introduced.

Based on a set of specific instances, experiments are carried out, and the experimental results show that the performance of IACO is better than that of two variants of ACO, especially in terms of the convergence speed and swarm diversity. Finally, IACO is used to solve PRD for the oil and gas treatment system of semi-submersible production platform. The simulation results, which include nine pipe paths, demonstrate the practicality and high-efficiency of IACO.

The main contribution of this study is the development of method for solving PRD of a semi-submersible production platform based on the novel mathematical model and the proposed IACO.