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Preface The functions of business divide into several areas and the general focus of this book is on one of the most important although least understood of these—DISTRIBUTION. The particular focus is on reviewing current practice in distribution costing and on attempting to push the frontiers back a little by suggesting some new approaches to overcome previously defined shortcomings.

Addresses the standardization of the measurements and the labels for concepts commonly used in the study of work organizations. As a reference handbook and research tool, seeks to improve measurement in the study of work organizations and to facilitate the teaching of introductory courses in this subject. Focuses solely on work organizations, that is, social systems in which members work for money. Defines measurement and distinguishes four levels: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Selects specific measures on the basis of quality, diversity, simplicity and availability and evaluates each measure for its validity and reliability. Employs a set of 38 concepts ‐ ranging from “absenteeism” to “turnover” as the handbook’s frame of reference. Concludes by reviewing organizational measurement over the past 30 years and recommending future measurement reseach.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology for the comparison of business units and to illustrate its implementation. Job stress is introduced as a mediator variable. A postal company is taken as a case study and its three business units are compared. The units (i.e. employees who have direct contact with customers) analyzed are postal clerks, couriers and call center operators.

Quantitative data were collected using two questionnaires: the first to assess the state of predefined organizational parameters, and the second to measure the stress levels of employees. The χ² test of independence (χ² test) and Fisher’s exact test are used to calculate correlation. Work stress score and stress distribution index, which are proposed in this study, are used to quantify the levels of stress, the state of organizational parameters and possible improvement points, as well as to compare the business units.

According to the results, the most demanding job is that of couriers, followed by postal clerks and call center operators.

The proposed model could be used to assess and improve businesses and to reduce the stress levels of employees. Further, a model for the comparison of business units might be a useful tool for managers in defining working hours, breaks, length of holiday periods and even in creating a wage structure.

Reports the results of an empirical investigation conducted for the purposes of exploring the issue of unit selection and the sales comparison approach. The proximate motivation of this study was in determining how non‐reinforcing appraisal estimates may be addressed. The investigation proceeds by exploring two possible criteria through which the reliability of appraisal estimates may be measured. The first involves the percentage error made in price per unit of comparison (UOC), while the second concerns the total valuation error in the appraisal of real property. Results involve the utilization of the coefficient of variation and the Markov inequality, and may assist appraisers when different units of comparison yield non‐reinforcing estimates of value. It is shown that maximum confidence in guaranteeing that the percentage error between the estimated and actual price per UOC lies within a tolerance level chosen ex‐ante obtains through choosing the UOC with the minimum coefficient of variation. Total valuation error is minimized as a function of the standard deviation for the price per UOC, the sample size, and the UOC’s value for the real property being appraised. While minimum per unit percentage error may be obtained utilizing a particular UOC, the minimization of total valuation error may imply the utilization of an alternative unit. It is shown for the empirical analysis conducted, that when two common units of comparison are considered ‐ acreage and front footage ‐ both percentage and total valuation error were minimized through the use of price per acre rather than price per front foot.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

Action in international marketing is usually preceded by research. Most international marketing research reports are built on a skeleton of currently available international socio‐economic, demographic and social indicators. The author in this paper argues that the currently available indicators used by marketing analysts have in many cases little comparative value and are in many cases inadequate for, or irrelevant to, the requirements of marketing. He uses in illustration the needs of a specific project that had as its objective the prediction of the different levels of retail distribution in Western Europe. The limitations of available international indicators are analysed. Preferable alternatives are proposed. Some of these require original research: others the restructuring of existing data. It is also urged that it is a basic pre‐requisite that international marketing analysis be made at the level of the sub‐national region — not at national level. The formation of a specifically‐oriented Marketing Indicators Working Party is proposed.

1.1. Logical Necessity of the Three Dimensions as a Unit of Thought The mathematician does not look kindly on the simple question of why natural space should consist of precisely three dimensions. Instead of giving an answer he assumes a silent smile and shows us a version of space with an infinity of dimensions, as if space were some kind of toy for him to fiddle with to his heart's content.

This paper aims to address the problem of real‐time control and monitoring of a failure prone manufacturing system in an intelligent and optimum way. This paper also aims to bridge the existence of a gap between maintenance systems and production systems.

A fuzzy logic based controller is used to achieve the desired target. Monitoring the process is performed by means of using supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. The integration between the fuzzy logic controller (FLC) and SCADA system is also presented. The software is developed and used to monitor and control a miniaturised system in online and real‐time condition.

This paper shows that by using fuzzy logic, the relationship between inputs and outputs is clearly shown, which eventually provide more tractable result than the dynamical analysis one. Moreover, the response surface generated by the fuzzy logic offers visual aid, adaptive and flexible operation to investigate the inputs and outputs relationships.

Future research direction would be to embed such a model into a user‐friendly software. A further development would be to investigate means of generating the rule‐based directly from the data without the need for eliciting knowledge from experts.

This paper provided a practical applications that can help solving the problem of lack of real‐time control and monitoring of a failure prone manufacturing system in an intelligent an optimum way. This paper also helped in bridging the existing gap between maintenance systems and production systems.

The results of the performance comparisons show that in most studied cases, the performance of the developed system is better than the classical analytic approach.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

In this paper, we examine the comparative advantage of Korea and China while focusing on their technology level. The three digit SITC (Standard International Trade Classification) data is classified by technology level and the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) is derived from 1992-2009 by using UN COMTRADE data. For careful interpretation of the comparative advantage and technology levels, we also examined intra-industry trade and unit values of bilateral Korea-China trade, and semi-conductor industry technology. We found that the revealed comparative advantage has moved from low technology products to high technology products in Korea. China still maintains a comparative advantage in low technology products such as textiles and clothing, but at the same time, China’s high and medium-high technology products have recently gained a comparative advantage. The perception that China only has a comparative advantage for labor intensive products with low technology should be changed based on our analysis. However, China’s advancement in technology should not be overestimated. When comparing the unit value of basic materials of Korea’s and China’s exports, we found that Korea’s export product prices are on average higher than that of China’s, although the gap is reducing. A wider technology gap between Korea and China still exists in the semi-conductor industry, which is one of the most advanced high technology industries throughout the world.