Ethics of a Sustainable Enterprise—and the Need for it

In the modern global economy, new criteria are needed to describe the most modern enterprises: Sustainable Enterprise (SE) and Sustainable Enterprise Ethics (SEE). Long-term existence and development of humans and organisations depend, largely, on application of the sustainable development (SD) concept. Already, some enterprises consider the modern conditions and apply the requisite synergy of economic, ecological, social and ethical aims. They can be called Sustainable Enterprises (SEs). Suitable activities of SEs depend on their ethics even more than on their knowledge—Sustainable Enterprise Ethics. Attainment of SEE demands innovation of values, culture and behaviour of all critical SEs’ participants for them to understand, achieve and use SEE as a more/requisitely holistic practice, based on ethics of interdependence (EI). We offer some new suggestions on why humans need SE and SEE and suggest ways to create and implement EI as SEE in and for SEs rather than the traditional one-sided business behaviour.

Emergence: A Systems Theory’s Challenge to Ethics

The paper reconstructs Niklas Luhmann’s diagnosis of the dysfunctional character of moral communication in the modern society by emphasizing the emergent character of today’s moral problems. In the systems-theoretic literature, emergence means the irreducibility of the properties of the whole to the characteristics of its parts. Two arguments have been advanced. First, the dysfunctional character of moral communication has been traced back to the emergent character of many moral problems. Moral communication has thus been shown to be not inherently dysfunctional, but rather needful of semantic forms that take account of the emergent properties of the economic and other social systems. Second, these properties highlight the moral aspect of the precariousness of system–environment relations as seen by Luhmann. As a moral problem, this precariousness can be resolved through greater sensitivity of social systems to their environment, social and natural alike. Accordingly, the emergent properties of the economic and other social systems can be captured by recasting the concept of responsibility as the individual-level or organizational-level projection of the environmental sensitivity of these systems.     

Modeling for a Manpower System and Its Subsystems

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Management and Employees’ Collaboration: Is the Norwegian Work Life Model Suited for All?

Norway’s work life is known for its strong emphasis on the collaboration between employees, unions and managers. This article explores two case studies: two companies who are part of the same group of companies with the same owners, who are introducing broad collaboration. The same process was used to change employees’ participation in the development processes, but the results were different for each company. In this article we explore the factors that influence the implementation of broad collaboration between employees, unions and managers in the light of the Norwegian work life model and of the regional traditions. When introducing new collaboration patterns between managers, union and employees in a company, it is important to take regional traditions into consideration. One of the companies succeeded in implementing direct manager-employee collaboration, and the other company failed to implement broad collaboration. This article explores the reasons behind the different results. It further explores the experience from the two cases, and asks the question is the Norwegian work life model suited for all? The article suggests strategies for how to create an environment for broad collaboration in companies that have no such tradition.     

Comprehensive G?bner Basis Theory for a Parametric Polynomial Ideal and the Associated Completion Algorithm

Gr?bner basis theory for parametric polynomial ideals is explored with the main objective of mimicking the Gr?bner basis theory for ideals. Given a parametric polynomial ideal, its basis is a comprehensive Gr?bner basis if and only if for every specialization of its parameters in a given field, the specialization of the basis is a Gr?bner basis of the associated specialized polynomial ideal.For various specializations of parameters, structure of specialized ideals becomes qualitatively different even though there are significant relationships as well because of finiteness properties. Key concepts foundational to Gr?bner basis theory are reexamined and/or further developed for the parametric case:(i) Definition of a comprehensive Gr?bner basis,(ii) test for a comprehensive Gr?bner basis,(iii) parameterized rewriting,(iv) S-polynomials among parametric polynomials,(v) completion algorithm for directly computing a comprehensive Gr?bner basis from a given basis of a parametric ideal. Elegant properties of Gr?bner bases in the classical ideal theory, such as for a fixed admissible term ordering,a unique Gr?bner basis can be associated with every polynomial ideal as well as that such a basis can be computed from any Gr?bner basis of an ideal, turn out to be a major challenge to generalize for parametric ideals; issues related to these investigations are explored. A prototype implementation of the algorithm has been successfully tried on many examples from the literature.     

The Jointed Decision Model on a Newsboy-type Ordering and Pricing for Retailer

This paper deals with the jointed decision question on ordering and pricing for a short-life-cycle product under stochastic multiplicative demand depended selling price. According to the marketing practices, which retailers sell their products in different periods with the different marketing policies, we depict the jointed decision question with a stochastic dynamic programming model from the view of the centralized system. Then, we prove that the expected profit function are concave on decision vectors respectively, and develop the decision method for ordering and pricing. Lastly, we design the iterative search arithmetic to find the optimal decision vectors.     

Transport costs and China’s exports: Some empirical evidences

Based on a new panel data set covering exports of four Chinese port cities to 32 countries and Hong Kong over the period of 1997–2008, this paper extends the conventional gravity model to assess the impacts of transport costs and port efficiency on China’s exports. The results can be summarized as three main findings: (1) The improvements of port efficiency and reduction of road transport costs play a vital role in China’s export competitiveness in the global market. The coefficient estimates on them are relatively large, around 0.72 and ?0.89, respectively; (2) The effect of transport costs and port efficiency on China-to-Asia exports significantly exceeds that on China-to-Europe and China-to-America exports; (3) The overall estimated elasticity of road, railroad and port measure is 1.66, which is almost three times that of the average wage of port cities. The empirical results provide strong evidences that upgrading China’s transport service networks should offer greater scope for maintaining and increasing its competitive edge in low cost productions. The findings offer some insights and priorities for government policy making.     

Is Action Design Research Indeed Necessary? Analysis and Synergies Between Action Research and Design Science Research

Action research is one of the research methods that seeks to develop scientific knowledge while simultaneously acting to solve real problems. Design science and design science research are approaches that address problem-solving oriented researches, converging in this aspect with the objectives of action research. A significant part of the literature discusses action research and design science research separately. However, there are some early discussions regarding the similarities and the differences between these research methods. The objective of this study is to deepen an analysis that distinguishes action research, design science and design science research as research methods considering their convergences and divergences. This leads to the discussion of the need for a third method: action design research. This study was conducted based on a configurative systematic literature review. The analysis and the synthesis of literature took into account themes and content analyses. Some results could be observed. First, there is a significant number of similarities among these research methods; second, there are complementary and positive synergies in their use; and third, the concepts of artifact and classes of problems seem to contribute both to the proposition and to the evaluation of the results obtained by action research. Finally, it was possible to establish a set of possibilities for the use of action research and design science research in a combined manner. The limitations of this study have a theoretical nature. There is a need for a comparative analysis of the use of action research and design science research and the use of action research under the paradigm of design science.     

Population bases and statistical provision: towards a more flexible future?

In an increasingly complex and mobile society, there is a need for population estimates to be produced on a more flexible basis. Different uses of population data may require information to be output on different population bases, such as where people usually live ('usual residence') or where they are on a particular day ('population present'). This article explores many of the issues associated with defining 'the population'. Following consultation with data users, it outlines recommended population definitions that could facilitate a more flexible approach. Comparisons are made between the output bases produced from the 2001 Census and the more adaptable outputs potentially available in future if the recommended definitions were used.     

Primal Dual Algorithms for the Lexicographically Optimal Base of a Submodular Polyhedron and Its Relation to a Poset Greedoid

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Alternative Theorems and Sufficient Conditions of Global Convergence for a Class of Feasible Direction Algorithms

In this paper,two alternative theorems which differ from Theorem 10.2.6 in [1] andTheorem 1 in [3] are presented for a class of feasible direction algorithms.On the basis of alternativetheorems,furthermore,two sufficient conditions of global convergence of this class of algorithms areobtained.     

Design and Test of Multibus Adapter System on a Chip for Fault Tolerant Computer Systems

In order to improve the system reliability and performance and to reduce the system cost, volume and weight, we have designed, fabricated and tested the multibus adapter system of a trimodular redundant fault tolerant computer system on a single chip of 5000 gate CMOS gate array. The design, fabrication and test of this single chip system will be discussed..     

Applying XML for designing and interchanging information for multidimensional model

1.INTRODUCTION Duringtherecentyears,theenterpriseshavebeen askingforsupportintheprocessofextractinguseful,concise,handyinformationfordecision makingoutof thetonsofdatastoredintheirexpensiveandcomplex informationsystems.Themultidimensionalmodeling isoneofitskeytechniques[1].AsstatedinRef.[2],oncedevelopersdefinethemultidimensionalmodel structure,userscandefineasetofinitialrequire mentsasastartingpointforthesubsequentdata anal ysisphase.Fromtheseinitialrequirements,userscan applyasetofon li…     

Comprehensive Gröbner basis theory for a parametric polynomial ideal and the associated completion algorithm

Gröbner basis theory for parametric polynomial ideals is explored with the main objective of mimicking the Gröbner basis theory for ideals. Given a parametric polynomial ideal, its basis is a comprehensive Gröbner basis if and only if for every specialization of its parameters in a given field, the specialization of the basis is a Gröbner basis of the associated specialized polynomial ideal. For various specializations of parameters, structure of specialized ideals becomes qualitatively different even though there are significant relationships as well because of finiteness properties. Key concepts foundational to Gröbner basis theory are reexamined and/or further developed for the parametric case: (i) Definition of a comprehensive Gröbner basis, (ii) test for a comprehensive Gröbner basis, (iii) parameterized rewriting, (iv) S-polynomials among parametric polynomials, (v) completion algorithm for directly computing a comprehensive Gröbner basis from a given basis of a parametric ideal. Elegant properties of Gröbner bases in the classical ideal theory, such as for a fixed admissible term ordering, a unique Gröbner basis can be associated with every polynomial ideal as well as that such a basis can be computed from any Gröbner basis of an ideal, turn out to be a major challenge to generalize for parametric ideals; issues related to these investigations are explored. A prototype implementation of the algorithm has been successfully tried on many examples from the literature.     

Analysis and design for architecture-based software

1.INTRODUCTION Softwareengineeringindustryhasproposedaseriesof theories,methodsandtoolstosolvesomeproblemsin thesoftwaredevelopmentprocess,sincetheconcept ofsoftwareengineeringwascreatedbyNATOin1968.However,theproblemsoflongdevelopment period,highcostandlowqualityinthesoftwarede velopmentstillexistduetotheinherentcomplexity andvolatilenessofthesoftware.Accordingtoagreat dealofstatistics,70%erroneousnessisintroduced duringrequirementanddesignphaseinthelargescale softwaredevelopment.Moreov…     

Integration of Decision－Support and Knowledge－Based Techniques in a Problem－Solving Strategy for Sel

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Decentralized robust guaranteed cost control for a class of interconnected singular large-scale systems with time-delay and parameter uncertainty

The decentralized robust guaranteed cost control problem is studied for a class of interconnected singular large-scale systems with time-delay and norm-bounded time-invariant parameter uncertainty under a given quadratic cost performance function. The problem that is addressed in this study is to design a decentralized robust guaranteed cost state feedback controller such that the closed-loop system is not only regular, impulse-free and stable, but also guarantees an adequate level of performance for all admissible uncertainties. A sufficient condition for the existence of the decentralized robust guaranteed cost state feedback controllers is proposed in terms of a linear matrix inequality (LMI) via LMI approach. When this condition is feasible, the desired state feedback decentralized robust guaranteed cost controller gain matrices can be obtained. Finally, an illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Virtual Action Research for Virtual Organisations?

Business organisations have always existed in a constantly changing environment. To survive it is necessary for them to adapt and adjust to the changes. When analysing complex entities, such as organisations, researchers have frequently adopted the methods of action research. But with the advent of greater use of information and communication technology businesses are changing in their composition and one practical manifestation of this is the rise of virtual teams. Virtual teams reflect the trend for an organisation to comprise ‘satellites’ or clusters of expertise in different parts of the globe. Such a transformation of what we can now take as an organisation creates new challenges for managers and for those inquiring into organisational problems. In this paper we attempt to address the question whether action research is any longer a valid way of organisational intervention for the researcher and consultant alike. In this paper we describe field research in which a soft method of Action Research was used during the analysis phase of IS development as a means of understanding the problem domain, identifying information requirements, evaluating technologies and reducing conflicts. The research was conducted between two institutions that were separated by several thousand miles and all participants connected from individual locations using virtual synchronous ICT. The study provided insight into the use of AR in virtual settings and as a means of conflict resolution in virtual teams. The findings have implications for IS development (which is increasingly conducted in virtual teams), education and management among others.     

Football,Business, and Government—Can Studies of High-Level Teams Across Disciplines Produce Generic Principles for Systems and Management?

This paper describes work in progress which seeks to establish whether there are sufficient similarities between high-level teams operating in the business, government, and sporting environments to justify further research in these areas. It distinguishes strategic and tactical teams and identifies the characteristics of each within their separate disciplines. The paper concludes that there is indeed worthwhile research to be conducted in this field. Such research would not be confined to mere theory because the three areas investigated are already interconnected in a complex manner best investigated by a systemic approach.     

The Core and Coritivity off a System (IV)——Relations between a System and Its Complement

The coritivity, h(G), of a connected graph G, is defined by h(G) = max{ω(G-S)-|S|: S∈C(G)}, where ω(G) denotes the number of components of a graph G, C(G) denotes the collection of cut-sets of G. In this paper, the notion of complementary coritivity is proposed, and the relations between coritivity and its complement are studied, for example, two bounds, Nordaus-Gaddum problems and some foundational properties etc.