Too Smart to Participate? Rational Reasons for Employees’ Non-participation in Action Research

Systemic Practice and Action Research - Action research literature promotes broad participation in order to gain better insights into prevailing issues and cope with both present and future...     

Allocation Planning for R&D with Uncertainty:Model and Procedure

A decision support model with the stochastic objective function measuring the benefitcontributions of projects and stochastic resource constraint and its decision making analysis pro-cedure with the case study are presented for selecting R＆D projects,in which the uncertainty inproject evaluation and selection,the technical or outcome,cost or resource and benefit or payoffinterrelationships among projects,and the experience and knowledge of ther R＆D manager can beconsidered.     

Is Hypermobility a Challenge for Transport Ethics and Systemicity?

Modern modes of transport, in the developed world, were designed to achieve higher mobility (or speed) and increased accessibility, all in the name of growth and human progress. However, in the course of providing for this higher mobility, through the rapid expansion of the transport system, we have ended up with a condition of imbalanced mobility, which we refer to as "hypermobility," particularly with reference to the automobile mode. Ironically, this very expansion of the transport network, with the objective of providing higher transport speeds, has resulted in traffic congestion that has drastically reduced mobility and accessibility, thereby lowering business productivity, increasing fuel consumption, increasing pollution, and robbing the public of billions of hours of valuable time. In light of the present unsustainable conditions, we examine and analyze the concepts of mobility through an inquiry of time, space, human freedom, and social justice from an ethical and systemic viewpoint. We conclude that if hypermobility is not dealt with both as an individual and as a collective responsibility, the challenge to transport ethics and its systemicity could be further impaired.     

Weak Representation of the Survival Function Under Semiparametric Model for Truncated and Censored Data

In this paper we study semiparametric estimators of the survival function and the cumulative hazard function based on left truncated and right censored data. Weak representations of the two estimators are derived, which are valid up to a given order statistic of the observations.     

Existence of Positive Periodic Solutions for the SIV Epidemic Model with Impulsive Vaccination and Infection-Age

In this paper, we discuss the SIV epidemic model with impulsive vaccination and infection-age. Bifurcation theory and Lyapunov-Schmidt series expansion are used to show the existence of the positive periodic solutions under some conditions.     

The Vanguard Method as Applied to the Design and Management of English and Welsh Children’s Services Departments

This paper follows several case studies where the children’s services departments of English and Welsh local authorities have fundamentally redesigned the way they worked following the application of the Vanguard Method (Seddon, Systems thinking in the public sector, 2008), a particular form of systems thinking. After first studying the way the children’s social care service worked as a system, the social workers in these authorities were able to demonstrate the way that government-prescribed IT and performance measures were restricting the way they could do what was shown to matter to the children in their care. The paper will document how, after being granted ministerial permission to suspend the use of their old performance measures and IT, a new set of operating principles was developed and employed. The redesigned system has shown encouraging early results. Evidence from these case studies (following Yin 2009) is presented in the form of recorded operational improvements and statements from participants. The paper will be of topical relevance to all involved in social care in the light of the government-commissioned Munro Review (Munro, The Munro Review of child protection: final report, 2011). The issues discussed will also be germane to the many other public sector partner agencies involved in the delivery of social care services (e.g. police, health, housing associations).     

Correction to: Knowledge Sharing: What Works and What Doesn’t Work: A Critical Systems Thinking Perspective

Systemic Practice and Action Research - The article missed to include the article Acknowledgment that should be written as follows.     

Measuring the Performance of a Research Strategic Plan System Using the Soft Systems Methodology’s Three ‘Es’ and the Viable System Model’s Indices of Achievement

We explore problems involving the measurement of the performance of a system. We outline two systemic approaches that have come from different epistemological positions: one from the interpretivist paradigm (soft systems methodology) and the other from the cybernetic paradigm (viable systems model). These two systemic methodologies that have tackled problems involving performance measurement are considered and discussed: (a) Checkland’s systems ideas of ‘managing and controlling’ a system throughout a set of three measures of performance: efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness; and (b) Beer’s concepts of Actuality, Capability, Potentiality of the firm and his claims that the performance of a system needs to be quantifiable and resumed on ‘pure’ numbers which should reflect the survivability of the firm. A parallel is drawn between the two approaches concluding that although the paradigms underpinning them are in some way different, the practicalities of these approaches to control, measure and improve the performance of a system are very similar. A case involving the measurement of a proposed research strategic plan for a Manchester Metropolitan University Business School’s department is used to illustrate the systemic approaches.     

A Model for Water Quality Assessment Based on the Information Entropy and Its Application in the Case of Huiji River

Based on the information entropy, a model for water quality assessment is Using this model, the paper gives a case study on the water quality assessment River. The space-time variation law of the water quality is analyzed also in this result indicates that the model possesses some clear mathematic and physical and it is simple, practical and accurate.     

Call for Papers for the International Conference on Virtual Reality and Visualization (ICVRV’12)

Qinhuangdao,China,9/14-9/15,2012http://icvrv2012.csp.escience.cn/About the ICVRV Conference The ICVRV conference,now at its second year,will be hosted by YanShan University and be co-organized by Beijing Technology and Business University,in Qinhuangdao,China from September 14-15,2012.We are     

Call for Papers The 11th International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management(ICSSSM’14)

June 25-27,2014,Qingdao,China http://mse.qdu.edu.cn/mse/ICSSSM14Co-Sponsored by:IEEE SMC(pending)Qingdao University The Chinese University of Hong Kong Tsinghua University National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC)Hosted bv:Business School,Qingdao University,China Conference Co-Chairs;Junxia Xie,Qingdao University,China Jian Chen,Tsinghua University,China Xiaoqiang Cai The Chinese University of Hong Kong     

Call for Papers The 10th International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management (ICSSSM’13)

July 3-5, 2013, Hong Kong, China For more information, please visit http://www.rccm.tsinghua.edu.cn/icsssm/2013/ Co-Sponsored by: IEEE SMC (Pending) The Chinese University of Hong Kong     

A Set of Conventions,a Model: An Application of Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model to the Strategic Planning Process

In contemplating better ways to manage, Stafford Beer says the big problem is that you are not determining absolute facts: you are establishing a set of conventions. Hence his view, that a model is neither true nor false: it is more or less useful. And while this paper suggests Beer’s Viable Systems Model (VSM) is overwhelmingly more, rather than less useful, that the VSM and its founding theories are virtually unknown at the level of everyday management begs the question, why? Over time we have learned about the usefulness of the VSM compared to other management theories, when used in the contest of the organisational strategic planning process. Thus through a sequence of diagrams based on Beer’s original drawings, we show how the VSM came to underpin a process for strategic planning in one organisation. The paper has three aims; to attach an everyday ‘common speak’ understanding to some of Beer’s work, to demonstrate how we have learned to appreciate the usefulness of the VSM and its associated diagrams and conventions and to suggest a link between the Action Research change methodology and Beer’s work.     

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.     

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.     

A Hybrid Approach for Studying the Lead-Lag Relationships Between China’s Onshore and Offshore Exchange Rates Considering the Impact of Extreme Events

Understanding the characteristics of the dynamic relationship between the onshore Renminbi (CNY) and the offshore Renminbi (CNH) exchange rates considering the impact of some extreme events is very important and it has wide implications in several areas such as hedging. For better estimating the dynamic relationship between CNY and CNH, the Granger-causality test and Bry-Boschan Business Cycle Dating Algorithm were employed in this paper. Due to the intrinsic complexity of the lead-lag relationships between CNY and CNH, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm is used to decompose those time series data into several intrinsic mode function (IMF) components and a residual sequence, from high to low frequency. Based on the frequencies, the IMFs and a residual sequence are combined into three components, identified as short-term composition caused by some market activities, medium-term composition caused by some extreme events and the long-term trend. The empirical results indicate that when it only matters the short-term market activities, CNH always leads CNY; while the medium-term impact caused by those extreme events may alternate the lead-lag relationships between CNY and CNH.     

Organizational Model Design for Small Coffee Farmers in the Municipality of Viotá - Colombia Case Study: Creo en el Agro

Systemic Practice and Action Research - An organizational design proposal is made for Creo en el Agro, an organization made up of small coffee growers who were victims of the armed conflict in the...