An empirical investigation into the sources of supply chain disruptions

Master's thesis Industrial Economics and Technology Management IND590 - University of Agder 2019Firms are facing a vast array of risks which can cause disruptions to the normal operation of their supply chains. Managers striving to prepare for and overcome these disruptions have a broad selection of literature and risk reports at their disposal when assessing risks to their supply chain. These risk reports and academic works provide differentiated and compelling answers to what are the most pressing risks to supply chains, but are they accurate? This study aims at providing managers with an empiricalfoundation on what the main sources of supply chain disruptions have been the last decade by addressing the following research question:What have been the main sources of supply chain disruptions over the last decade, and do observed patterns correspond with expectations put forward in the scholarly literature and the risk management communities?Based on a content analysis of 11 504 articles from the Financial Times archive from 2009-2018, 445 articles describing sources of supply chain disruptions were retrieved. The samples were later analysed using statistical methods. The results of this investigation revealed that disruptions originating from within the supply chain were in sum the most prevalent. The majority of these disruptions were associated with risks that have traditionally been the concerns of supply chain managers. These risks include operational struggles at suppliers that are unable to deliver the desired quantity and quality, as well as challenges with forecasting demand and navigating the legal and bureaucratic process that emerge from operating a complex global supply chain across multiple regions. The study also revealed that supply chain disruptions stemming from risk sources external to the supply chain such as asset price collapse, natural hazards, terrorism and political turmoil have accounted for a relatively constant number of supply chain disruptions over the last decade. This observation is contrary to the seemingly increasing focus on these risks by the global community. However, even though there has not been an increase in disruptions caused by external events, catastrophic events still stood out as one of the biggest threats facing supply chains. Catastrophic incidents encompass high impact-low probability events including natural hazards such as earthquakes and hurricanes together with man-made acts both deliberate e.g. war and terrorism, and unintentional such as fires. Somewhat contrary to the attention given o acts of terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, disruptions associated with acts of terrorism constituted a surprisingly small number of the supply chain disruptions, with the vast majority of disruptions related to catastrophic events attributed to natural hazards. Lastly, the findings showed that disruptions originating from risks associated with information and communication technology, in particular, cyber-crime and unplanned IT outage, have been an increasingly common source of supply chain disruptions during the decade in conjunction with the advancing digitalisation of supply chains.Comparing the findings against the focus of academia and the risk management communities it is apparent that the strong focus on risks external to the supply chain is somewhat warranted given the frequent occurrences of catastrophic events that disrupt supply chains. However, the study revealed that too much attention has been given to these high-profile events, and in the process the more mundane risks facing supply chains have received less attention. As a consequence,these risks continue to pose a significant threat to the performance of supply chains. The findings highlight the importance of using several sources of information when assessing risks to supply chains. No single source of information, may it be scholarly literature, risk reports or internal reporting are able to grasp all the current, and future, patterns of supply chain disruptions by themselves. Managers should keep this in mind when identifying and assessing the risks to their supply chain. Diligence in seeking out alternative sources of information on supply chain risks can aid in creating a more advantageous supply chain risk management process and foster greater resilience in supply chains

FINANCIAL VISUALIZATION APPLICATION ADOPTING BIMODAL VISUALIZATION

Thevisualization system considers financial people's needs and approaches alternative wayto understand financial data. This is oneof the processes of analyzing and converting data from two different modalities into graphics. This allows financial decision makers andfinancial analyst to gaininsight intothe data, drawconclusions and directly interact with the data. The purpose of this project is to develop visualization for financial instruments - equity and to researchthe effectiveness of financial visualization for financial trader andinvestors. Tomake sure financial visualization for equities will work, this project will focus first in otherelement from finance whichis share price. Thereasonto choose share price is because share price is one of important financial elements in financial market. This visualizationsystemdeals with two modalities of information; numerical and textual. Financial trader or investor make his/her decision based onthe behaviour of equities or share price overa certain period of time and consults other sources of information directly or indirectly with theinstruments. These sources include internal factor of certain industry or economies and about the sectorand wider issues that may affect on the instrument which equities

Expresiones citativas y reportativas: análisis contrastivo inglés-español de la prensa de calidad

Tesis de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Filología, Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua y Lingüística Inglesa), leída el 27/06/2017The language embedded in quotations in newspaper reports is a powerful tool that can influence readers’ thought, in particular their position towards the state of affairs and/or the participants included in the quote (Fowler 1994). This thesis, entitled ‘Reporting expressions: an English-Spanish contrastive study of quality press’, investigates the subtle ways by which the media restructures the world in the discourse, which jeopardises its efforts to configure itself as an objective and unbiased information medium. Thus, this study aims at answering a broad research question: is news industry impartial or evaluative? To this end, I will analyse the linguistic features embedded in reporting expressions that may lead to ideological variations, thus provoking distortions of meaning of what was originally uttered by the information sources.The parameters that will be studied in this investigation are the following: reporting style; reporting verb, which comprises tense, aspect, voice and writer’s commitment; the source of information, considering the specificity and gender factors; reportative evidentiality; news values; and, finally, the prominence parameter, which addresses the study of headlines...El lenguaje incluido en las citas periodísticas es una herramienta poderosa que puede influir en el pensamiento de los lectores, en particular su posicionamiento hacia los hechos y/o participantes incluidos en la cita (Fowler 1994). Esta tesis, titulada ‘Expresiones citativas y reportativas: análisis contrastivo inglés-español de la prensa de calidad’, investiga las maneras sutiles por las cuales los medios de comunicación reestructuran el mundo en el discurso, lo cual compromete sus esfuerzos por configurarse como un medio de información objetivo e imparcial. Por lo tanto, todo este estudio tiene como objetivo responder a la siguiente cuestión amplia de la investigación: ¿la industria de las noticias es imparcial o evaluativa? Para tal fin, analizaré los rasgos lingüísticos inmersos en expresiones citativas que puedan llevar a variaciones ideológicas, provocando así distorsiones de significado de lo que fue originalmente dicho por las fuentes de información.Los parámetros que serán estudiados en esta investigación son los siguientes: estilo citativo; el verbo citativo, que incluye tiempo, aspecto, voz y la implicación del escritor; la fuente de información, considerando los factores de especificidad y género; la evidencialidad reportativa; los valores de las noticias; y, finalmente, el parámetro de la prominencia, que aborda el estudio de los titulares de prensa...Depto. de Estudios Ingleses: Lingüística y LiteraturaFac. de FilologíaTRUEunpu

A metaphor corpus in business press headlines

In linguistics a corpus typically involves a finite body of texts which are considered to be representative of a particular variety of language at a specific time (McEnery & Wilson, 2001). Those are the assumptions we have had in mind in this metaphor corpus based on business press headlines. Our body of texts is a finite number of headlines drawn from the specific field of the business sections of three newspapers: Financial Times, El País and El Mundo, published over a period running from January to July 2003. Compiling a small corpus of non-literal instantiations as different authors have done (Cortés de los Ríos, 2001; Kövecses, 2002; Charteris-Black, 2003; Koller, 2004; Deignan, 2005; and others) will enable us first to identify whether the contextual meaning of a word or a multiword unit of headline contrasts with its basic meaning and whether the contextual meaning can be understood by comparison with that basic meaning, and then to categorize, both in the Spanish and in the British press, the different linguistic realizations of a headline in terms of their syntactic structure, metaphor foci and source domains

From icon to naturalised icon:a linguistic analysis of media representations of the BP Deepwater Horizon crisis

This research explores how news media reports construct representations of a business crisis through language. In an innovative approach to dealing with the vast pool of potentially relevant texts, media texts concerning the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill are gathered from three different time points: immediately after the explosion in 2010, one year later in 2011 and again in 2012. The three sets of 'BP texts' are investigated using discourse analysis and semi-quantitative methods within a semiotic framework that gives an account of language at the semiotic levels of sign, code, mythical meaning and ideology. The research finds in the texts three discourses of representation concerning the crisis that show a movement from the ostensibly representational to the symbolic and conventional: a discourse of 'objective factuality', a discourse of 'positioning' and a discourse of 'redeployment'. This progression can be shown to have useful parallels with Peirce's sign classes of Icon, Index and Symbol, with their implied movement from a clear motivation by the Object (in this case the disaster events), to an arbitrary, socially-agreed connection. However, the naturalisation of signs, whereby ideologies are encoded in ways of speaking and writing that present them as 'taken for granted' is at its most complete when it is least discernible. The findings suggest that media coverage is likely to move on from symbolic representation to a new kind of iconicity, through a fourth discourse of 'naturalisation'. Here the representation turns back towards ostensible factuality or iconicity, to become the 'naturalised icon'. This work adds to the study of media representation a heuristic for understanding how the meaning-making of a news story progresses. It offers a detailed account of what the stages of this progression 'look like' linguistically, and suggests scope for future research into both language characteristics of phases and different news-reported phenomena

The impact of news on the South African sovereign bond market

Thesis (PhD (Financial Management Sciences))--University of Pretoria, 2022.A reverse event study approach is used to investigate how the South African sovereign bond yield curve react to headline news. Abnormal return dates in the zero-coupon yields are identified using GARCH models on the daily return series and news items that are classified into categories using supervised machine learning. A regression model is fitted to determine the link between the abnormal daily returns and news categories. The results indicate that for abnormal increases in returns, indicating an increase in yield (negative news) the entire yield curve was impacted by political news and the medium term (5-year) was also impacted by international news. For abnormal decreases in returns, indicating a decrease in yields (positive news) political news had the greatest impact on the long end (15-and 20-year) of the yield curve, and economic news had the greatest impact on the medium term (10-year).Financial ManagementPhD (Financial Management Sciences)Unrestricte

The press reporting of the David Irving libel trial: a rhetorical and discursive analysis

This thesis is a study of the David Irving libel trial and its newspaper coverage. The libel trial, involving allegations of Holocaust denial, gained widespread coverage in the national broadsheet newspapers. It is the presentation of Irving and the debate around the term 'Holocaust denier' in the newspapers that this thesis focuses upon. The aim of the thesis is to examine the presentation of an individual such as Irving, as a fascist and Holocaust denier, through the newspapers. The thesis, therefore, approaches the topic of contemporary fascism through a case study of the way that fascism is represented in the media and the language used in such representation. This differs from previous examinations of contemporary fascists and Holocaust deniers that place their primary emphasis upon the motivation behind such ideological positions. The theoretical basis of the thesis is one based primarily upon Rhetorical Psychology, informed by a background of Discursive Psychology. The thesis focuses upon the rhetorical strategies used, both in the courtroom and in the newspaper coverage of the action. Additionally, a content analysis was carried out, which showed that the broadsheets provided most coverage, that Irving was the main focus of the coverage, and that the opening and judgment days gained the most column inches. Given that much of the trial was predicated upon a debate as to the meaning of the term 'Holocaust denier', areas of the trial transcript were also analysed to determine the rhetorical strategies used in this debate. Following on from this, the potential transition in the use of the term was shown in the newspaper coverage. It is shown that 'Holocaust denier' underwent a noticeable shift from the coverage of the opening day to the coverage of the judgment. The thesis shows the change of language over a relatively short space of time, providing implications as to the development of ideographs or terms used in ideological discourse, and the manner in which they may be analysed. The thesis ends with some suggestions for further research into ideographs and ideological discourse in general