71,037 research outputs found
Improving working relationships for smallholder farmers in formal organic crop supply chains: Evidence from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
The 48 members of the Ezemvelo Farmers' Organisation (EFO) in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (SA), that are fully-certified as organic farmers were surveyed in October-December 2004 to assess their perceived levels of satisfaction, trust, cooperation and commitment in a formal supply chain producing amadhumbes (a traditional vegetable tuber), potatoes and sweet potatoes for a major SA supermarket group. Empirical recursive models show that a high level of satisfaction in the working relationship results in these farmers trusting the pack-house agent more. High levels of trust, in turn, lead to higher levels of both commitment to, and cooperation in, the supply chain. A simultaneous-equation model showed that EFO members with higher levels of commitment tend to be more cooperative, and that members with higher levels of cooperation tend to be more committed toward the working relationship. These results suggest that strategies to improve the working relationship with the pack-house agent need to promote satisfaction, trust, cooperation and commitment. For example, co-investment in better crop storage facilities at farm-level would promote satisfaction and hence trust. There is also scope for more cooperation in the planning of new organic crop products to grow and market, and to remove some price uncertainty by giving EFO farmers more information about prices that they will be paid by the pack-house in this supply chain.Industrial Organization,
Charlotte Valley Central School District and Charlotte Valley Teachers Association
In the matter of the fact-finding between the Charlotte Valley Central School District, employer, and the Charlotte Valley Teachers Association, union. PERB case no. M2011-066. Before: Robert E. Flynt, fact finder
Coordination approaches and systems - part I : a strategic perspective
This is the first part of a two-part paper presenting a fundamental review and summary of research of design coordination and cooperation technologies. The theme of this review is aimed at the research conducted within the decision management aspect of design coordination. The focus is therefore on the strategies involved in making decisions and how these strategies are used to satisfy design requirements. The paper reviews research within collaborative and coordinated design, project and workflow management, and, task and organization models. The research reviewed has attempted to identify fundamental coordination mechanisms from different domains, however it is concluded that domain independent mechanisms need to be augmented with domain specific mechanisms to facilitate coordination. Part II is a review of design coordination from an operational perspective
Xerox Cuts Costs Without Layoffs Through Union-Management Collaboration
The case study that follows deals with Xerox Corporation, a multinational equipment manufacturing company that decided to work with its union to find ways to use employees\u27 skills and new technologies in addressing economic problems in its manufacturing division. The specific labor-management cooperation project described here began after the Xerox Corporation decided that to produce some of its products competitively, it would need to save over 53 million in production costs. At first, the only solution the company saw was closing down one department, laying off ISO employees, and subcontracting the manufacturing of component parts. But this did not happen. Instead, the company and union agreed to try the unorthodox route of collaboration to solve economic and production problems—without any layoffs. This collaborative effort came despite a companywide downsizing policy that resulted in extensive layoffs throughout Xerox
Solving DCOPs with Distributed Large Neighborhood Search
The field of Distributed Constraint Optimization has gained momentum in
recent years, thanks to its ability to address various applications related to
multi-agent cooperation. Nevertheless, solving Distributed Constraint
Optimization Problems (DCOPs) optimally is NP-hard. Therefore, in large-scale,
complex applications, incomplete DCOP algorithms are necessary. Current
incomplete DCOP algorithms suffer of one or more of the following limitations:
they (a) find local minima without providing quality guarantees; (b) provide
loose quality assessment; or (c) are unable to benefit from the structure of
the problem, such as domain-dependent knowledge and hard constraints.
Therefore, capitalizing on strategies from the centralized constraint solving
community, we propose a Distributed Large Neighborhood Search (D-LNS) framework
to solve DCOPs. The proposed framework (with its novel repair phase) provides
guarantees on solution quality, refining upper and lower bounds during the
iterative process, and can exploit domain-dependent structures. Our
experimental results show that D-LNS outperforms other incomplete DCOP
algorithms on both structured and unstructured problem instances
Self-Evaluation Applied Mathematics 2003-2008 University of Twente
This report contains the self-study for the research assessment of the Department of Applied Mathematics (AM) of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) at the University of Twente (UT). The report provides the information for the Research Assessment Committee for Applied Mathematics, dealing with mathematical sciences at the three universities of technology in the Netherlands. It describes the state of affairs pertaining to the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2008
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