Management Control Systems and Contextual Variables in the Hospitality Industry

Purpose – The paper examined management control systems (MCS) in Indonesian hospitality sector. This study examines the impact of six contextual factors at one time to determine the importance of each factor on the design of MCS. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based upon data collected through a survey sent to “star” hotels in Central Java, Indonesia. Using Chenhall (2003) design, a regression equation is run to examine the relationship between MCS and the contextual variables of environment, technology, structure, size, strategy and culture. Findings – The paper finds that higher levels of the contextual variables of technology, structure, and culture are related to more sophisticated MCS while size is related to more traditional MCS. Research limitations/implications –These findings are related to the hospitality industry in Indonesia. Future research could examine different settings (i.e. country, industry, etc) and investigate the effect of each contextual variable on the relationships between MCS and firm performance. Originality/value – The present study extends the scope of MCS system in accounting literature by testing Chenhall (2003) works on the relationship between contextual variables and MCS. It attempts to fill the gap in contingency-based studies that have previously focused on one aspect of contingency by considering six contextual factors. Furthermore, this paper also contributes to a fuller understanding of MCS practices in Indonesia and the hospitality industry and helps management in determining its most effective design. Keywords Hospitality management, Management Control Systems, Indonesia, Contextual Variable

Skin Mast Cells Contribute to Sporothrix schenckii Infection

Background: Sporothrix schenckii (S. schenckii), a dimorphic fungus, causes sporotrichosis. Mast cells (MCs) have been described to be involved in skin fungal infections. The role of MCs in cutaneous sporotrichosis remains largely unknown. Objectives: To characterize the role and relevance of MCs in cutaneous sporotrichosis. Methods: We analyzed cutaneous sporotrichosis in wild-type (WT) mice and two different MC-deficient strains. In vitro, MCs were assessed for S. schenckii-induced cytokine production and degranulation after incubation with S. schenckii. We also explored the role of MCs in human cutaneous sporotrichosis. Results: WT mice developed markedly larger skin lesions than MC-deficient mice (> 1.5 fold) after infection with S. schenckii, with significantly increased fungal burden. S. schenckii induced the release of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF), interleukin (IL)-6, IL-10, and IL-1β by MCs, but not degranulation. S. schenckii induced larger skin lesions and higher release of IL-6 and TNF by MCs as compared to the less virulent S. albicans. In patients with sporotrichosis, TNF and IL-6 were increased in skin lesions, and markedly elevated levels in the serum were linked to disease activity. Conclusions: These findings suggest that cutaneous MCs contribute to skin sporotrichosis by releasing cytokines such as TNF and IL-6

Does the spacecraft trajectory strongly affect the detection of magnetic clouds?

Magnetic clouds (MCs) are a subset of interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) where a magnetic flux rope is detected. Is the difference between MCs and ICMEs without detected flux rope intrinsic or rather due to an observational bias? As the spacecraft has no relationship with the MC trajectory, the frequency distribution of MCs versus the spacecraft distance to the MCs axis is expected to be approximately flat. However, Lepping and Wu (2010) confirmed that it is a strongly decreasing function of the estimated impact parameter. Is a flux rope more frequently undetected for larger impact parameter? In order to answer the questions above, we explore the parameter space of flux rope models, especially the aspect ratio, boundary shape, and current distribution. The proposed models are analyzed as MCs by fitting a circular linear force-free field to the magnetic field computed along simulated crossings. We find that the distribution of the twist within the flux rope, the non-detection due to too low field rotation angle or magnitude are only weakly affecting the expected frequency distribution of MCs versus impact parameter. However, the estimated impact parameter is increasingly biased to lower values as the flux-rope cross section is more elongated orthogonally to the crossing trajectory. The observed distribution of MCs is a natural consequence of a flux-rope cross section flattened in average by a factor 2 to 3 depending on the magnetic twist profile. However, the faster MCs at 1 AU, with V>550 km/s, present an almost uniform distribution of MCs vs. impact parameter, which is consistent with round shaped flux ropes, in contrast with the slower ones. We conclude that either most of the non-MC ICMEs are encountered outside their flux rope or near the leg region, or they do not contain any

Investigation of Dynamics of Self-Similarly Evolving Magnetic Clouds

Magnetic clouds (MCs) are "magnetized plasma clouds" moving in the solar wind. MCs transport magnetic flux and helicity away from the Sun. These structures are not stationary but feature temporal evolution. Commonly, simplified MC models are considered. The goal of the present study is to investigate the dynamics of more general, radially expanding MCs. They are considered as cylindrically symmetric magnetic structures with low plasma {\beta}. In order to study MC`evolution the self-similar approach method and a numerical approach are used. It is shown that the forces are balanced in the considered self-similarly evolving, cylindrically symmetric magnetic structures. Explicit analytical expressions for magnetic field, plasma velocity, density and pressure within MCs are derived. These solutions are characterized by conserved values of magnetic flux and helicity. We also investigate the dynamics of self-similarly evolving MCs by means of the numerical code "Graale". In addition, their expansion in a medium with higher density and higher plasma {\beta} is studied. It is shown that the physical parameters of the MCs maintain their self-similar character throughout their evolution. Conclusions. A comparison of the different self-similar and numerical solutions allows us to conclude that the evolving MCs are quite adequately described by our self-similar solutions - they retain their self-similar, coherent nature for quite a long time and over large distances from the Sun

Global and local expansion of magnetic clouds in the inner heliosphere

Observations of magnetic clouds (MCs) are consistent with the presence of flux ropes detected in the solar wind (SW) a few days after their expulsion from the Sun as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Both the \textit{in situ} observations of plasma velocity profiles and the increase of their size with solar distance show that MCs are typically expanding structures. The aim of this work is to derive the expansion properties of MCs in the inner heliosphere from 0.3 to 1 AU.We analyze MCs observed by the two Helios spacecraft using \textit{in situ} magnetic field and velocity measurements. We split the sample in two subsets: those MCs with a velocity profile that is significantly perturbed from the expected linear profile and those that are not. From the slope of the \textit{in situ} measured bulk velocity along the Sun-Earth direction, we compute an expansion speed with respect to the cloud center for each of the analyzed MCs. We analyze how the expansion speed depends on the MC size, the translation velocity, and the heliocentric distance, finding that all MCs in the subset of non-perturbed MCs expand with almost the same non-dimensional expansion rate ($\zeta$). We find departures from this general rule for $\zeta$ only for perturbed MCs, and we interpret the departures as the consequence of a local and strong SW perturbation by SW fast streams, affecting the MC even inside its interior, in addition to the direct interaction region between the SW and the MC. We also compute the dependence of the mean total SW pressure on the solar distance and we confirm that the decrease of the total SW pressure with distance is the main origin of the observed MC expansion rate. We found that $\zeta$ was $0.91\pm 0.23$ for non-perturbed MCs while $\zeta$ was $0.48\pm 0.79$ for perturbed MCs, the larger spread in the last ones being due to the influence of the environment conditions on the expansion

Model confidence sets for forecasting models

The paper introduces the model confidence set (MCS) and applies it to the selection of forecasting models. An MCS is a set of models that is constructed so that it will contain the “best” forecasting model, given a level of confidence. Thus, an MCS is analogous to a confidence interval for a parameter. The MCS acknowledges the limitations of the data so that uninformative data yield an MCS with many models, whereas informative data yield an MCS with only a few models. We revisit the empirical application in Stock and Watson (1999) and apply the MCS procedure to their set of inflation forecasts. In the first pre-1984 subsample we obtain an MCS that contains only a few models, notably versions of the Solow-Gordon Phillips curve. On the other hand, the second post-1984 subsample contains little information and results in a large MCS. Yet, the random walk forecast is not contained in the MCS for either of the samples. This outcome shows that the random walk forecast is inferior to inflation forecasts based on Phillips curve-like relationships.