161,827 research outputs found

    Metatheory and Friendly Competition in Theory Growth: The Case of Power Processes in Bargaining

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    [Excerpt] This paper analyzes the theoretical development taking place in a program of research on power processes in bargaining (see Bacharach and Lawler 1976, 1980, 1981a, 1981b; Lawler and Bacharach 1976, 1979, 1987; Lawler, Ford, and Blegen 1988; Lawler and Yoon 1990; Lawler 1986, 1992). The theoretical program takes as its starting point a situation where individuals, groups, organizations, or even societies with conflicting interests voluntarily enter into explicit bargaining. Explicit (as opposed to tacit) bargaining assumes the mutual acknowledgment of negotiations, conflicting issues along which compromise is possible, and open lines of communication through which parties can exchange offers and counteroffers in an attempt to resolve the issues that divide them (Schelling 1960; Bacharach and Lawler 1980; Boyle and Lawler 1991). The scope of this theoretical research program assumes further that the parties have a power capability, that they use this power tactically in an effort to achieve desired outcomes, and that they strive for a favorable position during the bargaining process

    Service Quality and Customer Loyalty in a Post-Crisis Context. Prediction-Oriented Modeling to Enhance the Particular Importance of a Social and Sustainable Approach

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    Research into the influence of service quality on customer loyalty has typically focused on confirming isolated direct causal influences regarding particular dimensions of quality, usually undertaken in the context of positive, firm-customer relations. The present study extends analysis of these factors through a new lens. First, the study was undertaken in a market context following a crisis that has had far-reaching consequences for customers’ relational behaviors. We explore the case of the Spanish banking industry, a sector that accurately reflects these new relational conditions, including a rising demand for more socially responsible banking. Second, we propose a holistic model that combines the effects of four key factors associated with service quality (outcome, personnel, servicescape and social qualities). We also apply an innovative predictive methodological technique using partial least squares (PLS) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) that enables us not only to determine the direct causal effects among variables, but also to consider different scenarios in which to predict customer loyalty. The results highlight the role of outcome and social qualities. The novelty of the social qualities factor helps to underscore the importance of social, ethical and sustainable practices to customer loyalty, although personnel and servicescape qualities must also be present to improve the predictive capability of service quality on loyalty

    Low Power Processor Architectures and Contemporary Techniques for Power Optimization – A Review

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    The technological evolution has increased the number of transistors for a given die area significantly and increased the switching speed from few MHz to GHz range. Such inversely proportional decline in size and boost in performance consequently demands shrinking of supply voltage and effective power dissipation in chips with millions of transistors. This has triggered substantial amount of research in power reduction techniques into almost every aspect of the chip and particularly the processor cores contained in the chip. This paper presents an overview of techniques for achieving the power efficiency mainly at the processor core level but also visits related domains such as buses and memories. There are various processor parameters and features such as supply voltage, clock frequency, cache and pipelining which can be optimized to reduce the power consumption of the processor. This paper discusses various ways in which these parameters can be optimized. Also, emerging power efficient processor architectures are overviewed and research activities are discussed which should help reader identify how these factors in a processor contribute to power consumption. Some of these concepts have been already established whereas others are still active research areas. © 2009 ACADEMY PUBLISHER

    Some conceptual issues in loop quantum cosmology

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    Loop quantum gravity is a mature theory. To proceed to explicit calculations in cosmology, it is necessary to make assumptions and simplifications based on the symmetries of the cosmological setting. Symmetry reduction is especially critical when dealing with cosmological perturbations. The present article reviews several approaches to the problem of building a consistent formalism that describes the dynamics of perturbations on a quantum spacetime and tries to address their respective strengths and weaknesses. We also review the main open issues in loop quantum cosmology.Comment: Invited article for an IJMP volume dedicated to loop quantum gravit
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