Champions @ Work: Employment, Workplace Practices and Labor-Management Relations in Western New York: A Study

This study examines private sector employment, workplace practices and labor-management relations in Western New York (WNY) from the mid-1980s to the present. It is a regional assessment, a benchmark designed to help the public and private sectors make informed decisions regarding enterprise and regional development. Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations conducted the study as a part of its public service mission, with financial support from New York State

What Will the Neighbors Say? How Differences in Planning Culture Yield Distinctive Outcomes in Urban Redevelopment: The Example of the Community Benefits Agreement Trend

Although taxpayer dollars often subsidize economic development projects, they sometimes produce mixed results for existing neighbors. Since 2001, in select localities, civic organizations have assumed the role of negotiator on behalf of local constituencies, espousing the view that economic development efforts should significantly improve residentsâ?? lives. Various organizations are entering into community benefits agreements (CBAs) with developers and/or governmental bodies in order to meet community needs. In return, the groups agree to support the projectsâ?? requests for governmental approvals and/or subsidies. Yet CBAs continue to emerge in relatively few communities. More importantly, they have taken markedly different forms in different places. This work compares major attempts by civic organizations to secure public benefits as part of real estate development project approval processes in California, New York, Wisconsin, and Florida. By comparing a range of CBAs, this study discerns which state- and local-level factors determine why and when CBAs emerge; which factors best account for the differences among the CBAs and benefits, if any, that result; what the impact of the phenomenon has been, and how it has shaped the field of urban political theory. The study finds: the CBA phenomenon reflect the interplay of a number of market, governmental, and civic factors involved in land-use planning and real estate development; local-level factors are more influential than state-level factors, although both are important; the factor that best accounts for differences among CBAs is the archetypal relationship between civic organizations (and not simply â??neighborsâ?? in general) and the officials in whose district the projects are to be sited, while differences in the resulting benefits best reflect local market conditions; CBA campaigns remain relatively niche but appear to be shaping broader municipal policy efforts; and the CBA phenomenon is consistent with previous findings in urban political theory, providing the parties involved with a vehicle for defusing land use-related conflicts and securing both project approvals and community benefits in the process

“The Laurel Story”: An Industrial Intersection of Authorship, Cult Film and Independent Cinema in an American Motion Picture Production Company, 1963-1994

This thesis presents the first academic analysis of key US motion picture production company Laurel Entertainment. Established in Pittsburgh by Night of the Living Dead (1968) director George A. Romero and his business partner Richard P. Rubinstein, Laurel’s geographical and ideological separateness from bicoastal filmic centres was unprecedented. Yet despite being at the forefront of a number of practices that came to shape non-Hollywood production, including synergetic crossovers and diversification, Laurel has been neglected from previous investigations of the independent sector. This study traces Laurel’s growth from grassroots subsidiary to publicly-owned enterprise, revealing the strategic and creative thinking that ensured survival on the margins of the industry. Here, an analysis of the firm’s infrastructure employs a synthesis of ethnographic research, empirical data and business and economic theory, considering the complex array of stakeholders and changing opportunity structures that fed into and helped dictate output. Scrutiny of Laurel and its co-founders also provides new insight into the cinema of major genre filmmaker George Romero, while shedding light on the under-researched figure of the independent film producer. By looking towards the activities of the Laurel partners, this study offers a revisionist account of auteur filmmaking, cult film and independent cinema from a “real-world,” practitioner-level perspective, asking how these strands intersected within the firm and mapping out the innovations, compromises and contradictions of this convergence

Knowledge Capturing in Design Briefing Process for Requirement Elicitation and Validation

Knowledge capturing and reusing are major processes of knowledge management that deal with the elicitation of valuable knowledge via some techniques and methods for use in actual and further studies, projects, services, or products. The construction industry, as well, adopts and uses some of these concepts to improve various construction processes and stages. From pre-design to building delivery knowledge management principles and briefing frameworks have been implemented across project stakeholders: client, design teams, construction teams, consultants, and facility management teams. At pre-design and design stages, understanding the client’s needs and users’ knowledge are crucial for identifying and articulating the expected requirements and objectives. Due to underperforming results and missed goals and objectives, many projects finish with highly dissatisfied clients and loss of contracts for some organizations. Knowledge capturing has beneficial effects via its principles and methods on requirement elicitation and validation at the briefing stage between user, client and designer. This paper presents the importance and usage of knowledge capturing and reusing in briefing process at pre-design and design stages especially the involvement of client and user, and explores the techniques and technologies that are usable in briefing process for requirement elicitation

Hochflexibles Workforce Management

It can be observed that companies tend to use a very demand driven personnel scheduling instead of using fixed shifts. In this context the term highly flexible workforce management (WFM) is used. With instruments such as the planning of subdaily workplace rotations, the combination of working time model generation and personnel scheduling or the combination of personnel scheduling and vehicle routing the demand for personnel can be covered very well. Such problems are novel and found little attention by researchers up to now.In this work classical OR-algorithms, metaheuristics and multi-agent systems (MAS) are evaluated on real world problems from logistics, retail and British Telecom. It can be shown, that classical OR-algorithms are not appropriate for these problems of highly flexible WFM, because of impractical CPU-times. On the other hand selected metaheuristics are very suitable. MAS should not be favoured, because selected metaheuristics performed always better. It must point out that a hybrid algorithm (a metaheuristic with a problem-specific repair) is responsible for the success of metaheuristics. MAS lack of a central planning instance that makes major changes for which agents are not able to do. Numerous algorithms of this work where originally developed for continuous problems. The adaption to combinatorial problems is described too. The appropriate adaption of parameters is also addressed.Zunehmend ist bei Unternehmen ein Trend weg von der starren Schicht- oder Dienstplanung hin zu einer auf den Personalbedarf ausgerichteten Planung festzustellen. In diesem Zusammenhang wird der Begriff hochflexibles Workforce Management (WFM) geprägt. Mit Instrumenten wie der Planung untertägiger Arbeitsplatzwechsel, der Kombination aus Arbeitszeitmodellerstellung und Einsatzplanung sowie der kombinierten Personaleinsatz- und Tourenplanung kann der Personaleinsatz sehr gut an den Personalbedarf angepasst werden. Derartige Problemstellungen sind neuartig und fanden in der Forschung bisher wenig Beachtung

An Investigation on Benefit-Cost Analysis of Greenhouse Structures in Antalya

Significant population increase across the world, loss of cultivable land and increasing demand for food put pressure on agriculture. To meet the demand, greenhouses are built, which are, light structures with transparent cladding material in order to provide controlled microclimatic environment proper for plant production. Conceptually, greenhouses are similar with manufacturing buildings where a controlled environment for manufacturing and production have been provided and proper spaces for standardized production processes have been enabled. Parallel with the trends in the world, particularly in southern regions, greenhouse structures have been increasingly constructed and operated in Turkey. A significant number of greenhouses are located at Antalya. The satellite images demonstrated that for over last three decades, there has been a continuous invasion of greenhouses on all cultivable land. There are various researches and attempts for the improvement of greenhouse design and for increasing food production by decreasing required energy consumption. However, the majority of greenhouses in Turkey are very rudimentary structures where capital required for investment is low, but maintenance requirements are high when compared with new generation greenhouse structures. In this research paper, life-long capital requirements for construction and operation of greenhouse buildings in Antalya has been investigated by using benefit-cost analysis study

Effective strategies for low volume vehicle programs

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-78).by Kristin Elisabeth Toth.S.M