PRIORITY MANAGEMENT – A DIRECTION TOWARDS COMPETITIVENESS

In a time when the most of us have to cope with globalization, the key for surpassing the negative effects produced by it, resides in choosing the right strategy. This necessary involves a performance management. Through this paper we propose priority management as an efficient way of thinking about gaining the vital competitive advantage.priority management, the Pareto law, 1-3-6 method, competitiveness, efficiency

COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

There are many challenges to face in this century. It’s an era of information. Those who have the best information are going to win the race for supremacy on the market. More and more managers are aware of the fact that they have to do something to remain on the market and to be successful. They have to adapt and to try to gain an advantage over the competitors. Nowadays, the only thing that makes the difference is the company’s competitiveness. The times when the one who had the capacity to produce more was the leader are long gone; now all the actors on every market are focused on quality and this leads to severe competition. What is left then? How can a company gain competitive advantage? The only thing that can make a difference is not the quality of the product but the quality of the information they posses about the market, the client, the product, the technological process, management etc. It’s about the information management. It’s about competitive intelligence.competitive intelligence, information, intelligence, strategy

Analyzing Students’ Perceptions From Their Interests and Rights’ Protection Perspective Within Various International Contexts

The research originated from comprehending the way students, as consumers; perceive the involvement of bodies empowered to protect their rights and interests, including consumption-modernizing programmes. Among the cross-scientific research methods used by our research, the survey has been chosen and applied in three universities from various countries: Constantin Brancoveanu University of Pitesti – Management – Marketing in Economic Affairs Faculty, Romania, Fernando Pessoa - Business Science Faculty, Portugal and University Degli Studi di Milano – Political Sciences Faculty, Italy. For data processing, comprehensive methods of analysis and statistic-mathematical methods have been used, while for data analysis the method of comparing interviewed students’ opinions and the causal explanation have been used. The paper’s originality consists in drafting a direct, quantitative research, based on the scientific research of students’ opinions, future opinion originators, in three countries with various development levels. In addition, Romanian profile literature does not enlist many scientific papers approaching the analysed topics, while international research papers exist, but only to a small extent. The main results of research reveal the occurrence of dissimilarities and similarities relevant to students’ perceptions, regarding the approached subject.consumers` protection, consumers` rights, international research, students, analysis of perceptions, different national contexts

On the Limited Communication Analysis and Design for Decentralized Estimation

This paper pertains to the analysis and design of decentralized estimation schemes that make use of limited communication. Briefly, these schemes equip the sensors with scalar states that iteratively merge the measurements and the state of other sensors to be used for state estimation. Contrarily to commonly used distributed estimation schemes, the only information being exchanged are scalars, there is only one common time-scale for communication and estimation, and the retrieval of the state of the system and sensors is achieved in finite-time. We extend previous work to a more general setup and provide necessary and sufficient conditions required for the communication between the sensors that enable the use of limited communication decentralized estimation~schemes. Additionally, we discuss the cases where the sensors are memoryless, and where the sensors might not have the capacity to discern the contributions of other sensors. Based on these conditions and the fact that communication channels incur a cost, we cast the problem of finding the minimum cost communication graph that enables limited communication decentralized estimation schemes as an integer programming problem.Comment: Updates on the paper in CDC 201

Decentralized Observability with Limited Communication between Sensors

In this paper, we study the problem of jointly retrieving the state of a dynamical system, as well as the state of the sensors deployed to estimate it. We assume that the sensors possess a simple computational unit that is capable of performing simple operations, such as retaining the current state and model of the system in its memory. We assume the system to be observable (given all the measurements of the sensors), and we ask whether each sub-collection of sensors can retrieve the state of the underlying physical system, as well as the state of the remaining sensors. To this end, we consider communication between neighboring sensors, whose adjacency is captured by a communication graph. We then propose a linear update strategy that encodes the sensor measurements as states in an augmented state space, with which we provide the solution to the problem of retrieving the system and sensor states. The present paper contains three main contributions. First, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions to ensure observability of the system and sensor states from any sensor. Second, we address the problem of adding communication between sensors when the necessary and sufficient conditions are not satisfied, and devise a strategy to this end. Third, we extend the former case to include different costs of communication between sensors. Finally, the concepts defined and the method proposed are used to assess the state of an example of approximate structural brain dynamics through linearized measurements.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, extended version of paper accepted at IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 201

COMMON INDUSTRIAL POLICY AND COMPETITIVENESS*

This article focuses on the theory in the field of industrial policy and government intervention in economy, presenting personal approaches and considerations related to this subject. Also, it presents worthy aspects to be considered when adapting industrial policy instruments to the modern day socio-political realities and especially to Romanian economy.industrial policy, market failure, competitiveness, economic growth

DELINEATING CATCHMENT AREAS FOR THE EASTERN EUROPEAN AIRPORTS IN 2010

This paper investigates the relation between the LAU2 centroids of selected countries in Eastern Europe and the closest airports, in terms of contribution to the construction of the theoretical catchment areas for these air nodes. Using time distances calculated in the road network and demographic mass of 2010, the methodology we propose is a reproductible guideline for the estimation of the relation between different geographical objects that match on an administrative geometry, at local level. Taking a conceptual distance to notions such as spatial accessibility or potential of interaction, we delineated the catchment areas based on the relative demographic contribution of the LAU2 to the construction of the airports' territorial service areas. The main challenge we faced is not the complexity of the model, but the proper estimation of the time distances in the road network and the implementation of cumulated population functions that can be mapped, in order to decline our objective - the territorial catchment areas of the airports

Horses’ Senses Involvement in Food Location and Selection

Senses are an important part of the interaction with the environment. Previous studies has been established that horses use smell and taste in the selection of their food. The involvement of sight in the selection process has not been clarified up to this study. Here, we investigate the involvement of senses in the selection process of food, also the proportion in which, each senses are involved and we evaluate the horses preferences for different colors. Two experiments have been designed and carried out with two racing horses The results obtained have demonstrated that the sight is the main sense in the location of the food, followed by the sense of olfactory organ involved in selecting plants ingested and the sense of taste which contributes less to the selection. There has also been identified a preference of the envolved horses for the pink color used in this experiment

ESTIMATING THE TERRITORIAL AUTOCORRELATION OF AIR PASSENGERS FLOWS IN EUROPE USING A MULTIVARIATE GRAVITY MODEL

Using a gravity model that includes the cost distances and the airports' mass at origin and destination, we have obtained a matrix of residuals for 21325 air links in Europe. These residuals served as the basis for calculating the coefficients of territorial autocorrelation in a multiple regional context. The coefficients we obtained were classified using an hierarchical clustering, at country level. This final typology shows that the national frontiers are more and more permeable to air traffic, having a limitated impact on the intensity of air links between the airports. Some spatial discontinuities are still at work in the European air space and they still have an influence on the amount of traffic, negatively (West-East opposition) or positively (the Scandinavian countries vs. the mainland). Mapping the residuals of the air flows gravity model indicate that these spatial discontinuities can occur also at regional scales of analysis, but they are fuelled by other logics: economic performance, tourism or workforce migration