Dry Matter and Minerals in Loblolly Pine Plantation on Four Arkansas Soils

Average contents of N, P, K, Ca, and Na and total above ground dry matter were determined in 19-year-old unthinned loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantations in southeastern Arkansas. Three stands were sampled on each of four sites: well and poorly drained coastal plain soils and well and poorly drained loessial soils. Total dry weights, determined from 15 felled trees on each of the 12 plots, ranged from 127,000 kg/ha on poorly drained loessial soil to 173,300 kg/ha on poorly drained coastal plain soil. Ranking of sites, in descending order of production of dry matter, P, K, and Na was: coastal plain poorly drained, coastal plain well drained, loess well drained, and loess poorly drained. Quantity of Ca in stemwood and stembark was 36% higher on well than poorly drained soils; P was 30% higher on coastal plain than loess soils. Results permit calculation of nutrient drain in timber harvests. Bark in 19-year-old plantations contained 44, 44, 25, and 50% of total N, P, K, and Ca in the stems

Engineering Bureaucracy: The Genesis of Formal Policies, Positions, and Structures in High-Technology Firms

[Excerpt] This article examines the impact of organizational founding conditions on several facets of bureaucratization—managerial intensity, the proliferation of specialized managerial and administrative roles, and formalization of employment relations. Analyzing information on a sample of technology start-ups in California\u27s Silicon Valley, we characterize the organizational models or blueprints espoused by founders in creating new enterprises. We find that those models and the social composition of the labor force at the time of founding had enduring effects on growth in managerial intensity (i.e., reliance on managerial and administrative specialists) over time. Our analyses thus provide compelling evidence of path dependence in the evolution of bureaucracy—even in a context in which firms face intense selection pressures—and underscore the importance of the logics of organizing that founders bring to new enterprises. We find less evidence that founding models exert persistent effects on the formalization of employment relations or on the proliferation of specialized senior management titles. Rather, consistent with neo-institutional perspectives on organizations, those superficial facets of bureaucracy appear to be shaped by the need to satisfy external gatekeepers (venture capitalists and the constituents of public corporations), as well as by exigencies of organizational scale, growth, and aging. We discuss some implications of these results for efforts to understand the varieties, determinants, and consequences of bureaucracy

Inertia and Change in the Early Years: Employment Relations in Young, High Technology Firms

[Excerpt] This paper considers processes of organizational imprinting in a sample of 100 young, high technology companies. It examines the effects of a pair of initial conditions: the founders\u27 models of the employment relation and their business strategies. Our analyses indicate that these two features were well aligned when the firms were founded. However, the alignment has deteriorated over time, due to changes in the distribution of employment models. In particular, the \u27star\u27 model and \u27commitment\u27 model are less stable than the \u27engineering\u27 model and the \u27factory\u27 model. Despite their instability, these two blueprints for the employment relation have strong effects in shaping the early evolution of these firms. In particular, firms that embark with these models have significantly higher rates of replacing the founder chief executive with a non-founder as well as higher rates of completing an initial public stock offering. Some implications of these findings for future studies of imprinting and inertia in organizations are discussed

Determinants of Managerial Intensity in the Early Years of Organizations

This paper examines how founding conditions shape subsequent organizational evolution— specifically, the proliferation of management and administrative jobs. Analyzing quantitative and qualitative information on a sample of young technology start-ups in California’s Silicon Valley, we examine the enduring imprint of two aspects of firms’ founding conditions: the employment blueprints espoused by founders in creating new enterprises; and the social capital that existed among key early members of the firm—their social composition and social relations. We find that the initial gender mix in start-ups and the blueprint espoused by the founder influence the extent of managerial intensity that develops over time. In particular, firms whose founders espoused a bureaucratic model from the outset subsequently grew more administratively intense than otherwise-similar companies, particularly companies whose founders had initially championed a “commitment” model. Also, firms with a higher representation of women within the first year subsequently were slower to bureaucratize than otherwise-similar firms with a predominance of males. Our analyses thus provide compelling evidence of path-dependence in the evolution of organizational structures and underscore the importance of the “logics of organizing” that founders bring to new enterprises. Implications of these results for organizational theory and research are discussed

Statistics of Ku-band microwave response of the United States with a satellite borne radiometer/scatterometer

The author has identified the following significant results. The Skylab S-193 radiometer/scatterometer collected thousands of measurements of scattering coefficient and brightness temperature over various parts of the United States during the summer of 1973 at angles of incidence between vertical and about 45 deg. These measurements have been combined to produce histograms of the response at each of several angles within this range, and to establish average scattering coefficient vs angle curves with 10% and 90% exceedance levels as well. The variation of the radiometric measurements is primarily in the region from 255 K to 285 K, with very few measurements giving higher values, but a significant, though small, number giving values down to and even below 200 K. The scattering coefficient varies, for the mean, from about 0 db at 1 deg off vertical to a low in the neighborhood of -10 db at 45 deg. The variability of the scattering coefficient measurements with this coarse resolution sensor is surprisingly small. The number of distinguishable levels is slightly more for the scatterometer than for the radiometer, but the amount of variation in brightness temperature caused by the physical temperature of the ground is enough so that the scatterometer can be used to distinguish significantly more meaningful levels than the radiometer