“The Simplest Thing is Difficult”: The United States Army and the War of 1812

The War of 1812 occupies an uneasy place in the American memory. Despite some popular notions of victory in that conflict, serious students of military history have always known that the United States did not win it. The war was at best a draw because the nation lacked experienced officers, disciplined soldiers, a working logistical system, and a clear-cut strategic plan. For most of the war American leadership was bungling and inadequate. The performance of the Regulars was frequently far from perfect, and that of the militia even less so. Yet the nation maintained its territorial integrity, and some younger Army officers demonstrated the leadership so conspicuously lacking at higher levels. These officers showed that American troops, Regular or militia, when properly led and trained performed as well as British Regulars

A Model of Potential Entrepreneurship: Profiles and Educational Implications

In an effort to determine the propensity for  entrepreneurship  of potential  entrepreneurs, students enrolled in Small Business Management classes at the graduate and undergraduate level were examined. A series of surveys including Jackson's Personality Inventory for Innovation and Risk Taking, and Jackson's PRF for Need for Achievement as well as the Carland Entrepreneurship Index were completed. The results supported the empirical development of a model of potential entrepreneurship. That model was tested from theoretical, statistical and visual perspectives. Finally, the model was used to develop implications for entrepreneurship education

Self-Actualization: The Zenith of Entrepreneurship

This paper presents entrepreneurship  literature  which supports  a treatment  of entrepreneurial drive as a continuum. Behavioral differences among entrepreneurs are presented and examined in the light of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The two perspectives are linked by a perspective of entrepreneurial activity as a vehicle which can support one's advancement through all levels of the hierarchy. This perspective is examined empirically with a database of 156 entrepreneurs, and the authors conclude that the respondents in this study who displayed higher entrepreneurial drive did view their businesses as vehicles for achieving self-esteem and self-actualization. Those respondents displaying lower entrepreneurial drive viewed their firms as vehicles for providing  basic financial  needs

Seeing What's Not THere: The Enigma of Entrepreneurship

The process is clear: entrepreneurs initiate business ventures. What is not clear is why they do so. The debate continues to rage about entrepreneurial behavior and this singular act of individual volition which is so vital to a nation's economic health and well being. The drives and personalities continue to be debated. Gartner (1988) asks, "Can one know the dancer from the dance?"  Is it even important to try? Carland, Hoy and Carland (I 988) think it is essential because one cannot understand the dance without  understanding the dancer.We think that the dance takes on the personality of the dancer. It is the dancer who interprets the dance and each artist makes the process his or her own. If we seek to understand the entrepreneurial process, we must have some insight into the entrepreneurial psyche. This is especially true if we wish to design educational and training programs for prospective and practicing entrepreneurs.In this work, we empirically examine 502 owner/managers of small businesses. We identify entrepreneurial vision, the ability to see what is not there, as their commonality. We empirically /ink that vision to the entrepreneurial psyche and use that to build insight into the entrepreneurial enigma, the process  of entrepreneurship

IMAGINING A HOME FOR US: REPRESENTATIONS OF QUEER FAMILIES IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE LITERATURE

This thesis addresses popular works of fiction written or produced near or after 1989 in Japan and examines the roles that sexual orientation, gender and 20th century social and discursive history have had on the conceptualization of familial relations in postwar Japan. This thesis will analyze the means by which writers and artists during the 1980s and 1990s have engaged discourses of family in their works and will argue that these writers explicitly use queer (hereby defined as non-heterosexual and/or non-gender conforming) individuals and narratives to question, reshape and propose alternatives to culturally received images of heterosexual marriage and the nuclear family model. In Japan, the earliest legal model of family was the ie or house system, which codified earlier social structures that had existed amongst the samurai class of the Edo period (1600-1868) and enshrined the concept of male primogeniture into law. This was changed after World War II, when the Ie system was abolished and replaced by a model of conjugal (nuclear) familial relations. This new model of household organization was promoted by the Allied Occupation, major businesses and corporations, and the postwar Japanese government, and its attendant gendered division of labor was the foundation upon which Japan recovered economically in the postwar period and remade itself as an export-driven, capitalist country in the 1960s and 1970s. This model of family, however, has come under increased socioeconomic pressure as a result of the 1990 real estate market bubble bursting and subsequent economic contraction, as well as by continuing demographic trends that indicate a long-term, decreasing population. This thesis will argue that the model of familial relations propagated during the postwar period, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s is ideologically rooted in a historically contingent model of sanctioned heterosexual relations, and that through examining depictions of those precluded from these sanctioned relations, a better understanding of the operation of gender, sexuality and familial relations as they operate in the Japanese popular and cultural spheres can be achieved

An Investigation of the Planning-Performance Conundrum in a Dynamic Macroentrepreneurial Environment

While it is intuitively appealing from  a theoretical perspective  to confirm  the relationship between strategic planning and performance as measured by growth and profitability,  many unknowns tend to confound the perfect model.  The literature is rich with studies attempting to explicate the dynamics of planning  and performance, yet  there is no closure because of the vagaries of sample and methodology.   This paper  investigates the planning-performance conundrum  in a dynamic macroentrepreneurial   environment.The results  of this study  clearly  show  that for   the present  sample  of macroentrepreneurs, strategic   planning    had   a   deleterious    effect   on   peiformance.        This   suggests    that entrepreneurship  researchers  may  need  to reexamine  some  basic  axioms  and precepts.    For example,  perhaps   entrepreneurs  do  employ  a  rapidly  evolving  vision  to  negotiate  through dynamic   environments   rather   than   operate   under   the  constraints   of  strategic   planning. Clearly,  the firms   in  this  sample  were  all  highly  successful  ventures.    Further,  they  all practiced  strategic  management.   If strategic planning  did not contribute to that success,  what did? The search for an explanation continues

Design from Within: A Resident-Based Approach to Nursing Home Design

This paper examined the value and impact of obtaining stakeholder input in the design of long-term care facilities. Most previous literature focused on obtaining input from an architect’s or nurse’s perspective, and very few studies have analyzed input from the residents—the primary stakeholder (Woo, Mak, Cheng & Choy, 2011). Specifically, this paper identifies and examines stakeholder input at The Maine Veterans’ Home in Scarborough, Maine

Modeling the values of private sector agents in multi-echelon humanitarian supply chains

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Humanitarian organizations (HOs) increasingly look to engage private sector supply chains in achieving outcomes. The right engagement approach may require knowledge of agents' preferences across multi-echelon supply chains to align private sector value creation with humanitarian outcomes. We propose a multi-attribute value analysis (MAVA) framework to elucidate such preferences. We formalize this approach and apply it in collaboration with a HO pilot aiming to facilitate better private sector availability of malaria rapid diagnostic tests in Uganda. We demonstrate how HOs could use criteria weights and value functions from MAVA for project evaluation; in the process, we reveal business model insights for importers, distributors, and retailers in the pilot. We also show how MAVA facilitates the impact assessment of hypothetical options (i.e., combinations of products, services, and subsidies) to guide HO resource deployment. This paper offers the first attempt, to our knowledge, to develop quantitative measures for economic and non-economic objectives involving all agents in a multi-echelon supply chain, either humanitarian or commercial. We hope that this initial step stimulates further research to validate results and develop the framework proposed

Bureaucrats and Imperial Finance: The Colonial Office, the Treasury and the West African Currency Board, 1911‑1914

Entre 1901 et I9I0, quarante pour cent des pièces de monnaie frappées au Royaume-Uni circulaient dans les pays britanniques de la côte ouest de l'Afrique. Cette situation n'était certes pas vue d'un bon oeil; d'une part, le British Treasury craignait les effets que pourrait avoir une repatriation soudaine de la monnaie alors que, d'autre part, le Colonial Office qui avait la responsabilité de voir au bien-être des colonies, enviait les profits réalisés par le Treasury qui détenait le pouvoir de faire frapper les pièces. Pour remédier au problème et assurer un meilleur contrôle, on institua donc, en 1912, le West African Currency Board (WACB).Le British Treasury et le Colonial Office furent intimement liés à la création et aux premières activités du WACB mais cette liaison prit la forme d'une lutte pour le contrôle de cette commission. Bien qu'on ait. jusqu'à date, toujours pensé que c'est le Treasury qui a eu la haute-main sur l'affaire, cette étude démontre, au contraire, que c'est le Colonial Office qui a réussi à dominer la situation et à prendre la commission sous sa tutelle. Pour faire état du comment et du pourquoi de cette prise de pouvoir, l'auteur décrit les mécanismes par lesquels le WACB fut créé et mis en opération au cours des années 1911-12, les modes selon lesquels on a rapatrié l'argent britannique des pays africains pendant les années 1912-14 et la controverse qui entoura la demande du Treasury d'être représenté au sein du WACB. Selon l'auteur, les décisions ont toujours favorisé le Colonial Office et il est évident que ce sont ses intérêts qui ont toujours prévalu

A theoretical and experimental dissociation of two models of decision‐making

La prise de décision est un processus computationnel fondamental dans de nombreux aspects du comportement animal. Le modèle le plus souvent rencontré dans les études portant sur la prise de décision est appelé modèle de diffusion. Depuis longtemps, il explique une grande variété de données comportementales et neurophysiologiques dans ce domaine. Cependant, un autre modèle, le modèle d’urgence, explique tout aussi bien ces mêmes données et ce de façon parcimonieuse et davantage encrée sur la théorie. Dans ce travail, nous aborderons tout d’abord les origines et le développement du modèle de diffusion et nous verrons comment il a été établi en tant que cadre de travail pour l’interprétation de la plupart des données expérimentales liées à la prise de décision. Ce faisant, nous relèveront ses points forts afin de le comparer ensuite de manière objective et rigoureuse à des modèles alternatifs. Nous réexaminerons un nombre d’assomptions implicites et explicites faites par ce modèle et nous mettrons alors l’accent sur certains de ses défauts. Cette analyse servira de cadre à notre introduction et notre discussion du modèle d’urgence. Enfin, nous présenterons une expérience dont la méthodologie permet de dissocier les deux modèles, et dont les résultats illustrent les limites empiriques et théoriques du modèle de diffusion et démontrent en revanche clairement la validité du modèle d'urgence. Nous terminerons en discutant l'apport potentiel du modèle d'urgence pour l'étude de certaines pathologies cérébrales, en mettant l'accent sur de nouvelles perspectives de recherche.Decision‐making is a computational process of fundamental importance to many aspects of animal behavior. The prevailing model in the experimental study of decision‐making is the drift‐diffusion model, which has a long history and accounts for a broad range of behavioral and neurophysiological data. However, an alternative model – called the urgency‐gating model – has been offered which can account equally well for much of the same data in a more parsimonious and theoretically‐sound manner. In what follows, we will first trace the origins and development of the DDM, as well as give a brief overview of the manner in which it has supplied an explanatory framework for a large number of behavioral and physiological studies in the domain of decision‐making. In so doing, we will attempt to build a strong and clear case for its strengths so that it can be fairly and rigorously compared to potential alternative models. We will then re‐examine a number of the implicit and explicit theoretical assumptions made by the drift‐diffusion model, as well as highlight some of its empirical shortcomings. This analysis will serve as the contextual backdrop for our introduction and discussion of the urgency‐gating model. Finally, we present a novel experiment, the methodological design of which uniquely affords a decisive empirical dissociation of the models, the results of which illustrate the empirical and theoretical shortcomings of the drift‐diffusion model and instead offer clear support for the urgency‐gating model. We finish by discussing the potential for the urgency gating model to shed light on a number of clinical disorders, highlighting a number of future directions for research