Project Selection Directed By Intellectual Capital Scorecards

Management of intellectual capital is an important issue in knowledgeintensive organizations. Part of this is the composition of theoptimal project portfolio the organization will carry out in thefuture. Standard methods that guide this process mostly focus onproject selection on the basis of expected returns. However, in manycases other strategic factors should be considered in theirinterdependence such as customer satisfaction, reputation, anddevelopment of core competences.In this paper we present a tool for the selection of a projectportfolio, explicitly taking into account the balancing of thesestrategic factors. The point of departure is the intellectual capitalscorecard in which the indicators are periodically measured against atarget; the scores constitute the input of a programming model. Fromthe optimal portfolio computed, objectives for management can bederived. The method is illustrated in the case of R&D departments.knowledge management;intellectual assets;knowledge capitalization;optimal portfolio

Collective frames of reference, recognition, and managers' mental models of competition: a test in two industries

This work was supported by ESRC grant no. R000232883.Managers draw upon sources of collective knowledge to cognitively represent strategic issues. It has also be argued that cognition is embedded in social interaction, enabling managers to recognize of others’ cognitions. In two separate industries, this study found that the influences upon managers’ mental models of their competitive environment include industry membership, organizational membership, and management level. The results indicate further that recognition of others’ mental models may be more pronounced than cognitive similarity.School of Managemen

Project Selection in Knowledge Intensive Organizations Based on Intellectual Capital Scorecards

Management of intellectual capital is an important issue in knowledge intensive organizations. Part of this is the composition of the optimal project portfolio the organization will carry out in the future. Standard methods that guide this process mostly focus on project selection on the basis of expected returns. However, in many cases other strategic factors should be considered in their interdependence such as customer satisfaction, reputation, and development of core competences. In this paper we present a tool for the selection of a project portfolio, explicitly taking into account the balancing of these strategic factors. The point of departure is the intellectual capital scorecard in which the indicators are periodically measured against a target; the scores constitute the input of a programming model. From the optimal portfolio computed, objectives for management can be derived. The method is illustrated in the case of R&D departments

Project Selection Directed By Intellectual Capital Scorecards

Management of intellectual capital is an important issue in knowledge intensive organizations. Part of this is the composition of the optimal project portfolio the organization will carry out in the future. Standard methods that guide this process mostly focus on project selection on the basis of expected returns. However, in many cases other strategic factors should be considered in their interdependence such as customer satisfaction, reputation, and development of core competences. In this paper we present a tool for the selection of a project portfolio, explicitly taking into account the balancing of these strategic factors. The point of departure is the intellectual capital scorecard in which the indicators are periodically measured against a target; the scores constitute the input of a programming model. From the optimal portfolio computed, objectives for management can be derived. The method is illustrated in the case of R&D departments

Development and testing of an intervention to increase staff knowledge and confidence in responding to health anxiety in the context of cognitive decline:a pilot study

Background: Memory complaint in the absence of organic pathology is a common phenomenon accounting for up to one third of patients presenting to memory clinics. Health anxiety has been specifically linked to dementia worry and repeated presentations to the National Health Service (NHS). Providing reassurance that an individual does not have dementia appears ineffective in reducing presentations to primary and secondary care services.Aims: This study sought to evaluate and establish the effectiveness of a 1-hour pilot training workshop to enhance healthcare professionals knowledge and confidence to those with health anxiety around cognitive decline.Method: The one-session pilot training workshop was developed and informed by previous work and consultation with the 2Gether NHS Foundation Trust Memory Assessment Service staff. The training workshop was then evaluated by employing an idiosyncratic self-report questionnaire. Participants completed the questionnaire prior to and after the training workshop.Results: Pre- and post-training questionnaires revealed that the pilot training workshop was effective in increasing perceived knowledge and confidence in staff responding to patients presenting with health anxiety and co-occurring subjective memory complaints.Conclusions: The findings suggest that healthcare professionals may benefit from training in identifying and addressing health anxious individuals with subjective memory complaints. This may have implications in the provision of psychologically-informed care offered in a memory assessment service. Recommendations are made for further enhancing the effectiveness of staff training and promoting alternative service treatment pathways

The Research Commons: a new creature in the library?

This is a post-print/preprint of an article published by Emerald in Performance Measurement and Metrics, VOL 11, available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14678041011064043.Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the use made of the Research Commons during its first year of operation in an attempt to establish whether it actually provides a genuinely new and different service from the point of view of the end‐users, and whether a facility such as this could indeed be presumed to support research and enhance research output at the university. Design/methodology/approach – Using Lippincott's assessment grid, an attempt was made to assess activities in the Research Commons according to the dimensions of extensiveness, efficiency, effectiveness, service quality and usefulness. Methodology was mixed, with quantitative and qualitative components that logged the extent and nature of the use of the various facilities in the Research Commons and sought to establish from stakeholder perceptions whether the services on offer are regarded as substantially different from those in the undergraduate Knowledge Commons and whether they are indeed seen to be supporting research activities. Findings – It was found that a combination of numerical and qualitative measurements has yielded sufficient evidence for the drawing of preliminary conclusions. The evidence gathered demonstrates that the Research Commons, designed primarily as a site for the creation of new knowledge in the form of original writing by researchers at postgraduate and academic level, is indeed an advance on the well‐established "library commons" concept, and that its creation represents an instance of "parallel invention" – the "new creature" that the title refers to. Originality/value – This paper provides a multifaceted perspective on the activities taking place in a new library facility and should provide librarians and researchers with evidence‐based insight into how meaningful research support may be provided to young researchers from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds as part of an academic library service in a middle income country

The influence of the Bible on later culture and literature

Scholarships & Prizes Office. University of Sydne

Resonance energy transfer: The unified theory revisited

Resonanceenergy transfer (RET) is the principal mechanism for the intermolecular or intramolecular redistribution of electronic energy following molecular excitation. In terms of fundamental quantum interactions, the process is properly described in terms of a virtual photon transit between the pre-excited donor and a lower energy (usually ground-state) acceptor. The detailed quantum amplitude for RET is calculated by molecular quantum electrodynamical techniques with the observable, the transfer rate, derived via application of the Fermi golden rule. In the treatment reported here, recently devised state-sequence techniques and a novel calculational protocol is applied to RET and shown to circumvent problems associated with the usual method. The second-rank tensor describing virtual photon behavior evolves from a Green’s function solution to the Helmholtz equation, and special functions are employed to realize the coupling tensor. The method is used to derive a new result for energy transfer systems sensitive to both magnetic- and electric-dipole transitions. The ensuing result is compared to that of pure electric-dipole–electric-dipole coupling and is analyzed with regard to acceptable transfer separations. Systems are proposed where the electric-dipole–magnetic-dipole term is the leading contribution to the overall rate

Water vulnerability assessment framework

The present deliverable report is related to Task 1.4 of the MADFORWATER project. The aim of the current report is double: (1) To define a framework for the development and assessment of integrated water & land management strategies (IWLMS) at basin level. This will be subsequently implemented in WP5 and WP6 of the MADFORWATER project. (2) To assess water security on a scale lower than the national level (as it was done in Task 1.2 of the MADFORWATER project) in order to provide a better understanding of the current water management practices and water vulnerabilities of the MADFORWATER selected basins: Souss-Massa basin in Morocco, Cap-Bon and Miliane basin in Tunisia, and the North-Eastern Nile Delta sub-basin in Egypt. It became apparent, during the execution of the MADFORWATER project, the need to handle a stronger consistency of indicators and information across different scales. In this view, Deliverable 1.4 focused on a systematic analysis to understand how the impact of potential local measures in the field of wastewater reuse could be assessed at different scales. Results were then used to derivate the assessment framework accordingly

Statistical properties of multistep enzyme-mediated reactions

Enzyme-mediated reactions may proceed through multiple intermediate conformational states before creating a final product molecule, and one often wishes to identify such intermediate structures from observations of the product creation. In this paper, we address this problem by solving the chemical master equations for various enzymatic reactions. We devise a perturbation theory analogous to that used in quantum mechanics that allows us to determine the first () and the second (variance) cumulants of the distribution of created product molecules as a function of the substrate concentration and the kinetic rates of the intermediate processes. The mean product flux V=d/dt (or "dose-response" curve) and the Fano factor F=variance/ are both realistically measurable quantities, and while the mean flux can often appear the same for different reaction types, the Fano factor can be quite different. This suggests both qualitative and quantitative ways to discriminate between different reaction schemes, and we explore this possibility in the context of four sample multistep enzymatic reactions. We argue that measuring both the mean flux and the Fano factor can not only discriminate between reaction types, but can also provide some detailed information about the internal, unobserved kinetic rates, and this can be done without measuring single-molecule transition events.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure