The Impact of Cross Cultural Communication on Collective Efficacy in NCAA Basketball Teams

This research contributes to the knowledge and theory on cross cultural communication by investigating the impact of cross cultural communication competence on the collective efficacy of multicultural National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball teams. Data was collected from 140 U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball coaches via the Cross Cultural Communication Competence Questionnaire and the Collective Efficacy Questionnaire for Sports. Principle component analysis was conducted on the data, revealing that the cross cultural communication competence and collective efficacy of basketball teams are multidimensional. The hypothesized relationship between cross cultural communication competence and collective efficacy was confirmed and statistically measured through regression analysis. It was found that four of the cross cultural communication competence dimensions produced by the principle component analysis exhibited a significant positive relationship with one of the two dimensions within collective efficacy. Given the well-supported relationship between collective efficacy and team performance in business, this study produces important implications for scholars and practitioners working with multicultural sporting teams

A PDE and option based approach to valuing and designing stochastic storage for wind-generated electricity

Significant penetration of wind generation will inevitably impose additional requirements on the remaining large conventional plant to deliver both the flexibility and reserve necessary to deal with variability and unpredictability of wind power, which will inevitably have cost implications. Energy storage systems appear to be an obvious solution for dealing with the unpredictability of renewable sources: during periods when intermittent generation exceeds the demand, when the surplus could be stored and then used to cover periods when the load is greater than the generation. However, views on the role of bulk storage remain highly controversial and, somewhat surprisingly, there has been very little work carried out to demonstrate the necessity (or otherwise) and economics of storage based applications in systems with high penetration of wind energy. In this paper we assess the economic value of such storage by an innovative realoptions method. Solution of the resulting PDE (partial differential equation) requires novel numerical techniques that are developed and successfully applied in this paper (and which yield results in excellent agreement, but at considerably less cost, than full simulations). This PDE approach may have applications in many physical, engineering and economic systems