Supply chain management and the Romanian transition

The purpose of this paper is to perform a systemic analysis of the Supply Chain Management, and to show what are the essential aspects of such a complex process. Actually, it is an integral perspective of intra- and interorganizational management activities aiming at the optimization of all important tangible and intangible fluxes and forces acting in a multifield framework. In the same time, we are looking at the Romanian transition and show how such a new perspective can be applied to the business environment. The analysis is challenging, since Romania is in a deep change process from a centrally planned economy toward a free market economy.management, supply chain management, system analysis, transition economy.

Changed Society, Changing Law, Hence Unstable Prisons

A Review of Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society by James B. Jacob

An exploratory study of the effect of social capital on supply chain relationships: the case of Romania

This study examines the relationship of social capital among buyers and their principal supplier and their most recently chosen supplier in Romania. The study provides an understanding of the transition from a command to a market economy. Responses from 96 managers were analyzed and revealed that supply chain practices are unevenly applied, the practices are used to greater degree with the principal supplier, and a statistically significant link was found between measures of the buyer’s social capital and its supply chain relationships with the principal supplier. No such link was found between the buyer and its most recently chosen supplier.buyer, relationships, Romania, social capital, supplier, supply chain, transition.

Supply chain management and the Romanian transition

Supply Chain Management (SCM), defined here as the construction of productive systems spanning over organizational borders with suppliers and customers and integrated via humanbased and information technology systems to satisfy final customer requirements, is introduced as a key concept to accelerate Romania’s economic transition as it approaches EU membership, as well as to develop a modern supplier network. We introduce SCM from a system perspective along three broad areas: input, operations, output and system integration activities. We close by introducing constraints to SCM implementation in Romania. The first major constraint involves a lack of appropriate physical and human capital. Modernization of antiquated equipment and training employees in modern operations practices are prime requisites. The second major constraint, and perhaps the more difficult to change, deals with a lack of social capital among Romanian firms and adapting to appropriate managerial and worker values and attitudes.Supply Chain Management; Social Capital; Transition Economy; Economic Development

Foraging memory: Retrieving words from one and from two semantic categories

Traditionally applied to an animal's search for food, the concept of foraging has been extended to include the search for information in such places as the Internet and libraries (Pirotti & Card, 1999). The premise behind the research reported here is that memory searching can also be construed as foraging. The goals of this investigation are to uncover mental factors that may affect memory production during memory search and to use this knowledge to guide a prediction of foraging production. Prior to testing, four such mental factors were identified: a time cost when producing an initial item from a different category (switch cost); a production benefit driven by a release of proactive interference (time-out benefit); a production cost caused by the additional mental load of executing an autonomous switching strategy (executive-decision cost); and sub-optimal allocation of time between categories. Experiment 1 tested whether switching between categories leads to a switch cost and/or time-out benefit by having subjects produce items from a category in a continuous three-minute block or multiple blocks that add to three minutes. Experiment 2 addressed the possibility of an "Executive-decision" cost by either allowing subjects to autonomously switch between categories or yoking them to another subject's switch schedule. Experiment 3 tested whether memory foragers divide their time optimally between categories. Data from the first experiment demonstrated that like external foraging, moving from category to category (patch to patch) results in a production downtime. These data also demonstrated that switching production between domains may lead to a time-out benefit. Experiment 2 showed that the execution of an autonomous switching strategy leads to less production then when switching is forced. The third experiment demonstrated that, unlike animals, humans do not have an innate sense of how to divide their time between patches (categories) to maximize gain. Our prediction was derived by having subjects produce category exemplars from a single category alone or from two categories at once. Data from single-category production trials as well as adjustments inspired by Experiment I through 3 were used to predict production from two categories. Though accurate, the flexibility of our prediction is limited. Research needed to allow for greater flexibility is discussed