Organizational Learning from Extreme Performance Experience: The Impact of Success and Recovery Experience

This paper argues that two different types of a firm’s own extreme performance experiences—success and recovery—and their interactions can generate survival-enhancing learning. Although these types of experience often represent valuable sources of useful learning, several important learning challenges arise when a firm has extremely limited prior experience of the same type. Thus, we theorize that a certain threshold of a given type of experience is required before each type of experience becomes valuable, with low levels of experience harming the organization. Furthermore, we propose that success and recovery experience will interact to enhance each other’s value. These conditions can help overcome learning challenges such as superstitious learning or learning from small samples. We investigate our ideas using a sample of the U.S. commercial banks founded between 1984 and 1998. Our results indicate that both success and recovery experience of a firm generate survival-enhancing learning, but only after a certain level of experience is reached. Furthermore, success and recovery experience enhance each other’s learning value, consistent with the theories that emphasize the importance of richer and contrasting experience in providing useful knowledge. Our framework advances organizational learning theory by presenting a contingent model of the impact of success and recovery experience and their interaction

Use of Variation Technique from Haydn Through Rachmaninoff

According to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, variation is “a form founded on repetition, and as such an outgrowth of a fundamental musical and rhetorical principle, in which a discrete theme is repeated several or many times with various modifications.” This dissertation shows how selected composers treated variation technique differently. Mozart’s Nine Variations in D major, K. 573 is one of Mozart’s later variations. Beethoven’s Variations and Fugue for Piano in E flat major, Op. 35 is a set of fifteen variations ending with a fugue finale, a departure from earlier variation forms. Schubert created the first example of fantasy variation in the slow movement of the Wanderer Fantasy D. 760 (1822). The Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491 by Mozart has the form of a theme with variations in the third movement, an Allegro. The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43 by Sergei Rachmaninoff is written for solo piano and symphony orchestra, closely resembling a piano concerto. The Serious Variations, Op. 54 by Mendelssohn has a wide range of pianistic textures and figures and virtuoso treatment of the theme. The Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13 is a set of etudes for solo piano by Robert Schumann. It began in 1834 as a theme and sixteen variations, plus a further variation on an entirely different theme. The Andante with Variations in F minor, Hob. 17/6 by Haydn is a set of double variations; the first theme is in F minor and the second theme in F major. Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor, WoO 80 has a chaconne form which is an unusual compositional style in the classic era. The work starts with the eight-bar theme that features contrary motion and growing harmonic tension. The pieces discussed above were presented in three recitals on April 23, 2008, February 7, 2009, and October 22, 2012. Compact disc recordings of these recitals are available in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland

A case study of lesson study in a high school: Implementation after the initial funding cease

This study examined the implementation of lesson study as a method of professional development in a high school setting after the initial funding had ceased. The participants had had experience with lesson study and included three math teachers, two science teachers, one special education teacher who collaborated with the science teachers, one literacy coach, and one curriculum coordinator. Data collection included secondary sources obtained by the university partnership; observations of the lesson study, the participants??? regular classrooms, and department meetings; two phases of in-depth interviews; an open-ended survey; and artifacts of the process of lesson study. The implementation of lesson study after the end of funding with support from a facilitator did yield some benefits for the participants, although they also confronted several challenges, such as time, scheduling, and various levels of understanding of what lesson study is. After implementing the lesson study, participants demonstrated changes in instruction, concern about student needs and performance, and collaboration with colleagues. Also, similarities between the regular department meetings and the lesson study meetings were found, which might contribute to the successful adaptation of lesson study into the U.S. context. Fully informing teachers about lesson study and giving them practical experience with it as a method of professional development can lead to its continuity

Alexander Rehding. 2009. Music and Monumentality: Commemoration and Wonderment in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Music and Monumentality remains a thought-provoking book that traverses familiar territory with a fresh perspective. Rehding's project is at once modest and ambitious: modest in that it makes no claims to comprehensiveness, ambitious in the scope and gravity of the questions raised. The result is that its treatment of the material is not always commensurate to the magnitude of the issues at stake. Nevertheless, the book stands as a laudable attempt to capture the contingency of historical phenomena. Both the concept of monumentality and the objects that sustain it are embedded in an intricate web of relationships that cannot be easily disentangled. Put another way, Music and Monumentality stands as an eloquent symptom of the early twenty-first -century condition: a disturbed, fragmented collective memory that may only apprehend the nineteenth century as a collection of souvenir

Rezoning Decisions Associated with Housing Price, Land Use Plan, and Urban Sprawl: Empirical Estimations

Under the theme of ¨DRezoning Decisions Associated with Housing Price, Land Use Plan, and Urban Sprawl: Empirical Estimations¡¬, this thesis consists of two research with two related topics. The first part analyzes the dynamics of zoning structure and accommodates the neighborhood spillover effects associated with the real estate market, focusing particularly neighborhood spillover effects between rezoning of vacant parcels and housing price. It is found that the price of a house is positively influenced by the prices of other houses in its neighborhood but the rezoning status of a vacant parcel in a neighboring location plays an insignificant role in explaining the price of a house. The contrasting results of neighborhood spillover effects between rezoning and housing price clarify the direction of association between rezoning and housing price. The second part examines whether the manipulation of land use plan influences spatial development patterns in Knoxville area. It is hypothesized that rezoning approvals from undevelopable land classifications to developable land classifications are affected by the area currently designated for agricultural-rural residential use. The results show that the average distances between the closest parcels identified as preexisting development and parcels predicted to be approved for developable land classification drop under the hypothetical land use plan scenarios with expanded area designated for agricultural-rural residential use. The drops of the average distances are due to the increases in the frequency of denials of rezoning petitions for development in the area expanded for agricultural-rural residential uses. These results indicate that a manipulation of agricultural-rural residential use areas encourages rezoning for development closer to the area of preexisting development, and thereby reduces urban sprawl

PHYTOCHEMICAL AND ANTIOXIDANT CHARACTERIZATION OF THINNED IMMATURE CITRUS UNSHIU FRUITS

Objective: We aimed to evaluate the characterization of thinned immature Citrus unshiu fruits with regard to their phytochemical profile and antioxidant capacity.Methods: Determination of total phenolic, flavonoid, and carotenoid and ascorbic acid contents was done by UV-Visible spectrophotometry, whereas UPLC-mass detection was used for the analysis of individual flavanone (naringin, hesperidin, hesperetin, neohesperedine and narirutin) and flavonol (rutin). In addition, free radicals (DPPH, O2-, H2O2 and NO) scavenging assays were used to determine the antioxidant capacity.Results: Naringin, hesperidine, neohesperedine and narirutin were the main flavanones in all thinned immature Citrus unshiu fruits. The contents of total phenolic, flavonoid and carotenoid were more prevalent in immature fruits than the level found in mature fruits. All thinned immature Citrus unshiu fruits possess an evident antioxidant capacity. The immature Citrus extract concentrations providing 50% inhibition (IC50) for free radicals; 1.2-1.49 mg/ml for DPPH, 1.03-1.46 mg/ml for superoxide, 1.95-3.43 mg/ml for hydrogen peroxide and 1.64-3.45 mg/ml for nitric oxide was lower than those of mature Citrus extracts.Conclusion: Thinned immature Citrus unshiu fruits could be an economic and readily accessible source of natural antioxidants and as a possible food and pharmaceutical supplement