Management innovation made in China: Haier’s Rendanheyi

This article shows how emerging market companies like China’s Haier Group create management innovations that are appropriate for an environment characterized by increased volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Dealing with VUCA effectively requires practices favoring nimble and decentralized responses; the Haier Group developed a platform of management practices under the label Rendanheyi (in Chinese: 人单合一) to transform itself from a conventional hierarchical manufacturing firm into a highly responsive online-based entrepreneurial company with “zero distance to the customer”. We demonstrate how the organizational, competitive, institutional, and technological contexts mattered for the development of Rendanheyi. Our study contributes several insights for practitioners and academics. First, we showcase how context dependent management innovations are created to allow emerging market firms like Haier to deal with a high VUCA world. Second, we draw lessons from Haier’s experimentation process for other firms. Finally, we create an extended process model of management innovation that managers, in both emerging and developed countries, can readily apply

Multimodal Classification of Urban Micro-Events

In this paper we seek methods to effectively detect urban micro-events. Urban micro-events are events which occur in cities, have limited geographical coverage and typically affect only a small group of citizens. Because of their scale these are difficult to identify in most data sources. However, by using citizen sensing to gather data, detecting them becomes feasible. The data gathered by citizen sensing is often multimodal and, as a consequence, the information required to detect urban micro-events is distributed over multiple modalities. This makes it essential to have a classifier capable of combining them. In this paper we explore several methods of creating such a classifier, including early, late, hybrid fusion and representation learning using multimodal graphs. We evaluate performance on a real world dataset obtained from a live citizen reporting system. We show that a multimodal approach yields higher performance than unimodal alternatives. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our hybrid combination of early and late fusion with multimodal embeddings performs best in classification of urban micro-events

An Electric Vehicle Charging Management Scheme Based on Publish/Subscribe Communication Framework

Motivated by alleviating CO2 pollution, Electric Vehicle (EV) based applications have recently received wide interests from both commercial and research communities by using electric energy instead of traditional fuel energy. Although EVs are inherently with limited travelling distance, such limitation could be overcome by deploying public Charging Stations (CSs) to recharge EVs battery during their journeys. In this article, we propose a communication framework for on-the-move EV charging scenario, based on Publish/Subscribe (P/S) mechanism to disseminate necessary information about CSs to EVs. Concerning privacy issue, those EVs subscribing to such information could then locally make their individual decisions to select desired CSs for charging, rather than applying a centralized manner where private EV information is required to be released through communication. In this paper we propose a novel communication framework for on-the-move EV charging scenario, based on the Publish/Subscribe (P/S) mechanism for disseminating necessary CS information to EVs, in order for them to make optimized decisions on where to charge. A core part of our communication framework is the utilization of Road Side Units (RSUs) to bridge the information flow from CSs to EVs, which has been regarded as a type of cost-efficient communication infrastructure. Under this design, we introduce two complementary communication modes of signalling protocols, namely Push and Pull Modes, in order to enable the required information dissemination operation. Both analysis and simulation show the advantage of Pull Mode, in which the information is cached at RSUs to support asynchronous communication. We further propose a remote reservation service based on the Pull Mode, such that the CS-selection decision making can utilize the knowledge of EVs' charging reservation, as published from EVs through RSUs to CSs. Results show that both the performance at CS and EV sides are further improved based on using this anticipated information

A potentiometric study of some solution equilibria involving biological ligands and transition metal ions

The formation constants for several metal ion-ligand complexes have been measured by glass electrode potentiometry in aqueous solution at 37°C using an ionic background of 150mM sodium perchlorate. The three topics comprising this thesis are (i) a study of the reaction of several metal ions, namely Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II) and Zn(II), with ligands such as adeninate, cyclohexylamine and cyclopentylamine. These were studied in order to gain experience in the techniques of potentiometry and computation. (ii) The second topic, which comprises the major portion of the thesis, involved the in vitro study of zinc complexes with a series of ligands which can be divided into two groups; those containing only oxygen donor groups (acetate, galacturonate, hydroxybutyrate, malate, malonate, oxalate, salicylate and tartarate) and those which contain oxygen and nitrogen donor groups (glycinate, glycylglycinate and glycylglycylglycinate); the purpose of this investigation being to suggest the best zinc supplementing drug for treating zinc deficiency conditions. Hydroxybutyrate and galacturonate are suggested to be the most promising ligands for zinc absorption. (iii) Finally, computer simulation models of equilibria involving zinc and ligands in intestinal solution were used to correlate the rate of growth of turkey poults with the type of metal-ligand complexing occurring in intestinal fluid

CAINE: A Context-Aware Information-Centric Network Ecosystem

Information-centric networking (ICN) is an emerging networking paradigm that places content identifiers rather than host identifiers at the core of the mechanisms and protocols used to deliver content to end users. Such a paradigm allows routers enhanced with content-awareness to play a direct role in the routing and resolution of content requests from users, without any knowledge of the specific locations of hosted content. However, to facilitate good network traffic engineering and satisfactory user QoS, content routers need to exchange advanced network knowledge to assist them with their resolution decisions. In order to maintain the location-independency tenet of ICNs, such knowledge (known as context information) needs to be independent of the locations of servers. To this end, we propose CAINE - Context-Aware Information-centric Network Ecosystem - which enables context-based operations to be intrinsically supported by the underlying ICN routing and resolution functions. Our approach has been designed to maintain the location-independence philosophy of ICNs by associating context information directly to content rather than to the physical entities such as servers and network elements in the content ecosystem, while ensuring scalability. Through simulation, we show that based on such location-independent context information, CAINE is able to facilitate traffic engineering in the network, while not posing a significant control signalling burden on the network

Performance management practices within emerging market multinational enterprises: the case of Brazilian multinationals

This study advances our understanding of HRM within EM-MNEs by examining the extent to, and mechanism by, which Brazilian MNEs standardize or localise their performance management (PM) policies and practices, and the factors that influence their design and implementation. We explored these issues through qualitative case studies of three Brazilian MNEs. The analysis of interview data reveals a strong tendency for Brazilian MNEs to centralise and standardise their PM policies and practices. The key finding of this paper is that PM practices within Brazilian MNEs are not based on indigenous Brazilian practices, but rather, are heavily influenced by global best practices. The findings are at odds with previous research, which suggests that EM-MNEs apply different HR practices in developed country subsidiaries and developing country subsidiaries. Also, contrary to expectations, our results indicate that institutional distance does not have a significant influence on the adaptation of PM practices at subsidiary level

Investigation and simulation of the transport of gas containing mercury in microporous silica membranes

This work investigates the effect of condensable Hg vapour on the transport of N2 gas across cobalt oxide silica (CoOxSi) membranes. Experimental results suggest that Hg significantly affects N2 permeation at 100 and 200°C, though this effect is negligible at 300°C. This effect was found to have a correlation with Hg adsorption on CoOxSi xerogels. In order to understand the Hg effect in the transport phenomena of N2 permeation, the oscillator model was used to model gas transport through pores with different sizes. By including effective medium theory (EMT), the oscillator model fitted well the experimental results and gave good prediction of mass transfer in ultra-microporous materials with a tri-modal pore size distribution, such as silica membranes. It is postulated that Hg seeks lower level potentials in micro-pores, and therefore Hg molecules tend to block small pores (2.5-4Å from 2.9Å), or reduce the average pore size of larger pores (6.7-7.8Å and 12-14Å). Although N2 permeation decreased with the presence of Hg, it did not decrease when the Hg load was increased by a factor of ten; this strongly suggests the adsorption of Hg molecules in the smaller pores (2.5-4.0Å), or along the pore wall for the larger pore ranges (6.7-7.8Å and 12-14Å)

Old World cleptoparasitic bee Stelis murina.

19 p. : ill., 1 map ; 26 cm. "November 30, 2009." Includes bibliographical references (p. 18-19).Herein we describe the mature oocyte and last larval instar of Stelis ‪(‬Stelis‪)‬ murina Pérez, a cleptoparasite associated with Osmia ‪(‬Pyrosmia‪)‬ submicans Morawitz near Ismailia, Egypt. The mature oocyte is compared with that of Stelis ‪(‬Stelis‪)‬ elongativentris Parker and found to be approximately equal in size. The mature oocyte of S. murina is also very close in size to that of its host, an unusual phenomenon in host-cleptoparasite relationships in bees. A review and analysis based on literature accounts of what is known about the mode of cleptoparasitism of Stelis is offered. Added are observations on the biology of Stelis murina resulting from our fieldwork. The mature larva of Stelis murina is described and found similar but not identical to those of other known Stelis larvae. We also include a preliminary key to the genera of cleptoparasitic megachilids based on known mature larvae and also a summary describing the modes of cleptoparasitism by these taxa