Knowledge Management, Innovation, and Productivity: A Firm Level Exploration Based on French Manufacturing CIS3 Data

In modern knowledge driven economies, firms are increasingly aware that individual and collective knowledge is a major factor of economic performance. The larger the firms and the stronger their connection with technology intensive industries, the more are they likely to set up knowledge management (KM) policies, such as promoting a culture of information and knowledge sharing (C), motivating employees and executives to remain with the firm (R), forging alliances and partnerships for knowledge acquisition (A), implementing written knowledge management rules (W). The French 1998-2000 Community Innovation Survey (CIS3) has surveyed the use of these four knowledge management policies for a representative sample of manufacturing firms. The micro econometric analysis of the survey tends to confirm that knowledge management indeed contributes significantly to firm innovative performance and to its productivity. The impacts of adoption of the four surveyed KM practices on firm innovative and productivity performance are not completely accounted by firm size, industry, research & development (R&D) efforts or other factors, but persist to a sizeable extent after controlling for all these factors.

Dispersion and Heterogeneity of Firm Performances in Nine French Service Industries, 1984-1987

In the present study, we have taken advantage of the wealth of information provided by the French annual survey of market services to construct a panel sample of data on about 2300 large firms, from 1984 to 1987, in nine selected service industries (at the four digit level of the industrial classification) . We have contrasted the average performances of firms across industries, in terms of labor productivity ratios and profitability margins, both in levels and in growth rates. We have compared these averages indicators for more or less inclusive sample definitions, going from the survey of all firms to a 'balanced' and "cleaned' panel data sample of large firms, and for the two kinds of averages usually considered in macro and micro-analyses. We, then proceeded to show that the differences across industries in average productivity and profitability are usually small when compared to the range of individual differences within industries, and have investigated to what extent the extreme variability in individual performances could be accounted for by other heterogeneity factors, besides the industry effects.

Payment periods in 2009 - one year on from the economic modernisation act.

Payemnt periods shortened in 2009. The decline is no longer due entirely to SMEs; it now concerns MTEs a well as large companies. It generates cash earnings, chiefly for SMEs.activity, profitability, debt, investment, SMEs, MTEs.

Fluid Modes of a Spherically Confined Yukawa Plasma

The normal modes of a three-dimensional Yukawa plasma in an isotropic, harmonic confinement are investigated by solving the linearized cold fluid equations. The eigenmodes are found analytically and expressed in terms of hypergeometric functions. It is found that the mode frequencies solely depend on the dimensionless plasma parameter $\xi=\kappa R$, where $R$ is the plasma radius and $\kappa$ the inverse screening length. The eigenfrequencies increase monotonically with $\xi$ and saturate in the limit $\xi\to\infty$. Compared with the results in the Coulomb limit~[D. H. E. Dubin, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{66}, 2076 (1991)], we find a new class of modes characterized by the number $n$ which determines the number of radial nodes in the perturbed potential. These modes originate from the degenerate bulk modes of the Coulomb system. Analytical formulas for the eigenfrequencies are derived for limiting cases

Kadanoff-Baym Equations with Initial Correlations

The Kadanoff-Baym equations (KBE) are usually derived under the assumption of the weakening of initial correlations (Bogolyubov's condition) and, therefore, fail to correctly describe the short time behavior. We demonstrate that this assumption is not necessary. Using functional derivatives techniques, we present a straightforward generalization of the KBE which allows to include arbitrary initial correlations and which is more general than previous derivations. As a result, an additional collision integral is obtained which is being damped out after a few collisions. Our results are complemented with numerical investigations showing the effect of initial correlations.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, to be published in ``Progress in Nonequilibrium Green's Functions'', M. Bonitz (Ed.), World Scientific, Singapore 2000, uses sprocl.st

Ferromagnetic behavior in magnetized plasmas

We consider a low-temperature plasma within a newly developed MHD Fluid model. In addition to the standard terms, the electron spin, quantum particle dispersion and degeneracy effects are included. It turns out that the electron spin properties can give rise to Ferromagnetic behavior in certain regimes. If additional conditions are fulfilled, a homogenous magnetized plasma can even be unstable. This happen in the low-temperature high-density regime, when the magnetic properties associated with the spin can overcome the stabilizing effects of the thermal and Fermi pressure, to cause a Jeans like instability.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Les étrangers, nouveaux « clients » des BP

Des bibliothécaires américains, anglais, australiens, canadiens, danois, espagnols, hollandais, néo-zélandais témoignaient des services mis en place dans leur pays à l\u27intention des immigrés. Programme commun d\u27acquisition et de distribution de documents multilingues au Nord de l\u27Europe, bibliothèque numérique pour nouveaux immigrants aux Pays-Bas... les expériences foisonnaient à la conférence de la section Ifla des services aux communautés pluriculturelles qui a réuni, en août, à Utrecht, 150 professionnels