An investigation into the work of managers in Great Britain: with particular reference to the management of human resources; and the skills and knowledge used

The Study is in four parts. The first part provides a background to the original research through a short twentieth century history of management and synopses of the work of selected earlier writers and researchers. The second part provides the results of a new empirical study of managerial work in Great Britain in the early nineteen-nineties. This study follows the lead of earlier researchers such as Carlson, Stewart and Mintzberg and invstigates managerial work using three methodologies. A quantitative study through a questionnaire survey is complemented by a smaller diary study and thirty face to face interviews with a range of managers from widely differing organisations and jobs. A statistical analysis of the data provides a very detailed review of how managers spend their time, requirements for effective performance, how performance is measured, major changes which have affected them, and the skills and knowledge used. Analysis of the diary data provides a very detailed profile of managerial work. Factor analysis is used to identify a new managerial typology; and using data from the various elements of the study a series of detailed managerial models, identifying both similarities and differences, is provided for an average manager, a general manager, five types of functional manager and five hierarchical levels of manager. Using information from the interview case studies, together with the statistical analysis, the management of human resouces, or "getting things done through other people", is addressed and a range of abilities, skills and knowledge required for effective people management identified. This section, particularly, contributes to the field of knowledge and provides guidance for the development of management education and training. Part three provides a comparison of the present study with earlier researches and shows that whilst the fundamental nature of managerial work changes relatively. little, the environment within which it takes place is constantly changing. Recent changes identified include greater customer orientation and demands for quality, new legislation, "de-layering" and the very rapid development of new technologies within both offices and factories. The evidence suggests that the work of managers is becoming continually more demanding and increasingly difficult. Part four provides a range of very detailed appendices in support of the main text

Three months journeying of a Hawaiian monk seal

Hawaiian monk seals (Monachus schauinslandi) are endemic to the Hawaiian Islands and are the most endangered species of marine mammal that lives entirely within the jurisdiction of the United States. The species numbers around 1300 and has been declining owing, among other things, to poor juvenile survival which is evidently related to poor foraging success. Consequently, data have been collected recently on the foraging habitats, movements, and behaviors of monk seals throughout the Northwestern and main Hawaiian Islands. Our work here is directed to exploring a data set located in a relatively shallow offshore submerged bank (Penguin Bank) in our search of a model for a seal's journey. The work ends by fitting a stochastic differential equation (SDE) that mimics some aspects of the behavior of seals by working with location data collected for one seal. The SDE is found by developing a time varying potential function with two points of attraction. The times of location are irregularly spaced and not close together geographically, leading to some difficulties of interpretation. Synthetic plots generated using the model are employed to assess its reasonableness spatially and temporally. One aspect is that the animal stays mainly southwest of Molokai. The work led to the estimation of the lengths and locations of the seal's foraging trips.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/193940307000000473 the IMS Collections (http://www.imstat.org/publications/imscollections.htm) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org