How Does Leadership Structure Affect the Bottom Line?

Key Findings Investment in High-commitment HR practices lead to key employee-based outcomes. When companies invest in employees with a system of high-commitment HR practices (see examples of these practices below) they are able to build a workforce with higher human capital and motivation to exert discretionary effort for the benefit of the organization. In particular, higher use of these high-commitment HR (HCHR) practices were significantly related to higher levels of employee education, company tenure/experience, collaboration, and helping behaviors. Higher employee human capital and motivation are resources that lead to competitive advantage. In return, these employee outcomes appear to be key organizational resources for driving competitive advantage. Specifically, higher levels of employee company tenure (i.e., firm-specific experience and knowledge), collaboration, and helping behaviors were all significantly related to higher company sales growth and perceived performance (performance relative to competitors as rated by the company CEO). Leaders make a diff in the extent to which these employee-based resources lead to competitive advantage. In general, these employee-based resources were related to higher performance, but CEOs with greater levels of human capital seemed to be able to leverage these resources for even greater performance. Compared to companies with CEOs with less experience, companies with CEOs with higher average industry and company experience and higher levels of employee human capital and motivation had significantly higher performance, suggesting that CEOs with higher experience seem to understand how to take advantage of the employee-based resources that have been built through the investment in HCHR practices

The Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia, 1970-1981

The period from 1957 to 1970 was from any perspective a period of rapid expansion and development in Canadian legal education. The years from 1970 until 1981 were by contrast a time of consolidation. In part that flowed almost naturally from the hectic pace of the 1960s; in part it flowed from financial restraints which became increasingly stringent in the latter half of the decade.\u27 Not surprisingly the experience of the Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia reflects, in varying degrees, the national pattern

Institutions and social change: Implementing co-operative housing and environmentally sustainable development at Christie Walk

How can institutions contribute to the building of civil society in the twenty- first century? It is clear that the old laissez-faire approach and the more recent neo-conservative reliance on the market have failed to deliver housing for many people. On the other hand the state-based welfare housing model espoused by the Australian Labor Party over the twentieth century has also been beset by problems. Social alienation, and the crisis in affordable housing make the case that individualist approaches to urban living are not working. More communal solutions are needed - solutions attuned to a complex view of civil society outlined by Michael Edwards' tripartite definition. At the same time the onset of global warming now prompts Australians to create more environmentally sustainable ways of living. Addressing the theme of responsibility, this paper focuses on citizenship in its broader environmental, social and active forms. It analyses interviews and documentary evidence concerning the planning and development of Christie Walk, an innovative, medium density eco-city development in Adelaide. The investigation reveals the effects of some Australian institutions on residents' efforts to live socially and environmentally sustainable lives in an urban environment. The paper offers transdisciplinary research and analysis, linking the fields of history, urban housing, community development and environmental theory

Design and Implementation of a Measurement-Based Policy-Driven Resource Management Framework For Converged Networks

This paper presents the design and implementation of a measurement-based QoS and resource management framework, CNQF (Converged Networks QoS Management Framework). CNQF is designed to provide unified, scalable QoS control and resource management through the use of a policy-based network management paradigm. It achieves this via distributed functional entities that are deployed to co-ordinate the resources of the transport network through centralized policy-driven decisions supported by measurement-based control architecture. We present the CNQF architecture, implementation of the prototype and validation of various inbuilt QoS control mechanisms using real traffic flows on a Linux-based experimental test bed.Comment: in Ictact Journal On Communication Technology: Special Issue On Next Generation Wireless Networks And Applications, June 2011, Volume 2, Issue 2, Issn: 2229-6948(Online

Water mass census in the Nordic seas using climatological and observational data sets

We have compared and evaluated the water mass census in the Greenlend-Iceland-Norwegian (GIN) Sea area from climatologies, observational data sets and model output. The four climatologies evaluated were: the 1998 and 2001 versions of theWorld Ocean Atlas (WOA98, WOA01), and the United States Navy’s GDEM90 (Generalized Digital Environmental Model) and MODAS01 (Modular Ocean Data Assimilation System) climatologies. Three observational data sets were examined: the multidecadal (1965-1995) set contained on the National Oceanographic Data Center’s (NODC) WOD98 (World Ocean Data) CD-ROM, and two seasonal data sets extracted from observations taken on six cruises by the SACLANT Research Center (SACLANTCEN) of NATO/Italy between 1986-1989. The model data is extracted from a global model run at 1/3 degree resolution for the years 1983-1997, using the POP (Parallel Ocean Program) model of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The census computations focused on the Norwegian Sea, in the southern part of the GIN Sea, between 10◦W-10◦E and 60◦N-70◦N, especially for comparisons with the hydrocasts and the model. Cases of such evaluation computations included: a) “short term” comparisons with quasi-synoptic CTD surveys carried out over a 4-year period in the southeastern GIN Sea; b) “climatological” comparisons utilizing all available casts from the WOD98 CD-ROM, with four climatologies; and c) a comparison between the WOA01 climatology and the POP model output ending in 1997. In this region in the spring, the fraction of ocean water that has salinity above 34.85 is ∼ 94%, and that has temperatures above 0◦C is ∼ 33%. Three principal water masses dominated the census: the Atlantic water AW, the deep water DW and an intermediate water mass defined as Lower Arctic Intermediate Water (LAIW). Besides these classes, both the climatologies and the observations exhibited the significant presence of deep water masses with T-S characteristics that do not fall into the “named” varieties, e.g., Norwegian Sea or Greenland Sea deep water (NSDW, GSDW). The seasonal volumetric changes for the Atlantic (AW), intermediate (LAIW) and deep waters (DW) in the GIN Sea are in reasonably good agreement between the climatologies, and with the results of hydrographic census surveys. Typical seasonal changes (spring-summer) involve about 30 × 103 km3 of AW increase and 33 × 103 km3 of LAIW decrease, and a decrease of about 32 × 103 km3 of DW between spring and autumn

Urinary naphthalene and phenanthrene as biomarkers of occupational exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

OBJECTIVES: The study investigated the utility of unmetabolised naphthalene (Nap) and phenanthrene (Phe) in urine as surrogates for exposures to mixtures of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). METHODS: The report included workers exposed to diesel exhausts (low PAH exposure level, n = 39) as well as those exposed to emissions from asphalt (medium PAH exposure level, n = 26) and coke ovens (high PAH exposure level, n = 28). Levels of Nap and Phe were measured in urine from each subject using head space-solid phase microextraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Published levels of airborne Nap, Phe and other PAHs in the coke-producing and aluminium industries were also investigated. RESULTS: In post-shift urine, the highest estimated geometric mean concentrations of Nap and Phe were observed in coke-oven workers (Nap: 2490 ng/l; Phe: 975 ng/l), followed by asphalt workers (Nap: 71.5 ng/l; Phe: 54.3 ng/l), and by diesel-exposed workers (Nap: 17.7 ng/l; Phe: 3.60 ng/l). After subtracting logged background levels of Nap and Phe from the logged post-shift levels of these PAHs in urine, the resulting values (referred to as ln(adjNap) and ln(adjPhe), respectively) were significantly correlated in each group of workers (0.71 < or = Pearson r < or = 0.89), suggesting a common exposure source in each case. Surprisingly, multiple linear regression analysis of ln(adjNap) on ln(adjPhe) showed no significant effect of the source of exposure (coke ovens, asphalt and diesel exhaust) and further suggested that the ratio of urinary Nap/Phe (in natural scale) decreased with increasing exposure levels. These results were corroborated with published data for airborne Nap and Phe in the coke-producing and aluminium industries. The published air measurements also indicated that Nap and Phe levels were proportional to the levels of all combined PAHs in those industries. CONCLUSION: Levels of Nap and Phe in urine reflect airborne exposures to these compounds and are promising surrogates for occupational exposures to PAH mixtures