Gradient canyons, concentration of curvature, and Lipschitz invariants

We find new bi-Lipschitz invariants of holomorphic functions of two variables by using the gradient canyons and by combining analytic and geometric viewpoints on the concentration of curvature

Ineffizienzen privater und öffentlicher Schulen im internationalen Vergleich: Eine Data-Envelopment-Analyse der PISA-2000-Daten

Effizienzunterschiede zwischen privaten und öffentlichen Bildungseinrichtungen sind in der empirischen Literatur höchst umstritten. Die Mehrheit der bisherigen Studien versuchte erfolglos mit Hilfe von Regressionsanalysen, meist nur auf nationaler Ebene, eine eindeutige Effizienzüberlegenheit privater Schulen zu belegen. Dieser Beitrag prüft in einem internationalen Vergleich durch eine Data-Envelopment-Analyse (DEA), ob private Schulen effizienter ausbilden. Dazu werden analog zur Mehrebenenanalyse die Effizienz der Schüler, Schulen, Schulform und Rahmenbedingungen des Landes berechnet. Es zeigt sich, dass die Effizienzunterschiede der privat organisierten Schulen länderspezifisch sind. Eindeutige Effizienzvorteile von privaten Lehranstalten können nur für staatlich-abhängige Privatschulen in Spanien und Frankreich nachgewiesen werden. In den anderen Ländern sind die besseren Leistungsergebnisse Folge der Selektion von Schülern und günstigeren Schulbedingungen. Die durchschnittlichen Effizienzunterschiede, die von der Organisationsform ausgehen, sind jedoch gering im Vergleich zu den Ineffizienzen, die den einzelnen Schulen anzulasten sind.Bildungsökonomie, Humankapital, Schuleffizienz, Data-Envelopment-Analyse, PISA 2000, Effizienzmessung, Schulwahl, Schulqualität

Conditions for an efficient innovation process: The Complementarity between new HRM practices and Suggestion Schemes

The specific and tacit knowledge of shopfloor employees are vital sources for innovative work behaviour. Firms can use these skills to increase the efficiency of process innovation in the stages of idea generation and implementation of new processes. This study examines the necessary conditions for harnessing employees’ innovative capabilities. The first condition is the emphasis on the human resource practices that support the formation, utilization and transfer of specific knowledge. As a second condition, organizations must adopt continuous improvement practices which capitalize on the developed specific knowledge. I use the “Changing Employment Relationships” survey to test for the complementary relationship between such a specific set of human resource practices and the existence of a suggestion scheme. The results confirm that organizations which provide the framework for their employees to acquire inventive skills will be more likely to establish a suggestion scheme. Secondly, the more practices are utilized the more attractive the suggestion scheme is for the employees to submit proposals. One reason therefore is due to greater efforts in the design of the suggestion scheme.suggestion schemes, innovative work behaviour, user innovation, organizational learning, tacit knowledge, kaizen, continuous improvement

Mapping the institutional capital of high-tech firms: A fuzzy-set analysis of capitalist variety and export performance

We examine how institutional configurations, not single institutions, provide companies with institutional capital. Building on the varieties-of-capitalism approach, it is argued that competitive advantage in high-tech industries with radical innovation may be supported by combinations of certain institutional conditions: lax employment protection, weak collective bargaining coverage, extensive university training, little occupational training, and a large stock market. Furthermore, multinational enterprises engage in “institutional arbitrage”: they allocate their activities so as to benefit from available institutional capital. These hypotheses are tested on country-level data for 19 OECD economies in the period 1990 to 2003. A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis yields several interesting findings. A high share of university graduates and a large stock market are complementary institutions leading to strong export performance in high-tech. Employment protection is neither conducive nor harmful to export performance in high-tech. A high volume of cross-border mergers and acquisitions, as a form of institutional arbitrage leading to knowledge flows, acts as a functional equivalent to institutions that support knowledge production in the home economy. Implications of these findings for theory, policy, and the analysis of firm-level behavior are developed.

Towards the Achievement of Frugal Innovation: Exploring Major Antecedents among SMEs

The study in hand investigates the impact of the Internet of things (IoT) and digital platforms on frugal innovation. Furthermore, we also tested the intervening role of digital platforms and moderating role of organizational readiness. Data were collected from SMEs and the collected data were analyzed with various statistical techniques. Findings shown that the IoT positively affects digital platforms and frugal innovation. Results proved that digital platforms mediate the association between the IoT and frugal innovation. Furthermore, organizational readiness also moderates on the association between digital platforms and frugal innovation. The findings revealed that only those businesses that update their business operations according to the needs of their customers can achieve success. Frugal innovation is an emerging concept, and its achievement is a very tricky and complex task. This study shows that only those businesses that update their business operations using the IoT and digital platforms can achieve success. Moreover, modern SMEs should be able to adapt to the required changes in their business activities. Hence, SMEs also require some strategic changes in their operations in order to cope with changing business circumstances

Unique Growth Pattern Presentation of a Papillary Renal Cell Carcinoma

Papillary renal cell carcinoma (PRCC) is defined by the WHO 2022 classification as a malignant tumor derived from the renal tubular epithelium. However, the WHO 2016 classification subdivided PRCC into two types, with type 1 PRCC showing papillae covered by a single layer of neoplastic cells, and type II PRCC, which can show multiple types of histologies and is more aggressive. The WHO 2022 classification eliminated the subcategorization of PRCC. Here, we present a histopathological case study with a 4-year follow-up diagnosed in 2018 as type I PRCC (WHO 2016) with intra-pyelocalyceal growth pattern in a 59-year-old male patient with a history of Type II diabetes mellitus, left-sided renal–ureteral lithiasis, and benign hypertrophy of the prostate. Microscopically the tumor was composed of small cuboidal cells with inconspicuous nucleoli, arranged on a single layer of tubulo-papillary cores, and scant, foamy macrophages. The tumor had a non-infiltrative, expansive pyelocalyceal growth pattern. Immunohistochemically (IHC), the tumor cells were CK7-intense and diffusely positive, and stained granular for AMACR. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) was performed for the tumor and the normal adjacent tissue for in-depth pathological characterization. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case where a PRCC displays this unique intra-pyelocalyceal growth pattern, mimicking a urothelial cell carcinoma of the renal pelvis system