Human resource and industrial relations practices of UK and US multinationals in Germany

Most of the research about HRM and IR practices of MNCs in their host country has been conducted in deregulated countries such as the UK and the US. Host countries with relatively weak institutional arrangements facilitate the transfer of home-country practices. In contrast, those with institutionally strong systems, such as Germany, impose stronger pressures for adaptation. This paper reports research about nine US and four UK subsidiaries operating in Germany. It examines how their HRM and IR practices are shaped by German labour and IR institutions, how they differ from a control group of indigenous firms and what room for manoeuvre is left for the introduction of home-country practices. The main conclusions are that small and medium-sized subsidiaries in particular can to some extent avoid the pressures exerted by German labour and IR institutions. This facilitates the transfer of home-country practices. However, even larger affiliates that comply with the German institutions can transfer practices from their parent company. The highly regulated German system leaves some room for flexibility. Nevertheless, the institutional environment prevents large companies from following a unitarist HRM and IR approach

Introduction to the Bethe ansatz I

The Bethe ansatz for the one-dimensional s=1/2 Heisenberg ferromagnet is introduced at an elementary level. The presentation follows Bethe's original work very closely. A detailed description and a complete classification of all two-magnon scattering states and two-magnon bound states are given for finite and infinite chains. The paper is designed as a tutorial for beginning graduate students. It includes 10 problems for further study.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Computational probes of collective excitations in low-dimensional magnetism

The investigation of the dynamics of quantum many-body systems is a concerted effort involving computational studies of mathematical models and experimental studies of material samples. Some commonalities of the two tracks of investigation are discussed in the context of the quantum spin dynamics of low-dimensional magnetic systems, in particular spin chains. The study of quantum fluctuations in such systems at equilibrium amounts to exploring the spectrum of collective excitations and the rate at which they are excited from the ground state by dynamical variables of interest. The exact results obtained via Bethe ansatz or algebraic analysis (quantum groups) for a select class of completely integrable models can be used as benchmarks for numerical studies of nonintegrable models, for which computational access to the spectrum of collective excitations is limited.Comment: 22 pages. Talk given at the 7th Summer School on Neutron Scattering, Zuoz Switzerland, August 199

Three educational scenarios for the future : lessons from the sociology of knowledge

This review draws on social realist approaches in the sociology of knowledge and in light of them constructs three scenarios for the future of education in the next decades. The primary focus of the review is on one of the most crucial questions facing educational policy makers- the relationship between school and everyday or common sense knowledge. The different possibilities for how the school/nonschool knowledge boundaries might be approached are expressed in three scenarios - 'boundaries as given', 'a boundary-less world’ and the idea of ‘boundary maintenance as a condition for boundary crossing’. The educational implications of each are explored and the review makes the case for the third scenario. The factors likely to make one or other scenario dominate educational policy in the next 20-30 years are also considered

Sustaining the Right to Water in South Africa

human development, water, sanitation

Introduction to the Bethe Ansatz III

Having introduced the magnon in part I and the spinon in part II as the relevant quasi-particles for the interpretation of the spectrum of low-lying excitations in the one-dimensional (1D) s=1/2 Heisenberg ferromagnet and antiferromagnet, respectively, we now study the low-lying excitations of the Heisenberg antiferromagnet in a magnetic field and interpret these collective states as composites of quasi-particles from a different species. We employ the Bethe ansatz to calculate matrix elements and show how the results of such a calculation can be used to predict lineshapes for neutron scattering experiments on quasi-1D antiferromagnetic compounds. The paper is designed as a tutorial for beginning graduate students. It includes 11 problems for further study.Comment: 11 page

Quasiparticles in the XXZ model

The coordinate Bethe ansatz solutions of the XXZ model for a one-dimensional spin-1/2 chain are analyzed with focus on the statistical properties of the constituent quasiparticles. Emphasis is given to the special cases known as XX, XXX, and Ising models, where considerable simplifications occur. The XXZ spectrum can be generated from separate pseudovacua as configurations of sets of quasiparticles with different exclusion statistics. These sets are complementary in the sense that the pseudovacuum of one set contains the maximum number of particles from the other set. The Bethe ansatz string solutions of the XXX model evolve differently in the planar and axial regimes. In the Ising limit they become ferromagnetic domains with integer-valued exclusion statistics. In the XX limit they brake apart into hard-core bosons with (effectively) fermionic statistics. Two sets of quasiparticles with spin 1/2 and fractional statistics are distinguished, where one set (spinons) generates the XXZ spectrum from the unique, critical ground state realized in the planar regime, and the other set (solitons) generates the same spectrum from the twofold, antiferromagnetically ordered ground state realized in the axial regime. In the Ising limit, the solitons become antiferromagnetic domain walls.Comment: 6 figure

Compiling ER Specifications into Declarative Programs

This paper proposes an environment to support high-level database programming in a declarative programming language. In order to ensure safe database updates, all access and update operations related to the database are generated from high-level descriptions in the entity- relationship (ER) model. We propose a representation of ER diagrams in the declarative language Curry so that they can be constructed by various tools and then translated into this representation. Furthermore, we have implemented a compiler from this representation into a Curry program that provides access and update operations based on a high-level API for database programming.Comment: Paper presented at the 17th Workshop on Logic-based Methods in Programming Environments (WLPE2007