Self-enhancement: food for thought

Self-enhancement denotes a class of psychological phenomena that involve taking a tendentiously positive view of oneself. We distinguish between four levels of self-enhancement—an observed effect, an ongoing process, a personality trait, and an underlying motive—and then use these distinctions to organize the wealth of relevant research. Furthermore, to render these distinctions intuitive, we draw an extended analogy between self-enhancement and the phenomenon of eating. Among the topics we address are (a) manifestations of self-enhancement, both obvious and subtle, and rival interpretations; (b) experimentally documented dynamics of affirming and threatening the ego; and (c) primacy of self-enhancement, considered alongside other intrapsychic phenomena, and across different cultures. Self-enhancement, like eating, is a fundamental part of human nature

A Multi-agent Framework for Agile Outsourced Supply Chains

The primary goal of an agile supply chain is to meet the varying demand of customers. Therefore, the supply chain nowadays involves coordination among partners, and this has raised issues of effective networking and logistics. The present chapter proposes a reconfigurable multi-agent architecture framework that can assist in selecting outsourcing partners and develop effective coordination among the partners and between manufacturing units. The proposed multi-agent architecture is inspired by the human self-healing mechanism and is capable of managing disruptions that occur during manufacturing operations. When a new production order is introduced, or during the disruptions, this agent framework uses a string matching algorithm to generate a better plan. The proposed agent architecture also learns continuously from its past experiences. This framework will also help to manufacture better quality products at minimum cost and within the due date.Department of Industrial and Systems Engineerin