Changes in capital allocation practices – ERM and organisational change

This paper aims to study changes in capital allocation routines following the introduction of a new risk management system, enterprise risk management (ERM). Based on an institutional framework and empirical evidence from multiple sources in a large UK insurance company, we evaluated the extent and nature of organisational change. ERM was seen as an external driver to the change in the existing routines, which in turn led to internal changes in new capital allocation routines. The change was extreme, which signifies that existing capital allocation routines were not strong enough to deal with ERM as a key driver of change

Underwriting profit margin of P/L insurance in the fuzzy-ICAPM

The ICAPM is used to study the underwriting profit margin of the P/L insurance company, including the insurances of automobile damage, automobile liability and fire, in which the parameters are the symmetric or non-symmetric triangular fuzzy numbers. From the ten-year data of a company in Taiwan we determine the lower and upper limits associated with the various α-level of the fuzzy numbers. Our results show that the best-fitting parameters of the model from our data are the asymmetric triangular fuzzy numbers. The skew factors in each insurance are determined, which could be used to perform the forecasting of the underwriting profit margin. Our results show that the systematic risk in the fuzzy environment (with best-fitting value of skew factor) becomes larger than that in the crisp environment. However, the insurance underwriting leverage and insurance financial leverage in the fuzzy environment are smaller than those in the crisp environment. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2006Underwriting profit margin, Insurance capital asset pricing model, Fuzzy set theory,

A systematic survey of floral nectaries

The construction of classifications, as well as the understanding of biological diversity, depends upon a careful comparison of attributes of the organisms studied (Stuessy, 1990). It is widely known that data from diverse sources showing differences from taxon to taxon are of systematic significance. Dur-ing the 20th century, systematists have emphasized that their discipline involves a synthesis of all knowledge (Stevens, 1994) or, in other words, the variation of as many relevant characters as possible should be incorporated into the natural system to be constructed. The extent to which particular characters are constant or labile will determine their usefulness to syste-matics. In general, more conservative characters will be valuable in defining families and orders, whereas more labile characters may be useful at the ge-neric and specific levels (Webb, 1984). There is no doubt that floral characters are among the most used in the classification of flowering plants. At the same time, they constitute essential features in diagnostic keys to taxa in both taxonomic treatments and Floras (Cronquist, 1981, 1988).Fil: Bernardello, Gabriel Luis Mario. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentin