Design methodology in management consulting

In dit proefschrift staat de studie van bedrijfskundige ontwerppraktijken centraal, in het bijzonder in het domein van het organisatie-advieswerk. De probleemstelling is: Welke beargumenteerd productieve strategieën hanteren competente organisatie-adviseurs om bedrijfskundige ontwerpen te creëren?Deze vraag wordt beantwoord in vier stappen. Eerst wordt een theoretisch raamwerk geconstrueerd bestaande uit een schets van de ontwikkeling van de bedrijfskundige ontwerpliteratuur, een achtergrondperspectief over hoe de wereld in elkaar zit waarin ontwerpers leven en werken, en een vocabulaire om ontwerppraktijken en praktijkgebaseerde methodologie te kunnen beschrijven. De tweede stap is het karakteriseren van het domein waarbinnen ontwerppraktijken bestudeerd worden: het organisatie-advieswerk. De derde stap is de empirische exploratie van bedrijfskundige ontwerppraktijken, waarvoor een mix van kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve methoden gebruikt is, te weten een enquete onder Nederlandse adviseurs en een serie diepte-interviews met 24 zeer goede organisatie-adviseurs, die op basis van de enqueteresultaten geselecteerd zijn. In deze empirische studie worden de praktijken van adviseurs geëxploreerd, gebaseerd op het theoretisch raamwerk dat in de eerste stap is geconstrueerd. Een belangrijk aandachtspunt in deze exploratie geldt de eventuele rol van stappenplannen, met de bedoeling om de uitgangsdiagnose van dit onderzoek te testen en verder uit te werken, en om de daadwerkelijke rol van stappenplannen in ontwerppraktijken te achterhalen. De vierde en laatste stap in het onderzoek is het formuleren van productieve ontwerpstrategieën

An elementary proof of Franks' lemma for geodesic flows

Given a Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ and a geodesic $\gamma$, the perpendicular part of the derivative of the geodesic flow $\phi_g^t: SM \rightarrow SM$ along $\gamma$ is a linear symplectic map. We give an elementary proof of the following Franks' lemma, originally found in [G. Contreras and G. Paternain, 2002] and [G. Contreras, 2010]: this map can be perturbed freely within a neighborhood in $Sp(n)$ by a $C^2$-small perturbation of the metric $g$ that keeps $\gamma$ a geodesic for the new metric. Moreover, the size of these perturbations is uniform over fixed length geodesics on the manifold. When $\dim M \geq 3$, the original metric must belong to a $C^2$--open and dense subset of metrics

Capturing the competence of management consulting work

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to assess whether the effort of consulting firms and branch organizations to establish a shared and standardized methodology as a means to professionalize consulting and as a standard for training is possible and sensible. - \ud \ud Design/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted among Dutch management consultants, which explored their ways of working and their ways of learning. - \ud \ud Findings: The study shows that efforts to develop a shared and standardized phase-model methodology do not seem to be effective. Instead of following phase-models, consultants appear to be improvising bricoleurs, tailoring their ways of working to specific situations, and using broad, heterogeneous and partly implicit repertoires, which are built through mainly through action-learning. This requires another kind of methodology and another kind of training. - \ud \ud Research limitations/implications: The article gives a general direction for the development of a consulting methodology and the education of consultants. Further research on consulting practices and repertoires is necessary to explore this direction. - \ud \ud Practical implications: The paper concludes that the value of phase-models as a standard is limited. Therefore, branch organizations, consulting firms and corporate universities should not focus their professionalization and training activities on these standardized methods. - \ud \ud Originality/value: Little work has been done yet on the relation between professionalization, methods, and training in management consulting, and no earlier publication has studied this topic quantitatively

Chemical Timescales in the Atmospheres of Highly Eccentric Exoplanets

Close-in exoplanets with highly eccentric orbits are subject to large variations in incoming stellar flux between periapse and apoapse. These variations may lead to large swings in atmospheric temperature, which in turn may cause changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere from higher CO abundances at periapse to higher CH4 abundances at apoapse. Here we examine chemical timescales for COCH4 interconversion compared to orbital timescales and vertical mixing timescales for the highly eccentric exoplanets HAT-P-2b and CoRoT-10b. As exoplanet atmospheres cool, the chemical timescales for COCH4 tend to exceed orbital and/or vertical mixing timescales, leading to quenching. The relative roles of orbit-induced thermal quenching and vertical quenching depend upon mixing timescales relative to orbital timescales. For both HAT-P-2b and CoRoT-10b, vertical quenching will determine disequilibrium COCH4 chemistry at faster vertical mixing rates (Kzz > 10^7 cm^2 s^-1), whereas orbit-induced thermal quenching may play a significant role at slower mixing rates (Kzz < 10^7 cm^2 s^-1). The general abundance and chemical timescale results - calculated as a function of pressure, temperature, and metallicity - can be applied for different atmospheric profiles in order to estimate the quench level and disequilibrium abundances of CO and CH4 on hydrogen-dominated exoplanets. Observations of CO and CH4 on highly eccentric exoplanets may yield important clues to the chemical and dynamical properties of their atmospheres.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal; v2 corrects typos and figure resolution issue

New passive telemetry system

Passive telemetry system enables the monitoring of vital biological functions from living organisms, without external connections or power sources. The FM system, using a phase locked loop technique, keeps the information frequency and powering frequencies separate

A note on the tensor product of restricted simple modules for algebraic groups

Let G be a semisimple simply connected algebraic group over an algebraically closed field of positive characteristic p. Denote by G1 its first Frobenius kernel. In this note, we determine for which group G the restriction to G1 of any indecomposable G-summand of the tensor product of any two restricted simple G-modules remains indecomposable

Information technology in educational management as an emerging discipline

This chapter introduces the application of computerized management information systems in schools and presents a brief history of the dynamic area of Information Technology in Educational Management (ITEM). Subsequently, the background of this special issue and a framework for its contents are portrayed. Finally, an overview is presented of the contents of the special issue

Quasi-hereditary quotients of finite Chevalley groups and Frobenius kernels

Let G be a semisimple connected simply connected linear algebraic group over an algebraically closed field k of characteristic p > 0. Denote by Gn its nth Frobenius kernel and by G(pn) its finite subgroup of Fpn-rational points. In this paper we find quotients of the algebra Un = k[Gn]* and of the group algebra kG(pn) whose module category is equivalent to a (highest weight) subcategory of the category of rational G-modules