Ministerial Transposition of EU Directives: Can Oversight Improve Performance?

This paper argues that the extent to which national administrations transpose EU directives in a timely fashion may be related to how transposition is coordinated inside national ministries. Focusing on transposition through secondary legislation in Estonia, Poland and Slovenia, the paper finds initial evidence that oversight can contribute to better transposition performance. Ministries with strong internal oversight tend to be better at timely transposition, while ministries with no or weak oversight perform worse. The results tend to hold if one controls for country effects, party preferences and transposition workload.directives; Estonia; political science

Integrating Learning from Examples into the Search for Diagnostic Policies

This paper studies the problem of learning diagnostic policies from training examples. A diagnostic policy is a complete description of the decision-making actions of a diagnostician (i.e., tests followed by a diagnostic decision) for all possible combinations of test results. An optimal diagnostic policy is one that minimizes the expected total cost, which is the sum of measurement costs and misdiagnosis costs. In most diagnostic settings, there is a tradeoff between these two kinds of costs. This paper formalizes diagnostic decision making as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The paper introduces a new family of systematic search algorithms based on the AO* algorithm to solve this MDP. To make AO* efficient, the paper describes an admissible heuristic that enables AO* to prune large parts of the search space. The paper also introduces several greedy algorithms including some improvements over previously-published methods. The paper then addresses the question of learning diagnostic policies from examples. When the probabilities of diseases and test results are computed from training data, there is a great danger of overfitting. To reduce overfitting, regularizers are integrated into the search algorithms. Finally, the paper compares the proposed methods on five benchmark diagnostic data sets. The studies show that in most cases the systematic search methods produce better diagnostic policies than the greedy methods. In addition, the studies show that for training sets of realistic size, the systematic search algorithms are practical on todays desktop computers

Controlling as a Method of Managing Human Capital

Controlling-based management is generally regarded as a way of increasing the operational efficiency of economic entities. Considering controlling based on the management level criterion makes it easier to control an organisation’s revenues and costs, whose greatest source are labour costs. In the knowledge- and IT-based economy, information processing and corporate social responsibility (CSR), being the outcome of evolution from the industry-based economy, have dominated management processes

Individual Professional Practice in the Company

Import 05/08/2014Práce popisuje průběh vykonávání bakalářského semináře formou individuální odborné praxe ve firmě AutoCont CZ a.s. Na začátku je čtenář seznámen s firmou, ve které byla bakalářská odborná praxe vykonávána. Dále je popsáno pracovní nasazení studenta, popis úkolů, které byly studentovi přiděleny a jejich časová náročnost. Poté je popsán postup řešení daných úkolů. Závěrem práce je shrnuto, kterých okruhů znalostí nabytých během studia bylo při absolvování praxe využito, a které okruhy bylo nutné dodatečně nastudovat a také celkové zhodnocení odborné praxe.This bachelor thesis describes the course of the individual professional practise in the AutoCont CZ a.s. company. At the beginning the reader is familiar with the company, in which was performed bachelor's professional experience. The following describes the dedication of the student, a description of the tasks that were assigned to the student and their time complexity. Then the described procedure for solving the tasks. Finally the work is summarized, which areas of knowledge acquired during their studies at graduation practice was used and which areas it was necessary to additionally study and the overall evaluation of professional practice.460 - Katedra informatikyvýborn

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

All the organizations of the contemporary society require professional management. Special challenges are to be faced by public organizations which – because of their public mission – are obliged to take care of the common good. Proper management of public sector organizations by leaders with leadership qualities determine the level of public value attained by the very organizations. In the era of knowledge-based society, the rudimentary role of leadership is to achieve high standards by the organizations in the area of knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing, implementation of innovative solutions and the ability to adapt to fast changing environment. Leadership is also about creating corporate cultural identity – a significant link between corporate mission and its human resources so as to develop the best possible standards of providing public services to inhabitants of the set community.All the organizations of the contemporary society require professional management. Special challenges are to be faced by public organizations which – because of their public mission – are obliged to take care of the common good. Proper management of public sector organizations by leaders with leadership qualities determine the level of public value attained by the very organizations. In the era of knowledge-based society, the rudimentary role of leadership is to achieve high standards by the organizations in the area of knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing, implementation of innovative solutions and the ability to adapt to fast changing environment. Leadership is also about creating corporate cultural identity – a significant link between corporate mission and its human resources so as to develop the best possible standards of providing public services to inhabitants of the set community

Differential influence of four invasive plant species on soil physicochemical properties in a pot experiment

Purpose This study compared the effects of four invasive plants, namely Impatiens glandulifera, Reynoutria japonica, Rudbeckia laciniata, and Solidago gigantea, as well as two native species-Artemisia vulgaris, Phalaris arundinacea, and their mixture on soil physicochemical properties in a pot experiment. Materials and methods Plants were planted in pots in two loamy sand soils. The soils were collected from fallows located outside (fallow soil) and within river valley (valley soil) under native plant communities. Aboveground plant biomass, cover, and soil physicochemical properties such as nutrient concentrations, pH, and water holding capacity (WHC) were measured after two growing seasons. Discriminant analysis (DA) was used to identify soil variables responsible for the discrimination between plant treatments. Identified variables were further compared between treatments using one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s HSD test. Results and discussion Plant biomass, cover, and soil parameters depended on species and soil type. DA effectively separated soils under different plant species. DA on fallow soil data separated R. laciniata from all other treatments, especially I. glandulifera, native species and bare soil, along axis 1 (related mainly to exchangeable K, N-NH_{4}, total P, N-NO_{3}, and WHC). Large differences were found between R. laciniata and S. gigantea as indicated by axis 2 (S-SO_{4}, exchangeable Mg, total P, exchangeable Ca, and total Mg). DA on valley soil data separated R. japonica from all other treatments, particularly S. gigantea, R. laciniata, and native mixture, along axis 1 (N-NO_{3}, total N, S-SO_{4}, total P, pH). Along axis 2 (N-NO_{3}, N-NH_{4}, Olsen P, exchangeable K, WHC), large differences were observed between I. glandulifera and all other invaders. Conclusions Plant influence on soil differed both among invasive species and between invasive and native species. Impatiens glandulifera had a relatively weak effect and its soil was similar to both native and bare soils. Multidirectional effects of different invaders resulted in a considerable divergence in soil characteristics. Invasion-driven changes in the soil environment may trigger feedbacks that stabilize or accelerate invasion and hinder re-colonization by native vegetation, which has implications for the restoration of invaded habitats

Until Christ Be Formed

Story of Mary in musical for