Competitive Priorities and Competitive Advantage in Jordanian Manufacturing

The purpose of this research was to explore and predict the relationship between the competitive priorities (quality, cost, flexibility and delivery) and the competitive advantage of firms in the Jordanian Industrial Sector. A population of 88 Jordanian manufacturing firms, registered on the Amman Stock Exchange, was targeted using a cross-sectional survey employing a questionnaire method of data collection. The results of the data analysis indicate a significant relationship between competitive priorities and competitive advantage. The research suggests that recognising and nurturing this relationship provides the master key for a firm to survive in a turbulent environment. Therefore, operational and marketing strategies should place emphasis on competitive priorities such as quality, cost, flexibility and delivery to achieve, develop and maintain competitive advantage. This study is one of the first to examine the relationship between the competitive priorities of Jordanian manufacturing firms and their competitive advantage

Poder y escritura : el Príncipe, la biblioteca y la dedicatoria (siglos XV-XVII)

Se muestra cómo la lectura y la escritura son actos sociales perfectamente normativizados en la cultura de la Edad Moderna. Se exponen los ejemplos de la biblioteca, una institución en la que tan importante como el material que conserva son las relaciones sociales que se establecen entorno a ella (así en las "bibliotecas reales" como en las particulares), y de la dedicatoria de libros, en la que los autores desarrollan un lenguage muy sutil que les permitía relacionarse de forma especial con el destinatario.Roger Chartier shows how reading and writing were perfectly normativized social acts in the culture of Modern Age. As a demonstration of his assertions, he sets two examples: the first concerning libraries, institutions where materials preserved there were as important as social relationship established round it (both in regal libraries and in private ones), the second about the dedications written in books, through which their authors developed a very subtle language that allowed them to set up a kind of especial relation with their final addressees

La investigación activa como herramienta para mejorar la enseñanza de la química : nuevos enfoques

In many European countries, chemistry education faces a number of important recurrent difficulties. For example, at the secondary school level, students' interest in chemistry is decreasing and teachers complain that repeated explanation and demonstration are not very effective, which frustrates them. At university level, lecture courses and laboratory courses are often disconnected and many student experiments are considered as boring «cookbook» problems. These and other recurrent difficulties have evoked the need to improve the quality of chemistry education at both levels. In this article, the contribution of educational research to an improvement of chemistry education is discussed. This research is considered as a tool for analysing teaching and learning problems, for elucidating backgrounds of these difficulties and for developing and evaluating new approaches in chemistry education. Special attention is focused on two promising new research approaches. First, a new research instrument is presented: protocols of discussions during real classroom and laboratory sessions. Second, a new research design is presented: the developmental research approach. Both research approaches can contribute to the improvement of chemistry classroom/laboratory practices and chemistry teacher training

The Evolution of roommate networks : a comment on Jackson and Watts JET (2002)

We extend Jackson and Watts's (2002) result on the coincidence of S-stochastically stable and core stable networks from marriage problems to roommate problems. In particular, we show that the existence of a side-optimal core stable network, on which the proof of Jackson and Watts (2002) hinges, is not crucial for their result

Magnetic field dependent biradical CIDNP as a tool for the study of conformations of polymethylene chains

A theory is presented in which the magnetic field dependence of chem. induced dynamic nuclear polarization (CIDNP) from polymethylene [25038-57-7] biradicals is related to the end-to-end distance distributio