Activity-based Management in France: A focus on the information systems department of a bank

The aim of the paper is to describe the Activity-based Costing and Management methods applied in France. For that purpose, we use a literature review and a case study. In a first time, we analyse the origins of the methods and their diffusion. Then we present the French situation. Finally, we propose a case study that takes place in a French bank. Our paper shows that the ABC and ABM methods are as developed in France as in the Anglo-Saxon countries and that the methods are strategically oriented.Activity based costing; activity-based management; case study; bank

The balanced scorecard as a knowledge management tool: a French experience in a semi-public insurance company

In this paper we present the Balanced Scorecard, a Strategic Control tool, which is quite famous all around the world and in the European countries. Its principle objective is to articulate planning decisions with control ones thanks to non-financial indicators. The Strategic Control and the Agency Theories constitute the foundation of this tool. But in Northern Europe, some specific Balanced Scorecard have been designed in the framework of the Knowledge Management Theory. To work, the Balanced Scorecard needs a sophisticated information system support. Using two theoretical backgrounds, the Strategic Control approach and the Knowledge Management Theory, we analyse the relevance of the Balanced Scorecard. More particularly, we present the French situation. First, we show that the French managers believe that the Balanced Scorecard is a relevant management instrument to drive the firm's objectives. Second, we describe the Balanced Scorecard of a semipublic French insurance company.Balanced Scorecard; Strategic Control; Non-financial Indicators; Knowledge Management; French Experience

Why has (reasonably accurate) Automatic Speech Recognition been so hard to achieve?

Hidden Markov models (HMMs) have been successfully applied to automatic speech recognition for more than 35 years in spite of the fact that a key HMM assumption -- the statistical independence of frames -- is obviously violated by speech data. In fact, this data/model mismatch has inspired many attempts to modify or replace HMMs with alternative models that are better able to take into account the statistical dependence of frames. However it is fair to say that in 2010 the HMM is the consensus model of choice for speech recognition and that HMMs are at the heart of both commercially available products and contemporary research systems. In this paper we present a preliminary exploration aimed at understanding how speech data depart from HMMs and what effect this departure has on the accuracy of HMM-based speech recognition. Our analysis uses standard diagnostic tools from the field of statistics -- hypothesis testing, simulation and resampling -- which are rarely used in the field of speech recognition. Our main result, obtained by novel manipulations of real and resampled data, demonstrates that real data have statistical dependency and that this dependency is responsible for significant numbers of recognition errors. We also demonstrate, using simulation and resampling, that if we `remove' the statistical dependency from data, then the resulting recognition error rates become negligible. Taken together, these results suggest that a better understanding of the structure of the statistical dependency in speech data is a crucial first step towards improving HMM-based speech recognition

The activity-based costing method developments: state-of-the art and case study

This paper analyses the management accounting applications which try to improve the Activity-based Costing method. In the first part, we describe them using the Strategic Management Accounting stream. Then, we present the main features of these applications. In the second part, we examine in details two of these features: The widening of the analysis perimeter and the relevant level of details to analyse the costs. Then, we analyse several proposals: Customer Profitability Analysis (CPA), Interorganizational Cost Management (IOCM), Resource Consumption Accounting (RCA) and Time-driven ABC (TDABC). Finally, we describe an experience observed in the IT supply European division of an international group. This group experiments what we call at the end a supply chain ABC tool to manage its interorganizational relations.Activity-based Costing, Strategic Management Accounting, Time-driven ABC, Case study.

Rental Housing Spot Markets: How Online Information Exchanges Can Supplement Transacted-Rents Data

Traditional US rental housing data sources such as the American Community Survey and the American Housing Survey report on the transacted market—what existing renters pay each month. They do not explicitly tell us about the spot market—i.e., the asking rents that current homeseekers must pay to acquire housing—though they are routinely used as a proxy. This study compares governmental data to millions of contemporaneous rental listings and finds that asking rents diverge substantially from these most recent estimates. Conventional housing data understate current market conditions and affordability challenges, especially in cities with tight and expensive rental markets

LES TABLEAUX DE BORD STRATEGIQUES : UNE INSTRUMENTATION DU CONTROLE DE GESTION STRATEGIQUE CONCEPTS, INSTRUMENTATION ET ENQUETE

International audienceAprès avoir expliqué que les développements autour de la notion de Contrôle de Gestion Stratégique sont à l'origine des Tableaux de Bord Stratégiques, nous présenterons les résultats d'une enquête. Celle-ci, constituée d'un volet quantitatif et d'un volet qualitatif, témoignera de l'intérêt des managers français pour de nouvelles approches en contrôle de gestion

Analysis of urban sprawl at mega city Cairo, Egypt using multisensoral remote sensing data, landscape metrics and gradient analysis

This paper is intended to highlight the capabilities of synergistic usage of remote sensing, landscape metrics and gradient analysis. We aim to improve the understanding of spatial characteristics and effects of urbanization on city level. Multisensoral and multitemporal remotely sensed data sets from the Landsat and TerraSAR-X sensor enable monitoring a long time period with area-wide information on the spatial urban expansion over time. Landscape metrics aim to quantify patterns on urban footprint level complemented by gradient analysis giving insight into the spatial developing of spatial parameters from the urban center to the periphery. The results paint a characteristic picture of the emerging spatial urban patterns at mega city Cairo, Egypt since the 1970s

Animal models of chronic experimental asthma — strategies for the identification of new therapeutic targets

Over the last decade mouse models of experimental asthma proved to be a valuable tool for the investigation of mechanisms that underlie acute allergic airway inflammation and development of airway hyperresponsiveness, two of the hallmarks of human asthma. Nevertheless, these acute models fail to reflect the aspects of this chronic disease because they do not represent any signs of chronicity and airway remodelling as it is defined by subepithelial fibrosis, goblet cell hyperplasia and airway smooth muscle cell hypertrophy. Recent mouse models were successful in overcoming these limitations by using chronic allergen-challenges. These new models of chronic experimental asthma now proved as a novel tool to examine the complex interaction of infiltrating inflammatory cells and structural cells such as fibroblasts and smooth muscle cells that ultimately leads to airway remodelling and stable airflow limitation. Recent studies clearly demonstrated that T helper 2 (TH2) cells and their typical cytokines play a critical role not only in airway inflammation but also in the development of airway remodelling. Since the transcription factor GATA-3 is essential for TH2 cell development and the production of several TH2 type cytokines this intracellular molecule represents a new promising target for therapeutic intervention in asthma that might even effect airway remodelling