The Moral Economy and Research on Projects: neglect and relevance to social capital and competencies

This paper makes a theoretical contribution to the understanding of management and of projects. The paper adopts an analysis of the moral economy, which poses a conceptual challenge to the way in which management generally, and specifically concerning projects, is understood. The paper also poses an indirect methodological challenge, particularly to positivism, empiricism and some interpretative analysis.Project management and the management of projects have tended to focus upon task and function respectively, which has relegated or excluded the role of morality in relationships in both research and practice. A similar position is adopted in economics with a focus upon closed systems. The combined result is an exclusion of the moral economy. This paper argues for a theoretical reappraisal of management generally, and specifically with regard to projects, to include the moral economy. The moral economy is not only foundational to the operation of the market economy, but also contributes to its performance.The conclusion summaries the main points and makes recommendations concerning theoretical development, methodology and practice

CMB E/B decomposition of incomplete sky: a pixel space approach

CMB polarization signal may be decomposed into gradient-like (E) and curl-like (B) mode. We have investigated E/B decomposition in pixel space. We find E/B mixing due to incomplete sky is localized in pixel-space, and negligible in the regions far away from the masked area. By estimating the expected local leakage power, we have diagnosed ambiguous pixels. Our criteria for ambiguous pixels (i.e. r_c) is associated with the tensor-to-scalar ratio of B mode power spectrum, which the leakage power is comparable to. By setting r_c to a lower value, we may reduce leakage level, but reduce sky fraction at the same time. Therefore, we have solved \partial \Delta C_l/\partial r_c=0, and obtained the optimal r_c, which minimizes the estimation uncertainty, given a foreground mask and noise level. We have applied our method to a simulated map blocked by a foreground (diffuse + point source) mask. Our simulation shows leakage power is smaller than primordial (i.e. unlensed) B mode power spectrum of tensor-to-scalar ratio r\sim 10^{-3} at wide range of multipoles (50\lesssim l \lesssim 2000), while allowing us to retain sky fraction ~ 0.48.Comment: v2: the point of the method strengthened, v3: criteria for ambiguous pixels rigorously derived, v4: matched with the accepted version in A&A (minor change), v5: typos correcte

Who should be leading in the process of successful supply chain management in construction?

Despite the critical role of a client in enabling supply chain integration, parties on the supply side of the construction supply chain – the lower tiers of the construction supply chain – are believed to be able to develop into more integrated production systems, independently from the demand. Main contractors are acknowledged to have a central position in the management of supply chains, offering great potential in the effective integration of their supply chains. This is deemed to be necessary as construction supply chains are fragmented, complex, highly uncertain and with many stakeholders requiring a leading actor to coordinate the process and relationships – projects are characterised by a high supplier involvement. This study sets out to explore the differences between the organisations involved at the lower tiers of the construction supply chain, focusing specifically on the internal SCM organisation of main contractor and supplier organisations, and their direct inter-relationships. SC Maturity levels are formulated according to relevant SCM concepts and based on Holti et al.’s (2000) seven principles of SCM organisation, and used to examine the relative SC Maturity of eight large main contractor and supplier organisations within the context of the Dutch construction industry. A case study, representing a construction supply chain initiated by a main contractor as a result of ongoing poor financial performance during the economic crisis and the existence of high failure costs, is further investigated to examine the SC Maturity levels based on one of the principles in more detail. This way the paper starts a discussion towards the development of an improvement framework and brings up the need for a more mature supply chain integrator, an organisation leading in the process of SCM implementation

Radio emission from cosmic ray air showers: simulation results and parametrization

We have developed a sophisticated model of the radio emission from extensive air showers in the scheme of coherent geosynchrotron radiation, providing a theoretical foundation for the interpretation of experimental data from current and future experiments. Having verified the model through comparison of analytic calculations, Monte Carlo simulations and historical experimental data, we now present the results of extensive simulations performed with our Monte Carlo code. Important results are the absence of significant asymmetries in the total field strength emission pattern, the spectral dependence of the radiation, the polarization characteristics of the emission (allowing an unambiguous test of the geomagnetic emission mechanism), and the dependence of the radio emission on important air shower and observer parameters such as the shower zenith angle, the primary particle energy, the depth of the shower maximum and the observer position. An analytic parametrization incorporating the aforementioned dependences summarizes our results in a particularly useful way.Comment: 33 pages, 24 figures, final version as accepted for publication by Astropart. Physics, only minor updates since V