Quality of a prescription drug is uncertain to patients, physicians and even the manufacturer of the drug. Because this uncertainty can deter physicians from prescribing the drug, it is important to investigate how various marketing communication activities help reveal the true quality of its product. In particular, this study investigates publicity and advertising under quality uncertainty. Chapter 1 studies the effect of publicity on consumer demand with a reduced form approach. Chapter 2 structurally investigates the roles of detailing and publicity when the information spill-over is present. Both chapters study the market of anti-cholesterol drugs (statins). Chapter 1 investigates the effects of publicity (media coverage) on consumer demand. The main obstacle to measuring the impact of publicity is that data on media coverage are difficult to interpret. To overcome this obstacle, we propose a new way to code information presented in news articles, mapping the information to a multi-dimensional attribute space. We combine our publicity data with data on sales, detailing, medical journal advertising, direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) and landmark clinical trial outcomes, and estimate a demand model. Our results suggest that not all forms of publicity are equal. In chapter 2, we study consumer learning about scientific evidence and its impact on demand for pharmaceutical products by using the Bayesian learning model. Unlike previous literature, our learning model allows consumer’s prior quality perceptions to be correlated across brands. This unique feature of the model allows us to investigate information spill-over effects across brands. The information spill-over allows late entrants to free-ride on first movers’ investment in clinical trials and marketing activities and to gain late mover advantage. In addition to using product level market share data, we supplement them with switching rates and discontinuing rates. The switching rate data are particularly useful for taking the presence of switching costs into consideration, which has been ignored in the literature using product-level data. Our estimated structural model has implications for managers in allocating resources to various types of marketing activities more efficiently and helps forecast returns of clinical trials that are sponsored by pharmaceutical firms.

Habilitacijos procedūrai teikiamų mokslo darbų apžvalgoje nagrinėjami svarbiausi Zenonos Onos Atkočiūnienės atliktų 1999 – 2009 metais atliktų mokslinių tyrimų rezultatai. Globaliai procesai, žiniomis grįstos ekonomikos iššūkiai skatina vadybinių paradigmų transformacijas. Formuojasi nauja vadybinė įvestis - žinių vadyba, kurios esmė – ne materialių objektų, o neapčiuopiamų (neišreikštų) išteklių naudojimas, palaikymas, valdymas ir tobulinimas, intelektinio kapitalo kūrimas ir gausinimas, siekiant konkurencinio pranašumo. Tiriant valdymo modelių transformacijas, kurias lėmė žinių visuomenės, žinių ekonomikos iššūkiai, galima identifikuoti verslo pranašumus ir trūkumus, nustatyti organizacijų kritinio strateginio pranašumo kūrimo sritis. Informacijos ir žinių vadybos integralumas argumentuojamas tiek jų kaip vadybos funkcijų, tiek kaip socialinių reiškinių esmę ir savitumus nusakančių objektų – informacijos, žinių tarpusavio sąsajų. Tyrimų tikslas – ištirti , įvertinti ir apibendrinti teorines informacijos ir žinių vadybos žiūras ir atsižvelgiant į aplinkos kaitą bei tarpkultūrinius organizacijų skirtumus atskleisti jų praktinio taikymo organizacijose turinį ir kryptis. Tyrimų uždaviniai: • Apibrėžti informacinės vadybinės veiklos pokyčius, nulemtus žiniomis grįstos ekonomikos raiškos. • Ištirti informacinėje veikloje taikomas rinkodaros strategijas ir pagrįsti rinkos informacinių poreikių tyrimo metodologiją. • Išanalizuoti informacijos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The review of the scientific works submitted for habilitation analyzes the most important results of the scientific research conducted by Zenona Ona Atkočiūnienė in 1999 – 2009. Processes taking place on a global scale, knowledge-based economic challenges encourage transformations of management paradigms. A new management input – knowledge management – undergoes formation. The essence of such management is the use, maintenance, administration and improvement of intangible resources, formation and enlargement of intellectual capital, seeking to gain competitive advantage. When investigating transformations of management models, conditioned by challenges of knowledge society and knowledge economy, business advantages and shortcomings may be identified and the fields of development of organizations’ critical strategic advantage may be set out. The integrity of information and knowledge management is reasoned by interlink between the objects (information and knowledge) denoting the essence and specific features of information and knowledge as management functions as well as social phenomena. The purpose of research: to investigate, evaluate and summarize theoretical aspects of information and knowledge management, and, taking into consideration environmental changes and intercultural differences of organizations, to disclose the content and trends of their practical application in organizations. The tasks of research: • To define changes of information management activities... [to full text]

My aim in this work is to identify and contextualize the goals driving contemporary post-secondary education reform in New Brunswick. I do this by grounding the 2007 Advantage New Brunswick Report and New Brunswick Action Plan in the general historical context of higher education. I provide a descriptive account of the policies under review with a view to the ideals of a liberal arts education. Through a critical theory framework, I relate the contents of the policies under review to neo-liberal ideology, professional, bureaucratic and managerial hegemony. My focus is on the place of the liberal arts and humanities in a system dominated by the corporate imperatives of professionalization, specialization and bureaucratization. I propose as a response to neo-liberal policies that seek to make education instrumental to the needs of the market returning to history, philosophy and classics as the core of a liberal arts education.

<p>A major challenge facing the South African wine industry has been the economic repositioning of the sector, which since 1994 has moved away from a highly regulated domestic environment. The increasing integration of the local industry into international markets and global value chains has been accompanied by the industry&rsquo / s deregulation and restructuring. From the production focus&nbsp / on a limited range of low value-added varieties produced for domestic tastes and to meet monopoly quotas, producers have shifted to planting noble cultivars suited to various international&nbsp / tastes. Despite the lack of growth in traditional Western European markets, new world producers like South Africa have successfully competed and secured new market share. The Western Cape&nbsp / ine industry is ranked as the second-largest contributor to the Western Cape economy. The thesis explores the effect of cluster governance and the coordination of strategic collective&nbsp / actions on the Western Cape wine cluster&rsquo / s competitiveness. The data has been gathered through a combination of documentary analysis and interviews conducted with the leadership and/or&nbsp / management of various industry organisations. A qualitative approach has been adopted in the data analysis and interpretation of the findings, with information gathered via a combination of&nbsp / documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with key representatives of established industry bodies and key role-players in the Western Cape wine cluster. </p>

Maintaining health and quality of life into old age is a critical issue facing society today. Language, and in particular language comprehension, is vulnerable to the processes of ageing (Au, Albert, & Obler, 1989; Kynette & Kemper, 1986; Nicholas, Obler, Albert, & Goodglass, 1985; Shewan & Henderson, 1988). An improved understanding of language processing and ageing will assist in distinguishing language difficulties in normal ageing from those in pathological ageing and aphasia (Maxim & Bryan, 1994) and, potentially, optimises communication throughout life. The current thesis focuses on a specific component of language comprehension - anaphora resolution . Anaphora resolution occurs frequently in everyday discourse and has been reported to decline with ageing (Cohen, 1979; Light & Capps, 1986; Ulatowska, Hayashi, Cannito, & Fleming, 1986). This thesis explored anaphora resolution relative to two key variables: ageing and working memory. Ageing was chosen as a variable as anaphora resolution has been shown to be affected by age (Cohen, 1979; Light & Capps, 1986; Ulatowska et al., 1986). Working memory was chosen as working memory is thought to underlie key aspects of discourse comprehension such as building a mental structure of discourse and updating the information (Brébion, 2003; Hasher & Zacks, 1988; Radvansky, Copeland, & Hippel, 2010; Radvansky, Lynchard, & von Hippel, 2009). Anaphora resolution was investigated using two key paradigms. The first focussed on anaphora resolution in a reading comprehension task. Performance was assessed using accuracy of response. The second employed Gernsbacher's (1989) probe-response paradigm. The probe- response paradigm allowed examination of specific working memory processes underlying discourse comprehension, namely; a) storing and maintaining information in working memory (i.e., laying the foundation of the discourse structure); and b) updating information stored in working memory through suppressing the irrelevant discourse information. Storage and maintenance of the information was assessed by examining whether participants utilised “advantage of first mention” (Gernsbacher, 1990). Suppression was evaluated by investigating whether the accessibility of nonreferent names decreased in participants' working memory after they read anaphoric pronouns in sentences. This approach aimed to answer the following questions: 1) Do age and working memory capacity affect anaphora resolution in a comprehension task?; 2) Do age and working memory affect advantage of first mention in a probe recognition task?; and 3) Does age affect suppression of irrelevant information in an anaphora resolution task? In Chapter 3, Gernsbacher's (1989) original study was replicated. In Chapter 4 the same questions were examined, with the addition of a higher working memory load. For both studies, 30 younger and 30 older participants completed two comprehension experiments followed by an assessment of working memory capacity (reading span task). The comprehension experiments each contained a reading comprehension task and a probe recognition task. The reading comprehension task introduced two discourse characters (either a male or female name), one of which was referred to later in the text, using an anaphoric pronoun. Comprehension questions always asked about the referents of the anaphoric pronouns. Participants' accuracy in answering each comprehension question was indicative of their ability to resolve anaphora. Response times in the recognition task provided measures of the accessibility of: a) first and second mentioned names, and b) referent and nonreferent names. Chapters 3 and 4 found that, regardless of the tasks' working memory storage demands, older adults were less accurate than younger adults in the comprehension of anaphoric pronouns. Comprehension accuracy was related to working memory capacity, such that individuals with higher working memory capacity exhibited higher accuracy of response in the comprehension task. In addition, working memory capacity affected the accessibility of first and second mentioned names in the discourse suggesting that working memory capacity might influence the process of laying the foundation for the mental representation of comprehension. An ageing effect was observed on the suppression process during anaphora resolution under high working memory load only. When working memory load was low, neither younger nor older participants suppressed the accessibility of the nonreferents by the time they finished reading the sentences. This suggested that anaphora resolution might be postponed in less demanding tasks. However, under higher working memory load, younger adults, but not older adults, suppressed the accessibility of the nonreferents by the time they finished reading the sentence. It was therefore suggested that age-related changes in anaphora resolution abilities might be mediated by a decline in inhibitory functions that are responsible for suppressing the already-activated information that are no longer relevant to the task goals. The final study of the thesis (Chapter 5) aimed to determine why younger adults delayed the process of anaphora resolution in Experiment 1 (See Chapter 3), but completed the process by the time they finished reading the sentences in Experiment 2 (See Chapter 4). Specific questions addressed were: 1) Was comprehension accuracy affected by working memory storage load and the syntactic structure of the sentences?; 2) Do younger adults suppress the accessibility of the nonreferents by the time they reach the end of the sentence, in simpler sentences with increased storage load and late disambiguation?; and, 3) Do younger adults suppress the accessibility of nonreferents by the time they reach the end of the sentence, in more syntactically complex sentences with low storage load and prior disambiguation?. Forty younger participants completed four separate comprehension experimental tasks followed by a reading span test. A similar experimental approach was employed to that described in Chapters 3 and 4; however working memory storage load, syntactic complexity, and time-course for providing contextual information were manipulated. Results of Chapter 5 found that participants' accuracy declined in more syntactically complex sentences. A decline in accuracy appeared indicative of the tasks' higher processing demands and demonstrated that prior disambiguation was not facilitating the resolution of anaphora. Results from the recognition task showed that in sentences of increased syntactic complexity, participants suppressed the accessibility of nonreferents by the time they finished reading the sentence. It was suggested that higher processing demands of syntactically complex sentences, rather than a facilitating effect of earlier disambiguation in these sentences, contributed to the earlier suppression of nonreferents. In summary, this thesis demonstrated that older adults were less accurate than younger adults in comprehending anaphoric pronouns. Moreover, working memory capacity positively influenced comprehension accuracy and affected the advantage of first mention of discourse entities. It was suggested that individual differences in working memory capacity might affect the ability to lay foundations for discourse comprehension. Furthermore, older adults showed no suppression of nonreferents during processing of anaphora, regardless of working memory storage load. It appears possible that older adults' difficulty in anaphora resolution might be due to an inability to suppress irrelevant discourse information. Findings from the present study suggest that ageing may negatively affect the comprehension of linguistic structures for which more than one meaning could be inferred. While further exploration of this finding is required, it is possible that communication strategies could be devised to minimise the use of structures with more than one meaning - with the aim of improving and maintaining communication in older adults. Ultimately, determining the underlying causes of language impairments in both healthy ageing and neurological disease will help to improve speech-language therapy methods for these populations.

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The Swedish market for vehicle inspection is re-regulated since June 2010. More than four years after the re-regulation there are eight companies in the market. Two of these companies are a result of the former monopolist's owners divided the business among themselves. The remaining six companies have entered the market through acquisitions or by building up their business from scratch, these are known as new entrants in the study. The competition has developed slowly and the former monopolist still has the highest market share. Industry conditions are to say the least special because the companies and technicians have to have individual licenses in the form of accreditation and certification, which causes high establishment barriers. The study has the aim of contributing to the knowledge of new entrants on the re-regulated vehicle inspection market. In particular, the new entrant’s establishment and their strategic choices are studied to find out how they act to market conditions in order to create competitive advantages. The study is based on four questions: Main Question: How do new entrants create competitive advantages in the vehicle inspection market? Sub query 1: How’s the new entrants view on the competitive situation? Sub query 2: How do the new entrants establish their station-/s? Sub query 3: What strategies do the new entrants use to strengthen its position against competitors? The essay is based on an empirical survey and is designed as a case study with four units of analysis that represent four new inspection companies in the market for vehicle inspection. Data were collected through interviews with people in key positions of the four companies, as well with a person of the authority whose task is to monitor market developments, namely the Transport Agency. Furthermore, also documents issued by the authorities and new entrants were reviewed. The conclusions that the study has come up with is that the new entrants create competitive advantages through a favorable placement of stations, a bit outside the city center. The strict regulation doesn’t allow the new entrants to create competitive advantages through new or modified inspection services. Based on these regulations the new entrants are trying to attract customers through enhanced service and additional services to the inspection. They try to create a total offering to the customer where the obligatory inspection service is included.

The study focuses on the use of information systems in the Heavy Engineering industry in South Africa and the decision to make, buy or rent information systems. Special focus was placed on the factors that influence the decision to make, buy or rent information systems. It is undeniable that changes in the competitive environment, such as technological advances and globalisation, are driving organisations toward new ways of operating. In striving to become flexible, lean, and more competitive, organisations have been increasingly swift to externalise support service functions. Every organisation must adapt to the current economic environment, the technology available in its industry and consider the risk and rewards within the industry framework. Organisations should carefully analyse the impact of their decisions, especially in consideration of the extent to which organisational competencies and competitive advantage could be affected. An extensive literature study was conducted on the factors that influence the decision to make, buy or rent. The literature study portrays the ideal state or methodologies for acquiring information systems and the best practices used in evaluating the best option for the organisation. The literature indicated the criteria for evaluating the decision to make, buy or rent information systems are the business need, in–house experience, project skills, project management and the time frame. These criteria can be broken down into the factors that have an influence on the decision, competitive advantage, security, skills, expertise, available resources, cost, time, implementation, support, maintenance, performance, quality, documentation, vendor issues, size of organisation, expected annual transactions, software control, functionality, productivity and increased turnover. Calculating the benefit that can be achieved from information systems must also include measures to incorporate the total benefit, not only the financial benefit. The balance scorecard approach measures the total return accompanying an investment in information systems, broken down into four sections, the financial perspective that measures the tangible outcomes, the customer perspective that measures customer value (quality, delivery and skill), the internal process perspective that measures the internal processes that add value and have the greatest impact on strategy and finally the learning and growth perspective that measures the intangible assets which focuses on human capital. Information systems form part of the corporate strategy, competitive positioning and must be aligned with the overall strategy of the organisation. A survey was done to determine the opinions about the different options managers/organisations have to consider when seeking to fulfil organisational requirements for information systems. Methodological issues as well as considerations with regard to gathering the data were discussed. A questionnaire was designed to collect data to obtain the information needed to solve the research problem. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was tested and it was found that a moderate to high level of consistency exists. The survey results were then presented in frequency tables and were analysed using descriptive statistics as well as inferring possible trends or conclusions based on relationships between certain responses on specific related questions and referring to the literature study. A framework was compiled from the literature study and empirical study that can be used for the purpose of decision–making in the make, buy or renting of information systems in the heavy engineering environment in South Africa. Benefits from purchasing software from a vendor include competitive advantage, available resources, implementation of the system, support to the system, system performance, documentation and training, and business functionality. Benefits from open source offerings include the size of the organisation and the number of expected annual transactions by the organisation. Benefits from SaaS (Software as a service) include competitive advantage, expertise, system performance and business functionality. Benefits from the outsourcing of development and other IT functions include competitive advantage, security, skills, available resources, implementation of the system, support to the system, system performance, documentation and training, business functionality and technical functionality. Benefits from developing in–house all or part of the effort include competitive advantage, security, skills, expertise, available resources, time, implementation of the system, support to the system, maintenance and upgrades, system performance, quality, documentation and training, business functionality, technical functionality, productivity improvements and increased turnover. Overall the linkage between the literature study and the empirical study concludes / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

The study focuses on the use of information systems in the Heavy Engineering industry in South Africa and the decision to make, buy or rent information systems. Special focus was placed on the factors that influence the decision to make, buy or rent information systems. It is undeniable that changes in the competitive environment, such as technological advances and globalisation, are driving organisations toward new ways of operating. In striving to become flexible, lean, and more competitive, organisations have been increasingly swift to externalise support service functions. Every organisation must adapt to the current economic environment, the technology available in its industry and consider the risk and rewards within the industry framework. Organisations should carefully analyse the impact of their decisions, especially in consideration of the extent to which organisational competencies and competitive advantage could be affected. An extensive literature study was conducted on the factors that influence the decision to make, buy or rent. The literature study portrays the ideal state or methodologies for acquiring information systems and the best practices used in evaluating the best option for the organisation. The literature indicated the criteria for evaluating the decision to make, buy or rent information systems are the business need, in–house experience, project skills, project management and the time frame. These criteria can be broken down into the factors that have an influence on the decision, competitive advantage, security, skills, expertise, available resources, cost, time, implementation, support, maintenance, performance, quality, documentation, vendor issues, size of organisation, expected annual transactions, software control, functionality, productivity and increased turnover. Calculating the benefit that can be achieved from information systems must also include measures to incorporate the total benefit, not only the financial benefit. The balance scorecard approach measures the total return accompanying an investment in information systems, broken down into four sections, the financial perspective that measures the tangible outcomes, the customer perspective that measures customer value (quality, delivery and skill), the internal process perspective that measures the internal processes that add value and have the greatest impact on strategy and finally the learning and growth perspective that measures the intangible assets which focuses on human capital. Information systems form part of the corporate strategy, competitive positioning and must be aligned with the overall strategy of the organisation. A survey was done to determine the opinions about the different options managers/organisations have to consider when seeking to fulfil organisational requirements for information systems. Methodological issues as well as considerations with regard to gathering the data were discussed. A questionnaire was designed to collect data to obtain the information needed to solve the research problem. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was tested and it was found that a moderate to high level of consistency exists. The survey results were then presented in frequency tables and were analysed using descriptive statistics as well as inferring possible trends or conclusions based on relationships between certain responses on specific related questions and referring to the literature study. A framework was compiled from the literature study and empirical study that can be used for the purpose of decision–making in the make, buy or renting of information systems in the heavy engineering environment in South Africa. Benefits from purchasing software from a vendor include competitive advantage, available resources, implementation of the system, support to the system, system performance, documentation and training, and business functionality. Benefits from open source offerings include the size of the organisation and the number of expected annual transactions by the organisation. Benefits from SaaS (Software as a service) include competitive advantage, expertise, system performance and business functionality. Benefits from the outsourcing of development and other IT functions include competitive advantage, security, skills, available resources, implementation of the system, support to the system, system performance, documentation and training, business functionality and technical functionality. Benefits from developing in–house all or part of the effort include competitive advantage, security, skills, expertise, available resources, time, implementation of the system, support to the system, maintenance and upgrades, system performance, quality, documentation and training, business functionality, technical functionality, productivity improvements and increased turnover. Overall the linkage between the literature study and the empirical study concludes / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Quality of a prescription drug is uncertain to patients, physicians and even the manufacturer of the drug. Because this uncertainty can deter physicians from prescribing the drug, it is important to investigate how various marketing communication activities help reveal the true quality of its product. In particular, this study investigates publicity and advertising under quality uncertainty. Chapter 1 studies the effect of publicity on consumer demand with a reduced form approach. Chapter 2 structurally investigates the roles of detailing and publicity when the information spill-over is present. Both chapters study the market of anti-cholesterol drugs (statins). Chapter 1 investigates the effects of publicity (media coverage) on consumer demand. The main obstacle to measuring the impact of publicity is that data on media coverage are difficult to interpret. To overcome this obstacle, we propose a new way to code information presented in news articles, mapping the information to a multi-dimensional attribute space. We combine our publicity data with data on sales, detailing, medical journal advertising, direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) and landmark clinical trial outcomes, and estimate a demand model. Our results suggest that not all forms of publicity are equal. In chapter 2, we study consumer learning about scientific evidence and its impact on demand for pharmaceutical products by using the Bayesian learning model. Unlike previous literature, our learning model allows consumer’s prior quality perceptions to be correlated across brands. This unique feature of the model allows us to investigate information spill-over effects across brands. The information spill-over allows late entrants to free-ride on first movers’ investment in clinical trials and marketing activities and to gain late mover advantage. In addition to using product level market share data, we supplement them with switching rates and discontinuing rates. The switching rate data are particularly useful for taking the presence of switching costs into consideration, which has been ignored in the literature using product-level data. Our estimated structural model has implications for managers in allocating resources to various types of marketing activities more efficiently and helps forecast returns of clinical trials that are sponsored by pharmaceutical firms.