Recent trends of financial distress for non-profit hospitals and the uptick in acquisition of these hospitals by for-profit entities indicate different focuses from the management of each type of hospital. Using data on hospital quality and basic financial measures, this study examines shift in the balance of financial and quality performance. The dataset focuses on private non-profit and for-profit hospitals with low bed counts, ranging from 50-200 total beds. Results indicate a positive relationship between for-profit status and basic financial performance measures, such as profitability, and a negative relationship with patient experience, cost reduction for the patient, and overall quality. This signals a tradeoff between financial performance and quality, especially measures relating to the customer. For-profit hospital management places more of an emphasis on the financial performance while non-profit hospital management demonstrates a balance between financial performance and high quality performance. Without being involved in hospital management decision-making, examining hospital outcomes is the best way to give insight into how hospital management is shifts performance priorities by different types of ownership.

The discipline of Human Resource Management is regarded as one of the fundamental pillars of organisational theory. The employees of an institution are considered to be the most important assets that an institution possesses, primarily because they determine the success or failure of the institution in question. Employee attraction and retention is known to scholars of the discipline as one of the prominent challenges that constantly confront institutions, both public and private. As labour markets become more globalised, the phenomenon of employee mobility surges, which results in these public and private institutions needing to develop and implement measures that would assist them in attracting skilled personnel, whilst also ensuring that they have the ability to retain such personnel. The war for talent continues to grow in the contemporary world as institutions strive to adapt the ever-changing milieu in which they operate. This study examines the underlying factors of career and retention management practices in the Department of Local Government and Housing by virtue of evaluating the Career and Retention Management Policy that the Department has in place as a means of addressing its turnover and retention challenges. Furthermore, the study recommends possible solutions and strategies for improving the current interventionist policy of the Department. The literature study indicated that employee turnover is detrimental to the ability of an institution to deliver goods and services, particularly if dysfunctional turnover occurs. Some of the causes, costs and types of turnover were conceptualised, in addition to the discussions on career and retention management. The study highlighted that the establishment of effective career development and management systems in the workplace is imperative, particularly as employees continuously seek personal and career growth opportunities. The failure to develop such systems may result in employees seeking these opportunities elsewhere, which would consequently deter the Department or any other institution from attaining its goals and objectives. The empirical study of this dissertation investigated possible reasons or factors why senior managers of the Department of Local Government and Housing may want to leave the Department and seek employment elsewhere. In addition to this, an evaluation of the Career and Retention Management Policy would provide a perceptive for assessing the effectiveness of the Policy in terms of its capacity to reduce employee turnover, at the same time ensuring that the Department remains an attractive employer of choice. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to forty senior managers; however twenty-one were completed and returned by the participants. The analysis of the data revealed that the public service has the capability to retain critically skilled employees and that this is not necessarily brought about by the introduction of improved remuneration packages, but rather by placing an emphasis on career development because very often employees in the Department of Local Government and Housing are denied opportunities to climb the career ladder and this results in the Department’s retention ability being challenged. Various gaps within the Policy were identified, predominantly its content, which was described by participants as ambiguous. The study recommends possible solutions and strategies for addressing the challenges that were identified in the analysis. International best practices are utilised as a benchmark for establishing how other institutions have successfully formulated and implemented effective career development and management systems. / Dissertation (MAdmin)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / School of Public Management and Administration / unrestricted

The EU has embarked on a resource efficiency trajectory in order to solve resource scarcity and general sustainability issues. The conversion of food waste into fuel is considered resource efficient as it makes use of resources that would otherwise be discarded. On the other hand, the food sector affects the environment substantially as it is inherently resource intensive and excessive. The purpose of the study was to assess how resource efficient the food waste substrate (feedstock for energy production) is from a life-cycle perspective. The study also aimed to determine if associated Swedish incentives and current market signals promote resource efficiency in Sweden. The food waste substrate has a complex life-cycle and current analyses neglect crucial life-cycle impacts. This makes resource efficiency difficult to determine in absolute terms. The first resource efficiency principle, that promotes the use of fewer inputs, becomes questionable as the food waste substrate has twice as many input stages in comparison to the food crop substrate. The second principle, stating that the food waste substrate should contribute to a low-carbon economy, also falls short due to a calculation method that neglects crucial emission stages. Due to the absent life-cycle perspective, crucial environmental impacts associated with food production are neglected. This affects the achievement of the Swedish Generation Goal and environmental quality objectives. The study concludes that the food waste substrate should undergo a thorough life-cycle analysis. Furthermore, it should be compared to other biofuel options in order to determine degree of resource efficiency. Only then can an appropriate set of EU and national policy measures be instated to safeguard scarce resources and promote a sustainable agriculture and energy sector.

Major companies in the insurance industry—notably Allstate, Progressive, and Farmers—often employ personification as a creative rhetorical tool in digital video advertisements. By leveraging brand characters in various ways, these companies seek to establish trust and engender emotional impact in customers. Allstate ascribes destructive characteristics that are associated with house cats to its Mayhem character; in doing so they evoke the desired emotional responses of humor and fear. Progressive creates and deploys the Motaur character, a visual personification and play on the Centaur; in this case, the company’s rhetorical strategy is to evoke humor and nostalgia that resonate with motorcycle owners. Farmers’ strategy is to win customers by demonstrating experience and empathy; they do so with the Professor Burke character, whose professorial ethos functions to evoke feelings of trust. I employ the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) in my analysis to explore the relationships between personification, emotional appeals, and persuasion.

Thesis (MPAM.) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / The South African government introduced the Supply Chain Management Framework in 2003, with a vision of creating a seamless system intended to play a critical role in service delivery to communities while achieving the objectives of cost-effectiveness, fairness, equity, transparency and ethics. This study focused on the impact of Supply Chain Management Policy Implementation in the Limpopo Office of the Premier. Qualitative data were collected, primarily in the form of semi-structured interviews using an interview schedule consisting of both closed and open-ended questions with the Chief Financial Officer, Director (SCM), Deputy Directors (Demand, Acquisition, Logistics and Inventory, Asset and Transport Management) and SCM nineteen SCM practitioners. These officials provided sufficient information concerning the effect of Supply Chain Management policy implementation in the Limpopo Office of the Premier. The study established that failure to implement SCM policy hurts service delivery. The effective implementation results in improved service delivery, whereas poor implementation results in the poor quality of service to the public, fraud and corruption, irregular and fruitless expenditures as well as negative departmental image.

Am 28. November 2023 hat der Senat der TU Bergakademie Freiberg eine institutionelle Forschungsdaten-Policy verabschiedet. Aus diesem Anlass widmen wir die erste Ausgabe des Open-Science-Snacks im neuen Jahr (2024) diesem Thema.

Submitted by Rosina Valeria Lanzellotti Mattiussi Teixeira (rosina.teixeira@unisantos.br) on 2016-02-18T12:45:23Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Gisele Santos Fernandez.pdf: 2240643 bytes, checksum: fb4617f3cebeec4254b01ecd4ead4698 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-18T12:45:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gisele Santos Fernandez.pdf: 2240643 bytes, checksum: fb4617f3cebeec4254b01ecd4ead4698 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The PARFOR (Plano Nacional de Formação de Professores da Educação Básica) is an emergencial initiative for basic education teachers of the public schools that was created to offer free courses of graduation in Pedagogia for teachers who work in the basic education, but didn´t have adequate graduation. This research focuses on two schools´ managers where 12 teachers work from one Education course refunded by Parfor. It´s intends to analyse schools manager´s conditions to support them so that they can consolidate declared gains for them in previous researches. For this, analyze official documents on managers and professionals of the school, in the federal and municipal scope and analyze the everyday routine of these professionals. Three main ideas guide this study: school as level meso of analysis, the paper of the actors in the implementation of policy and the school as place of students and teachers education. The research is supported in studies on the reception of politics in the bases of the systems of education, in this case, schools, (BOWE; BALL; GOLD, 1992; BALL, 1994; MAINARDES, 2006; MAINARDES; FERREIRA; TELLO, 2011), in this case, in schools, and on politics of teacher´s formation, especially, the Parfor (BRAZIL, 2009a, 2009b; GATTI, BARRETO, ANDRÉ, 2011; PESSOA, ARAÚJO, 2013). Concerning management´s approach, it call on Canário (2005), Sander (2007), Silva (2007), Dourado (2007), Vieira (2009), Paro (2012), Libâneo (2008), Luck (2009, 2012) and Lima (2011) and concerning school as a formation place, called on Canário (1998; 2005), Nóvoa (1999), Abdalla (2006) and Cunha (2008). It adopts qualitative approach with documentary analysis, schools observation, and interviews. The analysis of the data points to four main categories: policy as text, policy as discourse, pedagogical-formative management and structure and functioning of the school. Results indicate that managers have legal, personal, professional and material conditions to give pedagogical support to the teachers from Parfor education course; They set clear that the attendance vestige of the basic education in the kinder-garden level, still found in the discourses and the legal functional condition of the teachers act as hurdle for the purposes/intention of the analyzed policy. Finally, it reinforce that, despite of other conditions, each school receives and enact one policy according to its managers performance and leadership. / O PARFOR (Plano Nacional de Formação de Professores da Educação Básica) é uma iniciativa emergencial para professores do ensino fundamental da rede pública criada para oferecer cursos gratuitos de graduação a professores que trabalham na educação básica, sem a formação adequada para tal. Esta pesquisa focaliza gestores de duas escolas onde atuam 12 professoras-egressas de um curso de Pedagogia subsidiado pelo Parfor. Intencionou analisar as condições de gestores escolares para apoiá-las para que consolidem os ganhos declarados por elas em pesquisas anteriores, com o curso realizado. Para tanto, analisa documentos oficiais sobre gestores e profissionais da escola, no âmbito federal e municipal e o cotidiano desses profissionais. Três ideias centrais norteiam o estudo: escola como nível meso de análise, o papel dos sujeitos na implementação de políticas e a escola como lugar de formação de alunos e professores. A pesquisa apoia-se em estudos sobre a recepção de políticas nas bases dos sistemas de ensino, no caso, nas escolas (BOWE; BALL; GOLD, 1992; BALL, 1994; MAINARDES, 2006; MAINARDES, FERREIRA; TELLO, 2011) e sobre políticas de formação de professores, especialmente, o Parfor (BRASIL, 2009a, 2009b; GATTI; BARRETO; ANDRÉ, 2011; PESSOA e ARAÚJO, 2013). Para abordar a gestão escolar recorre a Canário (2005, Sander (2007), Silva (2007), Dourado (2007), Vieira (2009), Paro (2012), Libâneo (2008), Luck (2009, 2012) e Lima (2011) e sobre a escola, como lugar de formação, recorre a Canário (1998; 2005), Nóvoa (1999), Abdalla (2006) e Cunha (2008). Adota abordagem qualitativa com análise documental, observação nas escolas e entrevistas. A análise dos dados apontou para quatro categorias principais: política como texto, política com o discurso, gestão pedagógico-formativa e estrutura e funcionamento da escola. Os resultados obtidos indicam que gestores têm condições legais, pessoais, profissionais e materiais para dar apoio pedagógico às professoras-egressas do curso de Pedagogia Parfor. Deixam claro que o resquício assistencialista das creches, ainda presente nos discursos, e a condição funcional legal das professoras atuam como limitadores para os fins da política analisada. Por fim, ratifica que cada escola recepciona e interpreta uma política, entre outras condições, de acordo com a atuação e liderança de seus gestores.

This dissertation investigates emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs)’s acquisitions of firms in developed economies (DE) through three distinctive but interrelated essays. Despite costs EMNEs must offset from the obvious cultural distance (CD) they encounter with limited exploitable advantages, EMNEs have continued to aggressively acquire firms in DE, suggesting there are ways for the EMNEs to effectively overcome CD. In Essay 1, using insights from the symbolic interaction paradigm in sociology, I developed the Dynamic Socio-Cultural Model (DSCM), to uncover the general process of cultural creation and change. At the core of the DSCM is the process of collective learning and adaptive interaction in every social system. Viewing EMNEs’ acquisitions in DE as a cultural event that leads to new shared cultural resources, DSCM shows culture is not as rigid as was typically conceptualized in the cross-cultural management literature. While the negative effect of CD may initially impede EMNEs, CD may be positively moderated by certain conditions of the involved cultures. In Essay 2, I extended DSCM and combined it with insights from the organizational learning literature to focus on EMNE’s choices of control mode and their performance implications. Performing event study and endogenous switching regression on 1157 EMNE’s acquisitions in 21 advanced economies, I found EMNEs have, on average, a positive post-acquisition performance. I also found being an EMNE from an emerging economy that underwent rapid industrialization and targeting a high-tech firm increases the probability for choosing a low-control mode. Moreover, EMNE acquirers choose control mode by strategically considering their unique characteristics to optimize performance. In Essay 3, using the same theoretical approach, I examined the target firms’ sources of value creation. Applying an event study on 167 acquisitions in North America made by EMNEs from 11 countries, I found EMNEs’ partial acquisitions in DE generate, on average, a positive target’s cumulative abnormal returns (CAR). There is also empirical support for several determinants of target’s value creation and moderation effects. In particular, I found target’s international experience attenuates the negative effect of CD on target CAR, while acquirer’s state-owned status exacerbates it. Overall, the three essays collectively contribute to research streams in EMNEs, seller’s view of M&A, and cultural change.

Il lavoro prende parte al dibattito scientifico su quali siano le più corrette modalità di attuazione del concetto di "sviluppo sostenibile". Attraverso l'applicazione dell'approccio coevolutivo allo studio condotto a Santiago del Cile, abbiamo cercato di rispondere alle seguenti domande: 1) Quali sono i problemi ambientali locali e quali le relative ripercussioni sociali? 2) Quali sono gli strumenti a disposizione delle municipalità locali per risolverli? 3) Quali strumenti vengono realmente impiegati e quali le ripercussioni sociali del loro utilizzo? / The work takes part in the scientific debate about the most correct ways to affect the sustainable development concept. Through the coevolutive approach application to Santiago case (Chile) we tried to answer following questions: 1) what are local environmental problems and what are their social repercussions? 2) What are instruments in the local municipalities hands in order to resolve them? 3) Which instruments are really employed and what are social repercussions from their use?

The disciplines of informatics and information visualization have developed in response to societal needs to find new insight in complex datasets and have been enabled by technological advancements. Joint application of these fields can demonstrate themes and connections that are otherwise not apparent. Methodological approaches, such as direct network analysis, can be applied to policy documents to determine if action or policy recommendations match the goals or objectives stated in the within the same documents. Informatics and information visualization can also be used to analyze changes of themes found within the documents over time. This paper seeks to leverage informatics and information visualization methodologies as a novel approach to policy analysis. In particular, directed network and time burst techniques are used to analyze water management policy documents for the State of Texas. The congruency between the stated goals or objectives and recommendations sections is evaluated at a topical level within each planning document and possible changes in important water policy concepts over time are highlighted by comparing among multiple planning documents. Although there limitations to the process at the time of publication due to the newness of the software utilized, this paper demonstrates that the products still lead to unique and insightful conclusions. / text