Abstract: The spatial variation in plant species associated with intercropping is intended to reduce resource competition between species and increase yield potential. A field experiment was carried out on corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L.) intercropping in a replacement series experiment with weed contamination consist of: weed free, infestation of redroot pigweed, infestation of jimsonweed and simultaneous infestation of redroot pigweed and jimsonweed in Karaj, Iran during 2007 growing season. The experimental design was a randomized complete block in factorial experiment with replicated thrice. Significant (P≤0.05) differences were observed in yield in intercropping. Corn yield was higher in intercropping, but soybean yield was significantly reduced by corn when intercropped. However, total productivity and land use efficiency were high under the intercropping system even in contamination of either species of weeds. Aggressivity of corn relative to soybean revealed the greater competitive ability of corn than soybean. Land equivalent ratio (LER) more than 1 in all treatments attributed to intercropping advantages and was highest in 50: 50 (corn/soybean) in weed free. These findings suggest that intercropping corn and soybean increase total productivity per unit area and improve land use efficiency. Considering the experimental findings, corn-soybean intercropping (50:50) may be recommended for yield advantage, more efficient utilization of resources, and weed suppression as a biological control.
Abstract: The research objective of the project and article “The impact of Structural Funds on the growth of competitiveness of Polish agriculture" is to assess competitiveness of regions in Poland from the perspective of Polish agriculture by analysing the efficiency of the use of Structural Funds, the economic procedure of their distribution and the regulatory and organisational framework under the Rural Development Programme (RDP). It must be stressed that defining the scope of research in the above manner limits the analysis only to the part of Structural Funds directed to support Polish agriculture.
Abstract: Retention in the IT profession is critical for
organizations to stay competitive and operate reliably in the dynamic
business environment. Most organizations rely on compensation and
rewards as primary tools to enhance retention of employees. In this
quantitative survey-based study conducted at a large global bank, we
analyze the perceptions of 575 information technology (IT) software
professionals in India and Malaysia and find that fairness of rewards
has very little impact on retention likelihood. It is far more important
to actively involve employees in organizational activities. In
addition, our findings indicate that involvement is far more important
than information flow: the typical organizational communication to
keep employees informed.
Abstract: Considering today-s increasing speed of change,
radical and innovative improvement - Kaikaku, is a necessity parallel
to continuous incremental improvement - Kaizen, especially for
SME-s in order to attain the competitive edge needed to be profitable.
During 2011, a qualitative single case study with the objective of
realizing a kaikaku in production has been conducted. The case study
was run as a one year project using a collaborative approach
including both researchers and company representatives. The case
study was conducted with the purpose of gaining further knowledge
about kaikaku realization as well as its implications. The empirical
results provide insights about the great productivity results achieved
by applying a specific kaikaku realization approach. However, it also
sheds light on the difficulty and contradiction of combining
innovation management and production system development.
Abstract: Achieving success is a highly critical issue for the
companies to survive in a competitive business environment. The
construction industry is also an area where there is strong
competition due to a large number of construction contractors. There
have been many factors such as qualified employees, quality
workmanship and financial management that can lead to company
success in the construction industry. The aim of this study was to
investigate the critical factors leading to construction company
success. Within this context, a survey was carried out among 40
Turkish construction companies which are located in the Northwest
region of Turkey. In this survey, top-level managers and owners of
the companies were interviewed. The interviews took place over a
five month period between January and May 2007. Finally, the
ranking of the critical success factors has been determined by using
the Simple Multi Attribute Rating Technique (SMART). Based on
the results, business management, financial conditions and
owner/manager characteristics were determined as the most
important factors to company success.
Abstract: Flow-shop scheduling problem (FSP) deals with the
scheduling of a set of jobs that visit a set of machines in the same
order. The FSP is NP-hard, which means that an efficient algorithm
for solving the problem to optimality is unavailable. To meet the
requirements on time and to minimize the make-span performance of
large permutation flow-shop scheduling problems in which there are
sequence dependent setup times on each machine, this paper
develops one hybrid genetic algorithms (HGA). Proposed HGA
apply a modified approach to generate population of initial
chromosomes and also use an improved heuristic called the iterated
swap procedure to improve initial solutions. Also the author uses
three genetic operators to make good new offspring. The results are
compared to some recently developed heuristics and computational
experimental results show that the proposed HGA performs very
competitively with respect to accuracy and efficiency of solution.
Abstract: This study adopts a qualitative approach, which
engages in the dialectical discussion on two levels of dyad opposite
views. The first level of the dyad opposite views is the Western
strategic perspective and the Eastern Tai-Chi thinking. The second
level of the dyad opposite views is resource-based view and resource
dependence theory. This study concludes the resource-oriented actions
for competitive advantage as the metaphor of Tai-Chi consisted of yin
and yang. This study argues that the focal firm should adopt bridging
strategy during the core competence development period because its
core competence development is likely to meet its competitor’s needs
of exploring strategy during the competitor’s external resource
development stage. In addition, the focal firm should adopt buffering
strategy during the external resource development period to prevent its
competitor’s the exploiting strategy from attack during the
competitor’s core competence development stage. Consequently, this
study takes a significant first step toward a novel contextualize
understanding of resource development based on strategic perspective
and Tai-Chi thinking providing more fully sustainable strategy for
competitive advantage.
Abstract: Thousands of masters athletes participate
quadrennially in the World Masters Games (WMG), yet this cohort
of athletes remains proportionately under-investigated. Due to a
growing global obesity pandemic in context of benefits of physical
activity across the lifespan, the BMI trends for this unique population
was of particular interest. The nexus between health, physical
activity and aging is complex and has raised much interest in recent
times due to the realization that a multifaceted approach is necessary
in order to counteract the obesity pandemic. By investigating age
based trends within a population adhering to competitive sport at
older ages, further insight might be gleaned to assist in understanding
one of many factors influencing this relationship.BMI was derived
using data gathered on a total of 6,071 masters athletes (51.9% male,
48.1% female) aged 25 to 91 years ( =51.5, s =±9.7), competing at
the Sydney World Masters Games (2009). Using linear and loess
regression it was demonstrated that the usual tendency for prevalence
of higher BMI increasing with age was reversed in the sample. This
trend in reversal was repeated for both male and female only sub-sets
of the sample participants, indicating the possibility of improved
prevalence of BMI with increasing age for both the sample as a
whole and these individual sub-groups.This evidence of improved
classification in one index of health (reduced BMI) for masters
athletes (when compared to the general population) implies there are
either improved levels of this index of health with aging due to
adherence to sport or possibly the reduced BMI is advantageous and
contributes to this cohort adhering (or being attracted) to masters
sport at older ages.
Abstract: Business and IT alignment has continued as a
top concern for business and IT executives for almost three
decades. Many researchers have conducted empirical studies on
the relationship between business-IT alignment and performance.
Yet, these approaches, lacking a social perspective, have had little
impact on sustaining performance and competitive advantage. In
addition to the limited alignment literature that explores
organisational learning that is represented in shared understanding,
communication, cognitive maps and experiences.
Hence, this paper proposes an integrated process that enables
social and intellectual dimensions through the concept of
organisational learning. In particular, the feedback and feedforward
process which provide a value creation across dynamic
multilevel of learning. This mechanism enables on-going
effectiveness through development of individuals, groups and
organisations, which improves the quality of business and IT
strategies and drives to performance.
Abstract: There is no doubt that Internet technology is widely used by hotels and its demand is constantly booming. Hotels have largely adopted website information services through using different interactive tools, dimensions and attributes to achieve excellence in functionality and usability but these do not necessary equate with website effectiveness. One way to investigate the effectiveness of hotel website is from the perspective ofe-consumers. This exploratory research is to investigate the perceived importance of websites effectiveness of some selected independent small and medium-sized hotels (SMHs) located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from the perspective of Omanie-consumers by using non-random sampling method. From 400 questionnaire addressed to respondents in 27 organizations in Muscat the capital city of Oman, 173 are valid. Findings of this study assist SMHs management in Dubai with the reallocation of their resources and efforts in order to supportebusiness development and to sustain a competitive advantage.
Abstract: Knowledge is renowned as a significant component
for sustaining competitive advantage and gives leading edge in
business. This study emphasizes towards proper and effectuate
utilization of internal and external (both either explicit or tacit)
knowledge comes from stakeholders, highly supportive to combat
with the challenges and enhance organizational productivity.
Furthermore, it proposed a model under context of IRSA framework
which facilitates the organization including flow of knowledge and
experience sharing among employees. In discussion section an
innovative model which indulges all functionality as mentioned in
analysis section.
Abstract: The deficit of power for electricity demand reaches
almost 30% for consumers in the last few years. This reflects with
continually increasing the price of electricity, and today the price for
small industry is almost 110Euro/MWh. The high price is additional
problem for the owners in the economy crisis which is reflected with
higher price of the goods.
The paper gives analyses of the energy needs for real agro
complex in Macedonia, private vinery with capacity of over 2 million
liters in a year and with self grapes and fruits fields. The existing
power supply is from grid with 10/04 kV transformer. The
geographical and meteorological condition of the vinery location
gives opportunity for including renewable as a power supply option
for the vinery complex.
After observation of the monthly energy needs for the vinery, the
base scenario is the existing power supply from the distribution grid.
The electricity bill in small industry has three factors: electricity in
high and low tariffs in kWh and the power engaged for the
technological process of production in kW. These three factors make
the total electricity bill and it is over 110 Euro/MWh which is the
price near competitive for renewable option. On the other side
investments in renewable (especially photovoltaic (PV)) has tendency
of decreasing with price of near 1,5 Euro/W. This means that
renewable with PV can be real option for power supply for small
industry capacities (under 500kW installed power).
Therefore, the other scenarios give the option with PV and the last
one includes wind option. The paper presents some scenarios for
power supply of the vinery as the followings:
• Base scenario of existing conventional power supply from the
grid
• Scenario with implementation of renewable of Photovoltaic
• Scenario with implementation of renewable of Photovoltaic and
Wind power
The total power installed in a vinery is near 570 kW, but the
maximum needs are around 250kW. At the end of the full paper some
of the results from scenarios will be presented. The paper also
includes the environmental impacts of the renewable scenarios, as
well as financial needs for investments and revenues from renewable.
Abstract: Fast development of technologies, economic globalization and many other external circumstances stimulate company’s competitiveness. One of the major trends in today’s business is the shift to the exploitation of the Internet and electronic environment for entrepreneurial needs. Latest researches confirm that e-environment provides a range of possibilities and opportunities for companies, especially for micro-, small- and medium-sized companies, which have limited resources. The usage of e-tools raises the effectiveness and the profitability of an organization, as well as its competitiveness.
In the electronic market, as in the classic one, there are factors, such as globalization, development of new technology, price sensitive consumers, Internet, new distribution and communication channels that influence entrepreneurship. As a result of eenvironment development, e-commerce and e-marketing grow as well.
Objective of the paper: To describe and identify factors influencing company’s competitiveness in e-environment.
Research methodology: The authors employ well-established quantitative and qualitative methods of research: grouping, analysis, statistics method, factor analysis in SPSS 20 environment, etc. The theoretical and methodological background of the research is formed by using scientific researches and publications, such as that from mass media and professional literature; statistical information from legal institutions as well as information collected by the authors during the surveying process.
Research result: The authors detected and classified factors influencing competitiveness in e-environment.
In this paper, the authors presented their findings based on theoretical, scientific, and field research. Authors have conducted a research on e-environment utilization among Latvian enterprises.
Abstract: Enterprise Wide Information Systems (EWIS)
implementation involves the entire business and will require changes
throughout the firm. Because of the scope, complexity and
continuous nature of ERP, the project-based approach to managing
the implementation process resulted in failure rates of between 60%
and 80%. In recent years ERP systems have received much attention.
The organizational relevance and risk of ERP projects make it
important for organizations to focus on ways to make ERP
implementation successful. Once these systems are in place,
however, their performance depends on the identified macro
variables viz. 'Business Process', 'Decision Making' and 'Individual
/ Group working'. The questionnaire was designed and administered.
The responses from 92 organizations were compiled. The
relationship of these variables with EWIS performance is analyzed
using inferential statistical measurements. The study helps to
understand the performance of model presented. The study suggested
in keeping away from the calamities and thereby giving the
necessary competitive edge. Whenever some discrepancy is
identified during the process of performance appraisal care has to be
taken to draft necessary preventive measures. If all these measures
are taken care off then the EWIS performance will definitely deliver
the results.
Abstract: Global competitiveness has recently become the
biggest concern of both manufacturing and service companies.
Electronic commerce, as a key technology enables the firms to reach
all the potential consumers from all over the world. In this study, we
have presented commonly used electronic payment systems, and then
we have shown the evaluation of these systems in respect to different
criteria. The payment systems which are included in this research are
the credit card, the virtual credit card, the electronic money, the
mobile payment, the credit transfer and the debit instruments. We
have realized a systematic comparison of these systems in respect to
three main criteria: Technical, economical and social. We have
conducted a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making procedure to deal
with the multi-attribute nature of the problem. The subjectiveness
and imprecision of the evaluation process are modeled using
triangular fuzzy numbers.
Abstract: In this paper we will constructively prove the existence
of an equilibrium in a competitive economy with sequentially locally
non-constant excess demand functions. And we will show that the
existence of such an equilibrium in a competitive economy implies
Sperner-s lemma. We follow the Bishop style constructive mathematics.
Abstract: In this paper, we study the cooperative communications where multiple cognitive radio (CR) transmit-receive pairs competitive maximize their own throughputs. In CR networks, the influences of primary users and the spectrum availability are usually different among CR users. Due to the existence of multiple relay nodes and the different spectrum availability, each CR transmit-receive pair should not only select the relay node but also choose the appropriate channel. For this distributed problem, we propose a game theoretic framework to formulate this problem and we apply a regret-matching learning algorithm which is leading to correlated equilibrium. We further formulate a modified regret-matching learning algorithm which is fully distributed and only use the local information of each CR transmit-receive pair. This modified algorithm is more practical and suitable for the cooperative communications in CR network. Simulation results show the algorithm convergence and the modified learning algorithm can achieve comparable performance to the original regretmatching learning algorithm.
Abstract: The aim of the study was to investigate whether there
is the promotion of product ecodesign measures as a result of
adopting ISO 14001 certification in manufacturing companies in the
Republic of Slovenia. Companies gave the most of their product
development attention to waste and energy reduction during
manufacturing process and reduction of material consumption per
unit of product. Regarding the importance of different ecodesign
criteria reduction of material consumption per unit of product was
reported as the most important criterion. Less attention is paid to endof-
life issues considering recycling or packaging. Most
manufacturing enterprises considered ISO 14001 standard as a very
useful tool or at least a useful tool helping them to accelerate and
establish product ecodesign activities. Two most frequently
considered ecodesign drivers are increased competitive advantage
and legal requirements and two most important barriers are high
development costs and insufficient market demand.
Abstract: Cluster analysis is the name given to a diverse collection of techniques that can be used to classify objects (e.g. individuals, quadrats, species etc). While Kohonen's Self-Organizing Feature Map (SOFM) or Self-Organizing Map (SOM) networks have been successfully applied as a classification tool to various problem domains, including speech recognition, image data compression, image or character recognition, robot control and medical diagnosis, its potential as a robust substitute for clustering analysis remains relatively unresearched. SOM networks combine competitive learning with dimensionality reduction by smoothing the clusters with respect to an a priori grid and provide a powerful tool for data visualization. In this paper, SOM is used for creating a toroidal mapping of two-dimensional lattice to perform cluster analysis on results of a chemical analysis of wines produced in the same region in Italy but derived from three different cultivators, referred to as the “wine recognition data" located in the University of California-Irvine database. The results are encouraging and it is believed that SOM would make an appealing and powerful decision-support system tool for clustering tasks and for data visualization.
Abstract: Competitive relationships among Bradyrhizobium
japonicum USDA serogroup 123, 122 and 138 were screened versus
the standard commercial soybean variety Williams and two
introductions P1 377578 "671" in a field trial. Displacement of strain
123 by an effective strain should improved N2 fixation. Root nodules
were collected and strain occupancy percentage was determined
using strain specific fluorescent antibodies technique. As anticipated
the strain USDA 123 dominated 92% of nodules due to the high
affinity between the host and the symbiont. This dominance was
consistent and not changed materially either by inoculation practice
or by introducing new strainan. The interrelationship between the
genotype Williams and serogroup 122 & 138 was found very weak
although the cell density of the strain in the rhizosphere area was
equal. On the other hand, the nodule occupancy of genotypes 671 and
166 with rhizobia serogroup 123 was almost diminished to zero. .
The data further exhibited that the genotypes P1 671 and P1 166 have
high affinity to colonize with strains 122 and 138 whereas Williams
was highly promiscuous to strain 123.