Suchergebnisse

Major original equipment manufacturers (OEM) in the international automotive industry require their first‐tier suppliers to obtain QS‐9000 registration. One of the requirements included in the registration criteria is to have a process in place to evaluate all suppliers or subcontractors. Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI) Automotive Systems Group, a major first‐tier supplier, chose to request QS‐9000 registration of their suppliers (second‐tier). QS‐9000 does not require Tier‐1 suppliers to mandate that their suppliers (second‐tier) obtain registration. Since quality registration indicates that a quality system is in place, does it ensure that the operational measures of quality parts per million (PPM) or delivery performance are optimized? Do the organizational variables associated with QS‐9000 registration directly impact achieving it? For this study, a survey of JCI North American QS‐9000‐registered second‐tier suppliers was conducted to gather information about selected organizational variables, perceived performance outcome and results, and actual quality PPM and delivery performance. This study looks at the relationships between organizational variables and performance outcome and results.

Serbia is said to have one of the highest rates of brain drain in the world. For the generation glossed as the "children of the 1990s," stances toward mobility and migration have shifted along with geopolitics. Following nearly two decades of wartime entrapment, in 2009 the conditions of possibility for mobility fundamentally changed for Serbian citizens. Of both symbolic and material consequence, the country's return to respectable geopolitical standing also marked a shift toward more nuanced stancetaking in relation to mobility and migration. Namely, by the time of my research, the expectations of youth—not only of "normal mobility" but of "normalcy" more generally—had become more and more often calibrated against personal experiences of real-life travel. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Belgrade, Serbia from October 2014–December 2015, this dissertation tracks some of the consequences of this shift for young potential migrants in Serbia. I explore how the problem of skilled migration is constituted, the discourses produced, and the practices prompted. I analyze the mobility narratives of young potential migrants as proxies for commentary on a host of other socioeconomic issues. My focus is on the real and symbolic geographies invoked in talk of leaving and staying in Serbia; on how young potential migrants narrate their everyday navigations in the "here and now" and give moral weight to migratory aspirations for, and experiences of, lives lived in the "then and there." I argue that the foundational motif of these varied imaginaries is a deep investment in meritocracy--a value-laden register called upon to articulate aspiration as well as critique. Engaging the politics of mobility holistically, I also excavate what it means to stay in a context so many others leave. I explore the growth of social entrepreneurship and the digital economy as recent efforts to coax dignified work from an inhospitable climate of precarity (and as key to governmental "solutions" to brain drain). I untangle how entrepreneurialism is promoted as a project of reforming values while also serving as a realm of authenticity and "apolitical activism" for some. Training attention on work in the digital economy I illuminate how economic subjectivities are cultivated in complex relation to place and belonging in ways that muddy the dichotomy between staying and leaving. Finally, I show how both promoters of entrepreneurship and Serbia's digital transformation harness the dominant discourse on brain drain to cast themselves as certain social types and legitimize their agendas. This dissertation demonstrates how contemporary stances toward mobility and migration articulate aspirations to dignify the conditions of life and work, are implicated in a reconfiguration of middle-classness, and reveal how postsocialist subjects understand themselves and construct life projects in the context of ongoing political and socioeconomic change.

AbstractThe risk behavior of financially distressed companies is studied using the shifting regimes regression model originally suggested by Brown, Durbin, and Evans. In addition, the presence of nonsynchronous trading is detected and the regression model is adjusted accordingly using Dimson's technique. The results reveal that the behavior of systematic risk as firms approach bankruptcy depends to some degree on appropriate identification of periods over which beta is constant and adjusting for nonsynchronous trading. The results also lend support to the importance of skewness and to some extent beta but not unsystematic risk in explaining the security returns of firms approaching bankruptcy. Finally, the behavior of equity risk is examined according to the outcome of the bankruptcy filing.

Despite newer media technologies alleviating barriers of entry for marginalized groups, media still fails to address White supremacy at large. The live-streaming service Twitch banned one of its top streamers Hasan Piker in December 2021 for using the word "cracker" during a stream. Despite the myriad of complaints from women, people of color, LGBT +, and people with physical disabilities about targeted harassment they received on the platform, Twitch has taken little to no action on to ban those attacks. Utilizing critical whiteness and white framing theory, this study reviewed the discourse of Twitch influencers, who created YouTube reaction videos about the ban. All three of the influencers used rhetoric that sustained White supremacy like downplaying the impact of systemic racism, victimizing White men, and calling for freedom of hate speech. The implications of this study outline how the policing of hate speech can facilitate White supremacy on platforms.

In the present research a theoretical model of corporate divestitures is developed in which the wealth effects for divesting firms shareholders is examined for the case in which the acquirer is an incumbent management team and for the case when the acquirer is an outside buyer. Using an asymmetric information framework in which management enjoys specific utility from continued control of the operations, the model demonstrates that shareholders of the divesting firm should earn higher expected returns when the unit is sold to an incumbent management team rather than to an outside buyer. The subsequent empirical analysis reveals that this is in fact the case. While the announcement day ARs are statistically significant and positive for divestitures to both incumbent management teams and outside buyers, they are significantly larger when the buyer of the unit is the former. A similar and stronger results are observed for the 6 day period (t=-5 through 0) CARs. The policy implications of the theoretical model and empirical results reported above is that the divesting firms shareholders are not harmed, but receive higher returns when the units are purchased by an incumbent management team. Moreover, legislation to prevent or deter MBOs is not in the best interest of shareholders.

Purpose
– Healthcare facilities are entering an era of increased oversight and heightened expectations concerning both reduced costs and measureable quality. The US Affordable Care Act requires healthcare organizations to collect certain metrics, including patient assessments of quality, in order to monitor and improve the quality of healthcare. These metrics are used as a basis for graduated insurance reimbursements, and are available to consumers as an aid in selecting healthcare providers and insurance plans. The purpose of this paper is to provide healthcare providers with the analytic capabilities to better understand quality of care from the patient's point of view.


Design/methodology/approach
– This research examines patient satisfaction data from a multi-specialty Medical Practice Group, and uses regression analysis and paired comparisons to provide insight into patient perceptions of care quality.


Findings
– Results show that variables related to Access, Moving Through the Visit, Nurse/Assistant, Care Provider and Personal Issues significantly impact overall assessments of care quality. In addition, while gender and type of care provider do not appear to have an impact on overall patient satisfaction, significant differences do exist based on age group, specialty of the physician and clinic type.


Originality/value
– This study differs from most academic research as it focusses on medical practices, rather than hospitals, and includes multiple clinic types, medical specialties and physician types in the analysis. The study demonstrates how analytics and patient perceptions of quality can inform policy decisions.