Profitability

This article presents a new format of tool path polynomial interpolation in 5-axis machining. The linear interpolation usually used produces tangency discontinuities along the tool path, sources of decelerations of the machine tool whereas polynomial interpolation reduces the appearance of such discontinuities. The new format involves a faster tool path and a better surface quality. However, it imposes a modification of the process so as to take the interpolation format and the inverse kinematics transformation (necessary to 5-axis machining) into account. This article deals with the geometrical problem of tool path calculation. Validation tests are detailed. They show that profits concern the reduction of machining time as well as the quality of the machined surfaces. Indeed, the trajectory continuity avoids the appearance of marks and facets. q

Semantic Web service discovery finds a match between service requirement and service advertisements based on the semantic description. The discovery mechanism does not consider quality and business offers of advertised Web services. In this paper, we propose ontology based Semantic Web service architecture for selection which recommends the best match for the requester. We design semantic broker which allows providers to advertise their services by creating OWLS service profile consisting of functional, quality and business offers. The broker computes and records information for matchmaking during service publishing to improve the performance. The broker reads requirements from the requester and finds the best (profitable) Web service by matching functionality, capability, quality and business offers.

E-commerce not only has tremendous potential for growth but also poses unique challenges for both incumbents and new entrants. By examining drivers of firm performance in e-commerce from a capabilities perspective, the authors conceptualize three firm capabilities that are critical for superior firm performance in e-commerce: information technology capability, strategic flexibility, and trust-building capability. The extent and nature of market orientation is conceptualized as a platform for leveraging e-commerce capabilities. The authors test the effects of e-commerce capabilities on performance (e.g., relative profits, sales, return on investment) using data from 122 e-brokerage service providers. The results indicate that information technology capability and strategic flexibility affect performance given the right market orientation.

We measure the economic value of information derived from macroeconomic variables and from technical trading rules for emerging markets currency investments. Our analysis is based on a sample of 21 emerging markets with a floating exchange rate regime over the period [1997][1998][1999][2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007] and explicitly accounts for trading restrictions on foreign capital movements by using nondeliverable forward data. We document that both types of information can be exploited to implement profitable trading strategies. In line with evidence from surveys of foreign exchange professionals concerning the use of fundamental and technical analysis, we find that combining the two types of information improves the risk-adjusted performance of the investment strategies.

Purpose -Utilizing data envelopment analysis (DEA), this paper seeks to examine the performance of 20 Indian B-Schools, separating their profitability and marketability. The technique allows one to identify those management institutions which are able to utilize their resources in a most efficient way such that the overall goals of the organization are satisfied and total outcome maximized. If a management institution means to be effective in developing professionals who are going to be competent leaders and managers, then it would be useful to know the performance of the management institutes. However, measuring the performance of management institutes has received very little attention compared with other industries because it is difficult to measure its output. Design/methodology/approach -A DEA model is used to evaluate the relative efficiency of a group of decision-making units (DMUs) in their use of multiple inputs to produce multiple outputs where the form of production is neither known nor specified as in the case of parametric approach. Findings -The paper ranks management institutes from various points of stakeholders. The main findings are how much of the benefit from ranking of the B-Schools is credited because of its efficiency in converting the inputs to outputs. Does the ranking of any institution depend on scale of operations (scale efficiency) or is it only based on technical efficiency? Technical efficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and/or usage of excessive amounts of inputs. Practical implications -As Indian management schools widely publicize job offers with six figure salaries, managerial value addition, national ranking etc. provide an important impression about the management institutions. However, the reported results of experiments on input and output measures do not seem to differ between the ten best run institutes and the next ten institutes in terms of scale efficiency. Originality/value -The paper is one of the few written from the Indian perspective.

Eco-park LCA metrics Environmental optimization Criteria air contaminants a b s t r a c t Environmental considerations are receiving an increased amount of attention in both the residential and industrial sectors. In order to achieve a reduction in emissions of harmful substances to the air, water and land to meet national targets, industrial chemical producers must explore new avenues to reduce the impact that they have on the environment.

The paper attempts to explain the historical reasons for the dominance of the prudence concept in financial accounting by tracing the history of its meaning up to the end of the nineteenth century. Prudent accounting represented the elaboration by the accounting profession of a distinctive competence@8ithe determination of distributable profit@8iwhich enabled it to appear as the ally and advisor of

Theory at both the micro and macro level predicts that investments in superior human capital generate better firm-level performance. However, human capital takes time and money to develop or acquire, which potentially offsets its positive benefits. Indeed, extant tests appear equivocal regarding its impact. To clarify what is known, we meta-analyzed effects drawn from 66 studies of the human capital-firm performance relationship and investigated 3 moderators suggested by resource-based theory. We found that human capital relates strongly to performance, especially when the human capital in question is not readily tradable in labor markets and when researchers use operational performance measures that are not subject to profit appropriation. Our results suggest that managers should invest in programs that increase and retain firm-specific human capital.

Article analyses the conditions under which resources can be sources of SCA”, with the internal accumulation of assets, capabilities, organizational processes, firm attributes, information, knowledge; controlled by a firm that enable to conceive and implement strategies that improve its efficiency and effectiveness.

Grape production and viticulture have great traditions in Hungary. Nowadays wine-making is only profitable if the end-product is quality wine. Good-quality wine can be produced from must which has the proper high sugar content. If there is an unfavorable vintage, it is necessary to enrich the must, to increase its sugar content and to eliminate its other defects. Grape juice is not only a sweetener; it can be used for other purposes too because the juice of the grape is a pleasant, fashionable soft drink as well. However, the must storage can cause some difficulties, as fermentation starts easily. The aim of the investigations was to use osmotic distillation and membrane distillation after the microfiltration and reverse osmosis concentration [1] for water removal from grape juice in order to reach a high sugar content, to the extent that makes it possible to preserve the grape juice without cooling.

Although the stakeholder framework proposes the multidimensionality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) , previous research has yet to investigate the relationship between certain dimensions of CSR and corporate financial performance (CFP) in tourism-related industries. The purpose of this study was to disaggregate CSR into five dimensions based on corporate voluntary activities for five primary stakeholder issues: (1) employee relations, (2) product quality, (3) community relations, (4) environmental issues, and (5) diversity issues, and examine how each dimension would affect financial performance among firms within four tourism-related industries (airline, casino, hotel, and restaurant). While all CSR dimensions were proposed to have positive financial effects, results revealed that each dimension had a differential effect on both short-term and future profitability and that such financial impacts varied across the four industries. The findings can provide tourism managers with insights into which dimensions of CSR activities would improve their companies' financial performance.

This paper considers features underlying conservation-effective agricultural systems' impacts, because they can explain present successes, suggest guidelines for future initiatives, and indicate criteria for judging their effectiveness. Once farmers have made the transition in awareness, thinking and practice of Conservation Agriculture (CA), positive benefits which attract farmers include savings in time, labour, energy and expenditure, with increased productivity and profit

The purpose of this paper is to explore various motivations of Merger and Acquisitions in the Indian banking sector. This includes the various aspects of banking Industry's Merger and Acquisitions. It also compares pre and post merger financial performance of merged banks with the help of financial parameters like Gross-Profit Margin, Net-Profit Margin, Operating Profit Margin, Return on Capital Employed (ROCE), Return on Equity (ROE) and Debt-Equity Ratio. Through literature review it comes to know that most of the work done high lightened the impact of Merger and Acquisitions on different aspects of the companies. The data of Merger and Acquisitions since economic liberalization are collected for a set of various financial parameters. This study also examines the changes occurring in the acquiring firms on the basis of financial ground and also the overall impact of Merger and acquisitions (M&As) on acquiring banks. The Researcher used independent t-test for testing the statistical significance and this test is applied not only for the ratio analysis but also to test the effect of Merger and Acquisitions on the performance of banks. This performance is being tested on the basis of two grounds i.e. Pre merger and Post merger. The result of the study indicates that the banks have been positively affected by the event of Merger and acquisitions (M&As). These results suggest that merged banks can obtain efficiency and gains through Merger and Acquisitions (M&As) and passes the benefits to the equity share holders' in the form of dividend.

This article analyzes the relationship between the usage of Internet-based technologies, different types of innovation, and performance at the firm level. Data for the empirical investigation originates from a sample of 7,302 European enterprises. The empirical results show that Internet-based technologies were an important enabler of innovation in the year 2003. It was found that all studied types of innovation, including Internet-enabled and non-Internet-enabled product or process innovations, are positively associated with turnover and employment growth.

This paper sets out some findings of a research project carried out in private unaided schools in low-income areas of Hyderabad, India. The part of the research project documented here was designed to examine the question: ‘Is the regulatory regime conducive to entrepreneurial action and market discovery’ with particular reference to the low-income schools in Hyderabad. This paper is narrowly focused, setting out the results of pattern matching empirical data with the Austrian economic concepts of entrepreneurship, rivalry, and market discovery. The research discovered that two regulatory regimes exist, one that is set out ‘on paper’ in the Education Acts and associated rules, and another that operates ‘in practice’. That is, there is a combination of regulations ‘on paper’ and regulations existing in an ‘extra-legal’ sector. Generally it was found that the regulations ‘in practice’ are consistent with market principles. Conversely the regulations set out ‘on paper’ are not conducive to entrepreneurial innovation and market discovery. Recommendations for potential policy initiatives include the possibility of legitimising the ‘extra-legal’ sector by introducing self-regulation possibly via self-evaluation systems for the private unaided schools.

Toxicities of new chemistries viz. fipronil, chlorfenapyr, indoxacarb, spinosad, abamectin and emamectin benzoate, having novel modes of action, were evaluated using an IRAC leaf-dip method against Pakistani field populations of Helicoverpa armigera, which were highly resistant to conventional chemistries. Whereas the majority of populations exhibited susceptibility close to the baselines, there were, nevertheless, signs of resistance development to the new chemistries as demonstrated by a low level of tolerance in many populations. This may be due to a cross-resistance from the resistance mechanisms, particularly metabolic, already selected against older chemistries. If used judiciously and in rotation, the new chemistries can restore the profitability of crop production by counteracting and preventing insecticide resistance in H. armigera and other pests in the future.

Policy decisions at the organizational, corporate, and governmental levels should be more heavily influenced by issues related to well-being—people’s evaluations and feelings about their lives. Domestic policy currently focuses heavily on economic outcomes, although economic indicators omit, and even mislead about, much of what society values. We show that economic indicators have many shortcomings, and that measures of well-being point

The legislative modifications, both in accounting/book-keeping and fiscal manner, influenced the leasing which is known in our country as a modern financing technique for investments, beeing thus an alternative of economical entities financing. Starting from the rules imposed to nobanking financial institutions which evolve the credit activity through leasing, related to organization and their operation, in this work i will try to do a parallel between the topic registration accounting system and the system used before the 1 st january 2006, both to lodger and to owner, by studing the influence made on the balance sheet situations and the account of profit and loss, pointing also the taxing dificulties appeared same time with Romania adherence to European Union, related to profit taxation, value added tax, and the local duties, to the entities level which achieve leasing operations or acquire fixed assets in leasing conditions.

Increased litter sizes and associated piglet performance consequences, challenge swine producers. Stochastic modeling captured bioeconomic performance of individual piglets. As average litter size increased from 8.8 to 20.8 piglets, costs and revenues per head marketed from the demonstration herd decreased and total profit increased at a decreasing rate.

Fruit thinning has been practised for thousand of years, and serves a number of purposes. Too many fruits per tree can result in small fruit size and poor quality, breakage of limbs, exhaustion of tree reserves, and can also partially o completely inhibit bud initiation. Hand thinning of the peaches is the most common thinning practice adopted, but it is

Joint capture of multiple species by multiple fleets results in technical and economic interactions between fleets. This paper develops a bioeconomic model that incorporates interrelationships between fleets for a representative fishery in India. The study analyzes the impacts of overcapitalization on bio-economic sustainability. Results show that a continuation of the current fishing intensity would deplete most commercially important species in the near future. However, an optimal effort reallocation between fleets would increase fishery profits substantially, although some species would remain unsustainable. The study demonstrates how the newly emerging, large bodies of fishery data can be used for management decisions in developing countries.

A disequilibrium model of endogenous innovation and growth is presented. The behaviour of the agents is supposed to be governed by routines, not by maximization. The entrepreneurs are assumed to invest a fraction of their operating profits in real capital accumulation, and another fraction in R&D. The latter leads to an increase in labour productivity via a R&D production function. In this 'Schumpeterian' model, not only the R&D processes of innovations are considered, but the diffusion processes as well. As in Schumpeter's theory of economic development the economic impact of technical change is considered a disequilibrium phenomenon. Thus, in a capitalist economy characterized by ongoing diffusion processes of innovations, time averages are more important than steady state values even in a long run perspective.

Fair valuation is becoming a major concern for actuaries, especially in the per- spective of IAS norms. One of the key aspects in this context is the simulta- neous analysis of assets and liabilities in any sound actuarial valuation. The aim of this paper is to illustrate these concepts, by comparing three common ways of giving bonus in life insurance with profit: reversionary, cash or terminal. For each participation scheme, we compute the fair value of the contract taking into account liability parameters (guaranteed interest rate and participation level) as well as asset parameters (market conditions and investment strategy). We find some equilibrium conditions between all those coefficients and com- pare, from an analytical and numerical point of view, the systems of bonus. Developments are made first in the classical binomial model and then extended in a Black and Scholes economy.

Mobility is now the central focus of the lives of European citizens in business, education, and leisure. This will be enriched by pervasiveness in the future. The Daidalos vision is to seamlessly integrate heterogeneous network technologies that allow network operators and service providers to offer new and profitable services, giving users access to a wide range of pervasive, personalised voice, data, and multimedia services. This paper discusses the security issues that need to be addressed to make Daidalos a real viable solution for future pervasive mobility. Issues include among others privacy & identity management, secure protocols, distributed key management, security in ad hoc networks.

The pharmaceutical industry has produced many drugs that have benefited man. Political frameworks designed to govern the industry must maintain these benefits. However, regulation needs to be sufficiently robust to protect public health from drugs that are unsafe, ineffective, or unnecessary. The extent of industry influence over drug regulation, at the expense of other interested parties, suggests that the current system could be more robust. The many ways in which the pharmaceutical industry can influence governments and regulatory agencies are discussed, and methods by which this influence can be curbed are suggested.

We study manager-employee interactions in experiments set in a corporate environment where payoffs depend on employees coordinating at high effort levels; the underlying game being played repeatedly by employees is a weak-link game. In the absence of managerial intervention subjects invariably slip into coordination failure. To overcome a history of coordination failure, managers have two instruments at their disposal, increasing employees' financial incentives to coordinate and communication with employees. We find that communication is a more effective tool than incentive changes for leading organizations out of performance traps. Examining the content of managers' communication, the most effective messages specifically request a high effort, point out the mutual benefits of high effort, and imply that employees are being paid well.

A b s t r a c t The research investigates the performance of Islamic banking in Global economic recession period in Compare with Conventional Banking from the period of September 2008b to December 2009 in Pakistan. Data were collected from four leading Islamic banks and Four Conventional banks from the period of Sept.2008 to December 2009 operated in Pakistan.

The biggest producers and exporters of agricultural products have been adopting the genetic engineering in order to improve the factors productivity and the firms profits In the last decade, the United States of America (US) and the European Union (EU) have established a high divergent regulation on production, distribution and consumption of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Apparently, the EU´s complex legislative framework related to GMOs was intend to satisfy the European consumers which are concerned about food safety and whish to make more informed choice about the food they eat. The aim of this paper is to understand the potential motivations behind the different policies on GM products adopted by US and EU.

The Internet is growing to the point of needing more serious, scalable management infrastructure. Telecommunications companies and Internet Service Providers alike face the pressures of upgrading and provisioning their networks while constraining their infrastructure costs to maintain profitability and to stay competitive in an industry that is financially stressed with tight profit margins. In order to be financially successful in this environment, service providers will have to support a variety of services and applications on a combined packet infrastructure, carrying increased varieties of traffic with different performance characteristics and predictable levels of managed Quality of Service (QoS). Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) traffic engineering enables service providers to engineer their networks to provide such QoS; however, this task brings along with it a plethora of management challenges. This paper discusses these management challenges and our experience with the design and implementation of a policy-based management system, PECAN, for managing MPLS networks. PECAN provides the ability for a network operator to define high-level policies that control the operation of the management system. These high-level policies control admission of traffic into the network based on the QoS guarantees required; placement of traffic flows on MPLS traffic engineered paths; and the feedback loop between network fault/performance monitoring and reconfiguration of the network to alleviate the effects of any observed problems.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) systems are one of the most pervasive computing technologies with technical potential and profitable opportunities in a diverse area of applications. Among their advantages is included their low cost and their broad applicability. However, they also present a number of inherent vulnerabilities. This paper develops a structural methodology for risks that RFID networks face by developing a classification of RFID attacks, presenting their important features, and discussing possible countermeasures. The goal of the paper is to categorize the existing weaknesses of RFID communication so that a better understanding of RFID attacks can be achieved and subsequently more efficient and effective algorithms, techniques and procedures to combat these attacks may be developed.

Effort to decrease cost of production is a mainly step to improve profitability at the farm. Hidden cost, specifically, days open cost as a huge part of operation cost in dairy herd is one of important task of the managers. The aim of this study investigate of days open cost to identify, assess and control it. Pregnancy rate, culling rate,

The liberalization of electricity markets has forced energy producing companies and traders to calculate costs closer to the profit frontier. Thus, an efficient risk management and risk controlling are needed to ensure the financial survival even during bad times. Using the RAROC methodology we provide a new framework to quantify risks related to wholesale electricity contracts, also called full load contracts. We do not only consider risk of market price fluctuations but also correlation effects between the spot market price and the load curve of a customer. We further conduct an empirical study on whole sale contracts for industry customers and public utility companies of a German energy provider. Our findings support the adequateness of the approach and point out the importance of considering also price-volume correlation effects for electricity whole sale contracts.

For enterprises which are growing, developing products or facing tough competition, cash flow is often a limiting factor which determines their success or failure. This article is based on action research in a small enterprise with liquidity shortage whose sales grew at a rate of 20% while R&D amounted to 15% and profits to 8% of turnover. From the investigation it appeared that the most important managing~financial activity consisted of weekly cash flow planning with frequent feedback. Discrepancies between estimates and outcomes suggested what action was to be taken. Some benefits of continuous liquidity planning include better knowledge of revenue and expenses, better total quality, greater personnel involvement, better liquidi~', smaller inventory, better earning capacity, and so forth. In the article a model for continuous liquidity planning is presented, based on the study's findings.

FREE TRADE is one of the most cherished goals of American economists. The the-ory of comparative advantage, taught in every introductory economics course, is regarded as a triumph of scientific reason and a compel-ling argument to reduce legal barriers to in-ternational trade. ...

Rising costs, falling ore grades and a stagnant gold price are steadily eroding the economic viability of gold mining in South Africa. This paper explores the major economic dynamics behind the profit squeeze. The empirical analysis highlights the negative effect of the low gold prices-a development which more than drowned out the positive impact of increased labor productivity. Attention is also paid to the hemorraging of labor from the industry as well as to recent profit-sharing agreements with the National Union of Mineworkers. The paper concludes by arguing that world goal market conditions are not conducive to any sustained gold price increase in the near future. * I would like to thank Courtney Jung and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft. The research was funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) Canada, and by the University of Cape Town. Final revision accepted

Decoherence may significantly affect the polarization state of optical pulses propagating in dispersive media because of the unavoidable presence of more than a single frequency in the envelope of the pulse. Here we report on the suppression of polarization decoherence in a ring cavity obtained by properly retooling for photonic qubits the "bang-bang" protection technique already employed for nuclear spins and nuclear-quadrupole qubits. Our results show that bang-bang control can be profitably extended to quantum information processes involving flying polarization qubits.

This research aims to determine the influence of Capital Adequacy ratio, Bopo, Loan To Deposits ratio, and Net profit Margin on profit growth in banking companies from the 2014-2018 period. This Research conducted by the kind of data is used for secondary financial report banking companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2014-2018. The population in this research is a company bank's samples from 22 banks through purposive sampling. The analytical techniques used are multiple linear regression, multicollinearity test, autocorrelation test, heteroscedasticity test, F-test, T-test, and determination test. The F test results of the research concluded that all independent variables of CAR, BOPO, LDR, and NPM were simultaneously affecting profit growth. The T-test results of this research show only BOPO variables that affect on profit growth, while CAR, LDR, and NPM have no effect on profit growth.

Stomach contents from tiger sharks, Galeocerdo cuvier, caught on lines off the central coast of Western Australia were analysed to investigate variations in the diet due to sex, size and geographic location. Stomachs from 84 specimens contained food, while 26 had empty stomachs and 66 had regurgitated. Twelve prey groups were identified, the most common being turtles, sea snakes, teleost fishes, dugongs and sea birds. Dietary overlap was high between males and females. An ontogenetic shift was observed in the diet. Smaller prey (e.g. cephalopods, teleosts and sea snakes) were more common in small individuals, while the occurrence of larger prey (e.g. turtles, dugongs and elasmobranchs) increased with increasing shark size. Differences in the diet were observed between four regions along the central Western Australian coast. The ability to catch and consume large prey, prey availability, prey density, and prey profitability were identified as factors influencing the diet. The high level of occurrence of dugongs and turtles in the diet of G. cuvier, relative to their abundance, suggests that shark predation may play an important role in regulating populations of these species.

Many basic economic theories with perfectly functioning markets do not predict the existence of the vast number of microenterprises readily observed across the world. We put forward a model that illuminates why financial and managerial capital constraints may impede experimentation, and thus limit learning about the profitability of alternative firm sizes. The model shows how lack of information about one's own type, but willingness to experiment to learn one's type, may lead to short-run negative expected returns to investments on average, with some outliers succeeding. To test the model we put forward first a motivating experiment from Ghana, and second a small meta-analysis of other experiments. In the Ghana experiment, we provide inputs to microenterprises, specifically financial capital (a cash grant) and managerial capital (consulting services), to catalyze adoption of investments and practices aimed towards enterprise growth. We find that entrepreneurs invest the cash, and take the advice, but both lead to lower profits on average. In the long run, they revert back to their prior scale of operations. The small meta analysis includes results from 18 other experiments in which either capital or managerial capital were relaxed, and find mixed support for this theory.