Search results for "competition"
showing 10 items of 1409 documents
Dialogue in the Dark: Shedding Light on the Development of Social Enterprises in China
2015
International audience; The application of for-profit business practices to nonprofit organizations, social enterprises are a way for nonprofit organizations to find funding in a time of rising costs, falling donations, and increased competition from for-profit businesses in the social sector. Although well established in the mature economies of the West, these enterprises are a novelty in the emerging economies of Asia and in the transitional economies of the former communist world. The experiences of Dialogue in the Dark, a social enterprise concerned with the problems associated with blindness, highlight the unique challenges that social enterprises face in China and offer lessons for en…
Conflicting vocational identities and careers in the sector of tourism
2004
This article investigates the formation of vocational identities of workers in the sector of tourism in the Czech Republic, Greece and Spain. Major challenges and conflicts shape the sector of tourism as a particular labour space. Emerging issues relate to the need for diversifying the offer of services to face seasonality, strategies of entrepreneurial merging and demands for mobility and flexibility of the workforce. For the individual worker, a complex combination of related factors lead to tensions and contradictions, particularly in terms of changes in work organization, flexibility and how vocational identities of workers are shaped. An active policy for social dialogue and the improv…
Endogenous R&D Symmetry in Linear Duopoly with One-way Spillovers
2005
A duopoly model of cost reducing R&D-Cournot market competition is extended to encompass endogenous timing of R&D investments. Under the assumption that R&D spillovers are zero under simultaneous choices of R&D and only flow from the R&D leader to the follower under sequential choices, sequential and simultaneous play at the R&D stage are compared in order to assess the role of technological externalities in stimulating or attenuating endogenous firm asymmetry. The only timing structure of the R&D stage sustainable as subgame–perfect Nash equilibrium involves simultaneous play and thus zero spillovers.
Shaking the Status Quo: Business Accreditation and Positional Competition
2018
Modern business schools exist in a complex world of rankings, ratings, and credentials. Some argue that in increasingly competitive global higher education markets, signaling status and quality has actually become more important than having them (Gioia & Corley, 2002; Trank & Rynes, 2003). For many contemporary business schools, international accreditations have become key means and first steps in pursuing legitimacy and global status. In this essay, we elaborate in detail on a business school’s international accreditation process, including its motivations and outcomes. We conclude that while accreditation processes are, at best, fruitful quality improvement exercises, the inherent motivat…
Pool choice in a vertical landscape: Tadpole‐rearing site flexibility in phytotelm‐breeding frogs
2021
Abstract Many species of Neotropical frogs have evolved to deposit their tadpoles in small water bodies inside plant structures called phytotelmata. These pools are small enough to exclude large predators but have limited nutrients and high desiccation risk. Here, we explore phytotelm use by three common Neotropical species: Osteocephalus oophagus, an arboreal frog that periodically feeds eggs to its tadpoles; Dendrobates tinctorius, a tadpole‐transporting poison frog with cannibalistic tadpoles; and Allobates femoralis, a terrestrial tadpole‐transporting poison frog with omnivorous tadpoles. We found that D. tinctorius occupies pools across the chemical and vertical gradient, whereas A. fe…
School Teaching in Germany Between Tradition and Innovation: The Concept of the Outdoor School
2019
It is a well known fact that school is seen as having a spatial characteristic, being associated to indoor learning. The aim of this chapter is to underlined the idea that learning and educational processes can take place in different settings, and to offer other experiences that the traditional classroom with its specific conditions largely neglected. The dimensions of space, time, and body are re-evaluated from the perspective of outdoor education which faces children (and teachers) with new, sometimes challenging, and adventurous experiences that contrast with an everyday routine of school instruction.
Analyzing and organizing the sonic space of vocal imitations
2015
The sonic space that can be spanned with the voice is vast and complex and, therefore, it is difficult to organize and explore. In order to devise tools that facilitate sound design by vocal sketching we attempt at organizing a database of short excerpts of vocal imitations. By clustering the sound samples on a space whose dimensionality has been reduced to the two principal components, it is experimentally checked how meaningful the resulting clusters are for humans. Eventually, a representative of each cluster, chosen to be close to its centroid, may serve as a landmark in the exploration of the sound space, and vocal imitations may serve as proxies for synthetic sounds.
Hybridization selects for prime‐numbered life cycles in Magicicada: An individual‐based simulation model of a structured periodical cicada population
2020
Abstract We investigate competition between separate periodical cicada populations each possessing different life‐cycle lengths. We build an individual‐based model to simulate the cicada life cycle and allow random migrations to occur between patches inhabited by the different populations. We show that if hybridization between different cycle lengths produces offspring that have an intermediate life‐cycle length, then predation acts disproportionately to select against the hybrid offspring. This happens because they emerge in low densities without the safety‐in‐numbers provided by either parent population. Thus, prime‐numbered life cycles that can better avoid hybridization are favored. How…
Embryonic Ammonoid Shell Features: Intraspecific Variation Revisited
2001
Two samples of ammonoids belonging to the Oppeliidae, Sublunuloceras virguloidesHecticoceras (Brightii) canaliculatum, are analyzed to estimate the intraspecific variability of embryonic shell features. The study of embryonic shell characters reveals two main shapes of protoconch, flattened and round. Prosiphons may be straight or slightly curved. New parameters for area are added to the linear parameters commonly found in the literature. Prosiphon length and caecum area vary greatly whereas protoconch and ammonitella diameter vary only slightly, and the ammonitella angle is almost constant. The protoconch-to-ammonitella size ratio behaves differently in each species, suggesting different p…
Francia : ¿instrumentalización de la COVID-19 contra la igualdad escolar?
2021
La pandemia de COVID-19 ha puesto a prueba los sistemas educativos. Este artículo trata del caso francés, en el que tuvo lugar un confinamiento de dos meses, seguido de una reanudación muy parcial y selectiva del curso antes del verano, que no llegó a funcionar de nuevo realmente hasta septiembre, en condiciones sin precedentes. Muestra que lejos de ser un paréntesis excepcional, la crisis sanitaria fue utilizada por el gobierno para tratar de imponer cambios estructurales. Estas conclusiones se derivan de un análisis de las lógicas que estaban previamente en marcha en los proyectos de reforma de la enseñanza francesa, lo que permite distinguir entre las respuestas puntuales a una situación…