ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Organization Studies and the New Pragmatism: Positivism, Anti-Positivism, and the Search for Ethics
Authors: Andrew C. Wicks, R. Edward Freeman
Venue: Organization Science (1998)

The central claim of this paper is that organization studies needs to be fundamentally reshaped. Such change is needed to provideroom for ethics and to increase the relevance of research. We argue that the new pragmatism provides critical resources forthis change. Pragmatism is a particularly helpful tool to use in that it highlights the moral dimensions of organizing (is thisuseful for our purposes?) while at the same time avoiding entrenched epistemological distinctions that marginalize ethicsand make research less useful. The paper begins by discussing the relative absence of ethics within the mainstream of organization studies, indicates why this relative absence is problematic, and proceeds to show how pragmatism offers a preferable approach. Epistemology-specifically the debate between positivists and anti-positivists-becomes a central issue because the framework of positivism is overtly hostile to ethics (and other nonquantitative approaches to studying organizations), rendering it a marginal subject. While anti-positivism holds promise for overcoming this hostility towards ethics, it retains some of the destructive elements of positivism that create new and equally troubling difficulties. The paper claims, in contrast to the proposals of others (e.g., Zald's 1993 position) that the preferred alternative is not to split the difference, but to move beyond the positivism vs. antipositivism debate and work from an alternative framework. Pragmatism allows researchers to put this debate to the side and, in the process, develop research that is focused on serving human purposes-i.e., both morally rich and useful to organizations and the communities in which they operate.
Extending the working volume of projection-based mixed reality systems
Authors: R. C. Splechtna, A. L. Fuhrmann
Venue: Proceedings of the workshop on Virtual environments 2003 (2003)

The working volume of a Mixed Reality (MR) system - which superimposes the real environment with computer-generated virtual content - strongly depends upon the output/display device used. Single screen projection systems like the Barco Baron Table or the FakeSpace ImmersaDesk M seem rather limited regarding their working volume when compared with the CAVE, which is the only projection-based MR installation providing a wide range of viewing directions. We show how the working volume of such projection based MR systems can be extended by tracking not only the user, but also the projection screen and demonstrate how the tilting mechanism of a standard Barco Baron Table can be used to enlarge the range of usable viewing directions of the system. We also give a description of the complete calibration procedure and set-up necessary to employ this concept with any movable back projection system.
Simplifying Boolean constraint solving for random simulation-vector generation
Authors: Jun Yuan, Ken Albin, Adnan Aziz, Carl Pixley
Venue: Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE/ACM international conference on Computer-aided design (2002)

We present an algorithm for simplifying the solution of conjunctive Boolean constraints of state and input variables, in the context of constrained random vector generation using BDDs. The basis of our approach is extraction of "hold-constraints" from constraint system. Hold-constraints are deterministic and trivially resolvable; in addition, they can be used to simplify the original constraints as well as refine the conjunctive partition. Experiments demonstrate significant reduction in the time and space needed for constructing the conjunction BDDs, and the time spent in vector generation during simulation.
A Heuristic Algorithm for the Auto-Carrier Transportation Problem
Authors: R. Tadei, G. Perboli, F. Della Croce
Venue: Transportation Science (2002)

The delivery of vehicles to dealers is one of the major tasks in the vehicle production industry. It has relied on transportation companies that use special tractor-trailer trucks called auto-carriers. One of the main problems these companies have to solve is the optimal loading and routing of the auto-carriers, referred to as the Auto-Carrier Transportation (ACT) problem. In this paper we provide an integer programming formulation of the ACT problem and show that the problem isNP-hard in the strong sense. A three-step heuristic procedure stronglybased on the IP formulation, which considers loading, vehicle selection, and routing aspects, is proposed. An application to a real case studyof a vehicle transportation company located in northern Italyis given, with an average deviation lower than 3% from an upper bound on the optimal solution value.
Nortel Redefines Factory Information Technology: An Or-Driven Approach
Authors: Paul A. Brinkley, David Stepto, Kristopher R. Haag, John Folger, Kui Wang, Kuanlian Liou, W. David Carr
Venue: Interfaces (1998)

Nortel recruited a team of operations researchers and engineers to develop and implement an enterprise information system for Nortel's new PCS1900-cellular-equipment manufacturing operation. This system provides online access to quality, inventory, and cycle-time measurements, as well as linked analysis tools that provide real-time decision support. Production workers, managers, and engineers can access these tools through the Nortel intranet using Netscape. Inexpensive access to current factory information eliminated the costly delays formerly experienced gathering, analyzing, and transferring data. The OR specialists developed and implemented the network and decision-support system in less than one year. This marked a major shift from traditional shop-floor systems deployment within Nortel and within the industry in general and demonstrates an opportunity for OR to assume a leadership role in systems implementation in manufacturing operations.
Multi-relational data mining: a workshop report
Authors: Sašo Džeroski, Luc De Raedt
Venue: ACM SIGKDD Explorations Newsletter (2002)

In this report, we briefly review the Multi-Relational Data Mining workshop, which was held in Edmonton, Canada on July, 23, 2002 as part of the workshop program of the 8th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD-02).
Routing Through Virtual Paths in Layered Telecommunication Networks
Authors: Geir Dahl, Alexander Martin, Mechthild Stoer
Venue: Operations Research (1999)

We study a network configuration problem in telecommunications where one wants to set up paths in a capacitated network to accommodate given point-to-point traffic demand. The problem is formulated as an integer linear programming model where 0-1 variables represent different paths. An associated integral polytope is studied, and different classes of facets are described. These results are used in a cutting plane algorithm. Computational results for some realistic problems are reported.
Ramsey numbers involving large dense graphs and bipartite Turán numbers
Authors: Yusheng Li, Wenan Zang
Venue: Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B (2003)

We prove that for any fixed integer m ≥ 3 and constants δ < 0 and α ≥ 0, if F is a graph on m vertices and G is a graph on n vertices that contains at least (δ - o(1))n2/(log n)α edges as n → ∞, then there exists a constant c = c(m, δ)<0 such that r(F, G) ≥ (c - o(1)) (n/(log n)α+1)(e(F) - 1)/(m-2), where e(F) is the number of edges of F. We also show that for any fixed k ≥ m ≥ 2, r(Km,k, Kn) ≤ (k -1 + o(1)) (n/ log n)m as n → ∞. In addition, we establish the following result: For an m × k bipartite graph F with minimum degree s and for any ε < 0, if k < m/ε then ex(F;N) ≥ N2-1/ s-ε for all sufficiently large N. This partially proves a conjecture of Erdös and Simonovits.
Request Redirection Algorithms for Distributed Web Systems
Authors: Valeria Cardellini, Michele Colajanni, Philip S. Yu
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (2003)

Replication of information among multiple servers is necessary to support high request rates to popular Web sites. We consider systems that maintain one interface to the users, even if they consist of multiple nodes with visible IP addresses that are distributed among different networks. In these systems, the first-level dispatching is achieved through the Domain Name System (DNS) during the address lookup phase. Distributed Web systems can use some request redirection mechanism as a second-level dispatching because the DNS routing scheme has limited control on offered load. Redirection is always executed by the servers, but there are many alternatives that are worth of investigation. In this paper, we explore the combination of DNS dispatching with redirection schemes that use centralized or distributed control on the basis of global or local state information. In the fully distributed schemes, DNS dispatching is carried out by simple algorithms because load sharing are taken by some redirection mechanisms that each server activates autonomously. On the other hand, in fully centralized schemes, redirection is used as a tool to enforce the decisions taken by the same centralized entity that provides the first-level dispatching. We also investigate some hybrid strategies. We conclude that the distributed algorithms are preferable over the centralized counterpart because they provide stable performance, can take content-aware dispatching decisions, can limit the percentage of redirected requests and, last, but not least, their implementation is much simpler than that required by the centralized schemes.
Loss-bounded analysis for differentiated services
Authors: Alexander Kesselman, Yishay Mansour
Venue: Journal of Algorithms (2003)

We consider a network providing Differentiated Services (DiffServ) which allow network service providers to offer different levels of Quality of Service (QoS) to different traffic streams. We focus on loss and first show that only trivial bounds could be obtained by means of traditional competitive analysis. Then we introduce a new approach for estimating loss of an online policy called loss-bounded analysis. In loss-bounded analysis the loss of an online policy is bounded by the loss of an optimal offline policy plus a constant fraction of the benefit of the online policy. We relate the loss-bounded analysis to the throughput-competitive analysis. We derive tight upper and lower bounds for various settings of DiffServ parameters using the new loss-bounded model. We believe that loss-bounded analysis is an important technique that can complement traditional competitive analysis providing new insight and interesting results.
Proving the deterministic period breaking of linear congruential generators using two tile quasicrystals
Authors: Louis-Sébastien Guimond, Jiří Patera
Venue: Mathematics of Computation (2002)

We describe the design of a family of aperiodic PRNGs (APRNGs). We show how a one-dimensional two tile cut and project quasicrystal (2TQC) used in conjunction with LCGs in an APRNG generates an infinite aperiodic pseudorandom sequence. In the suggested design, any 2TQC corresponding to unitary quadratic Pisot number combined with either one or two different LCGs can be used.
Pseudo-additive measures and the independence of events
Authors: Didier Dubois, Endre Pap, Henri Prade
Venue: Technologies for constructing intelligent systems: Tasks (2002)

This paper is devoted to the investigation of independence (separability) of events with respect to a pseudo-additive measure that combine probabilistic and possibilistic behaviours via a threshold. It is based on a restricted family of t-conorm/ t-norm pairs which are very special ordinal sums. Any practically useful theory of pseudo-additive measures must use such special pairs of operations in order to conjointly extend the additivity property, and the notion of probabilistic independence.
Approximating Martingales for Variance Reduction in Markov Process Simulation
Authors: Shane G. Henderson, Peter W. Glynn
Venue: Mathematics of Operations Research (2002)

"Knowledge of either analytical or numerical approximations should enable more efficient simulation estimators to be constructed." This principle seems intuitively plausible and certainly attractive, yet no completely satisfactory general methodology has been developed to exploit it. The authors present a new approach for obtaining variance reduction in Markov process simulation that is applicable to a vast array of different performance measures. The approach relies on the construction of a martingale that is then used as an internal control variate.
The Effects of Mood on Individuals' Use of Structured Decision Protocols
Authors: Kimberly D. Elsbach, Pamela S. Barr
Venue: Organization Science (1999)

This paper begins to answer the call to broaden current theories of individual decision-making by including in them the effects of human mood. Grounding our arguments in psychological literature on the effects of mood on information processing, motivation, and decision heuristics, we develop hypotheses about how mood can significantly affect individuals' use of structured decision protocols. In support of our hypotheses, results from an experimental study of complex decision-making suggest that, in situations where a structured decision protocol is the usual method of decision-making, individuals in moderately negative moods are significantly more likely than those in moderately positive moods to: (1) carefully execute all the steps of a structured decision protocol, (2) execute the steps of a structured decision protocol in the correct order, and (3) rely on the outcome of the structured decision protocol as the primary basis for the decision. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for both organizational decision models and psychological models of mood and decision-making. In general, our findings help establish mood as an important variable in models of organizational decision-making and help shed light on often conflicting findings about the benefits of positive vs. negative mood for individual decision-making.
Existence and Uniqueness of Solutions of a Quasilinear Approximation of the 3D Navier&ndash;Stokes System
Authors: E. I. Dinaburg, Ya. G. Sinai
Venue: Problems of Information Transmission (2003)

For the quasilinear approximation of the 3D Navier&ndash;Stokes system proposed earlier by the authors in [1], some conditions of solution regularity are considered and the theorem on existence and uniqueness of the Cauchy problem for some class of initial data is proved.
Race conditions: a case study
Authors: Steve Carr, Jean Mayo, Ching-Kuang Shene
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2001)

Since detecting race conditions in a multithreaded or multiprocess program is an NP-complete problem, there is no efficient algorithm that can help detect race conditions in a program. As such, there are no easy-to-use pedagogical tools. Most operating systems and concurrent programming textbooks only provide a formal definition and some trivial examples. This is insufficient for students to learn how to detect race conditions. This paper attempts to fill this gap by presenting a set of well-organized examples, each of which contains one or more race conditions, for instructors to use in the classroom. This set of materials has been classroom tested for two years and the student's reaction has been very positive.
Database privacy: balancing confidentiality, integrity and availability
Authors: Martin S. Olivier
Venue: ACM SIGKDD Explorations Newsletter (2002)

The emphasis in database privacy should fall on a balance between confidentiality, integrity and availability of personal data, rather than on confidentiality alone. This balance should not necessarily be a trade-off, but should take into account the sensitive nature of the data being stored and attempt to increase all three dimensions to the highest level possible.To achieve such a balance, technological means should be developed.The paper illustrates some of the inherent problems in database privacy that should be addressed by technical solutions. It next demonstrates that the notion of privacy is complex; this complexity is likely to impede development of technical solutions.Finally, the paper finally uses the notion of informed consent to illustrate how the privacy problem can be viewed from multiple angles to flesh out the underlying problems that may be addressed by technical solutions.
Testing of Clustering
Authors: Noga Alon, Seannie Dar, Michal Parnas, Dana Ron
Venue: SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics (2003)

A set X of points in $\Re^d$ is (k,b)-clusterable if X can be partitioned into k subsets (clusters) so that the diameter (alternatively, the radius) of each cluster is at most b. We present algorithms that, by sampling from a set X, distinguish between the case that X is (k,b)-clusterable and the case that X is $\epsilon$-far from being (k,b')-clusterable for any given $0<\epsilon\leq 1$ and for $b' \geq b$. By $\epsilon$-far from being (k,b')-clusterable we mean that more than $\epsilon\cdot|X|$ points should be removed from X so that it becomes (k,b')-clusterable. We give algorithms for a variety of cost measures that use a sample of size independent of |X| and polynomial in k and $1/\epsilon$.Our algorithms can also be used to find approximately good clusterings. Namely, these are clusterings of all but an $\epsilon$-fraction of the points in X that have optimal (or close to optimal) cost. The benefit of our algorithms is that they construct an implicit representation of such clusterings in time independent of |X|. That is, without actually having to partition all points in X, the implicit representation can be used to answer queries concerning the cluster to which any given point belongs.
Oscillation of a class of second-order nonlinear ODE with impulses
Authors: Wu Xiu-li, Chen Si-Yang, Hong Ji
Venue: Applied Mathematics and Computation (2003)

In this paper, we investigate the oscillation of a class of second-order nonlinear ODE with impulses. Our results improve and generalize some known ones.
The Importance of Power-Tail Distributions for Modeling Queueing Systems
Authors: Michael Greiner, Manfred Jobmann, Lester Lipsky
Venue: Operations Research (1999)

Power-tail distributions are those for which the reliability function is of the form x-&#945; for large x. Although they look well behaved, they have the singular property that E(Xl) = infinity for all l &#8805; &#945;. Thus it is possible to have a distribution with an infinite variance, or even an infinite mean. As pathological as these distributions seem to be, they occur everywhere in nature, from the CPU time used by jobs on main-frame computers to sizes of files stored on discs, earthquakes, or even health insurance claims. Recently, traffic on the "electronic super highway" was revealed to be of this type, too. In this paper we first describe these distributions in detail and show their suitability to model self-similar behavior, e.g., of the traffic stated above. Then we show how these distributions can occur in computer system environments and develop a so-called truncated analytical model that in the limit is power-tail. We study and compare the effects on system performance of a GI/M/1 model both for the truncated and the limit case, and demonstrate the usefulness of these approaches particularly for Markov modeling with LAQT (Linear Algebraic Approach to Queueing Theory, Lipsky 1992) techniques.
Using Repertory Grids to Conduct Cross-Cultural Information Systems Research
Authors: M. Gordon Hunter, John E. Beck
Venue: Information Systems Research (2000)

As more business is being conducted internationally and corporations establishthemselves globally, the impact of cross-cultural aspects becomes an important research issue. The need to conduct cross-cultural research is perhaps even more important in the relatively newly emerging and quickly changing information systems (IS)field. This article presents issues relating to qualitative research, emic versus etic approaches, and describes a structured, yet flexible, qualitative research interviewing technique, which decreases the potential for bias on the part of the researcher. The grounded theory technique presented in this article is based on Kelly's Repertory Grid (RepGrid), which concentrates on "laddering," or the further elaboration of elicited constructs, to obtain detailed researchparticipant comments about an aspect within the domain of discourse. The technique provides structure to a "one-to-one "interview. But, at the same time, RepGrids allow sufficient flexibility for the research participants to be able to express their own interpretation about a particular topic. This article includes a brief outline of a series of research projects that employed the RepGrid technique to examine similarities and differences in the way in which "excellent" systems analysts are viewed in two different cultures. Also included is a discussion of the technique's applicability for qualitative researchin general and cross-cultural studies specifically. The article concludes by suggesting ways in which the RepGrid technique addresses some of the major methodological issues in cross-cultural research.
An Assurance Interval for the Non-Archimedean Epsilon in DEA Models
Authors: Saeid Mehrabian, Gholam R. Jahanshahloo, Mohammad R. Alirezaee, Gholam R. Amin
Venue: Operations Research (2000)

This paper clarifies the role of non-Archimedean infinitesimal e in DEA models so that the associated linear programs may be infeasible (for the multiplier side) and unbounded (for the envelopment side) for certain values of e. It is shown that the bound of e proposed by Ali and Seiford (1993) is invalid for feasibility and boundedness of the linear programs. A procedure is presented for determining an assurance interval of e. It is also shown that an assurance value for e can be found using a single linear program.
Referral Infomediaries
Authors: Yuxin Chen, Ganesh Iyer, V. Padmanabhan
Venue: Marketing Science (2002)

An interesting phenomenon has been the emergence of "infomediaries" in the form of Internet referral services in many markets. These services offer consumers the opportunity to get price quotes from enrolled brick-and-mortar retailers and direct consumer traffic to particular retailers who join them. This paper analyzes the effect of referral infomediaries on retail markets and examines the contractual arrangements that they should use in selling their services. We identify the conditions necessary for the infomediary to exist and explain how they would evolve with the growth of the Internet. The role of an infomediary as a price discrimination mechanism leads to lower online prices. Perhaps the most interesting result is that the referral infomediary can unravel (i.e., no retailer can get any net profit gain from joining) when its reach becomes too large. The analysis also shows why referral infomediaries would prefer to offer geographical exclusivity to joining retailers.
Alignment Between Business and IS Strategies: A Study of Prospectors, Analyzers, and Defenders
Authors: Rajiv Sabherwal, Yolande E. Chan
Venue: Information Systems Research (2001)

Alignment between business strategy and IS strategy is widely believed to improve business performance. This paper examines the impact of alignment on perceived business performance using Miles and Snow's popular classification of Defender, Analyzer, and Prospector business strategies. A priori theoretical profiles for these business strategies are developed using Venkatraman's (1989a) measure of business strategy. Theoretical profiles for IS strategies are developed in terms of four types of systems--operational support systems, market information systems, strategic decision-support systems, and interorganizational systems. Empirical data from two multirespondent surveys of 164 and 62 companies, respectively, are analyzed. Results indicate that alignment affects perceived business performance but only insome organizations. Alignment seems to influence overall business success in Prospectors and Analyzers but not in Defenders. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.