Managing Indefinite Boundaries: The Strategy and Structure of a Chinese Business Firm

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (01) ◽  
pp. 57-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall W. Meyer ◽  
Xiaohui Lu

This paper examines the status of boundaries in organizational theory. Tacitly if not explicitly, most researchers view organizations as bounded, tightly coupled and more or less rational systems. Yet organizations may also be open, loosely coupled, hierarchically nested systems whose boundaries are indefinite. In the case of China, incomplete separation of firms from the state, incomplete integration of firms and partial listing of assets have left most Chinese firms with indefinite boundaries. While many Chinese firms are disadvantaged by indefinite boundaries, some have managed their boundaries advantageously. The Chinese group corporation described here has resisted interference from its state owners, one of whom tried but failed to turn it into a captive supplier. It has secured full operational and financial control of subsidiaries despite their independent legal status, fractional local government ownership, and local government representation on their boards. And it has successfully funded and executed an aggressive acquisition strategy and now dominates its industry globally. There are lessons specific to the Chinese context. The most important is that boundaries should be assumed indefinite unless shown otherwise. And there are lessons about firms in emerging economies. Indefinite boundaries are characteristic of such firms; indefinite boundaries pose either threats or opportunities depending on the strategic response; lastly managing indefinite boundaries will be a key strategic priority and a precondition of finding and exploiting market opportunities.

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mbuzeni Mathenjwa

The history of local government in South Africa dates back to a time during the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. With regard to the status of local government, the Union of South Africa Act placed local government under the jurisdiction of the provinces. The status of local government was not changed by the formation of the Republic of South Africa in 1961 because local government was placed under the further jurisdiction of the provinces. Local government was enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa arguably for the first time in 1993. Under the interim Constitution local government was rendered autonomous and empowered to regulate its affairs. Local government was further enshrined in the final Constitution of 1996, which commenced on 4 February 1997. The Constitution refers to local government together with the national and provincial governments as spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated. This article discusses the autonomy of local government under the 1996 Constitution. This it does by analysing case law on the evolution of the status of local government. The discussion on the powers and functions of local government explains the scheme by which government powers are allocated, where the 1996 Constitution distributes powers to the different spheres of government. Finally, a conclusion is drawn on the legal status of local government within the new constitutional dispensation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
Mbuzeni Mathenjwa

The place and role of local government within the structure of government in Africa has attracted much public interest. Prior to and after independence, African countries used local government as the administrative units of central governments without their having any legal status, to the extent that local authorities were under the strict control of central governments. The autonomy of local government is pivotal in the democratisation of a country. The United Nations, European Union and African Union have adopted treaties to promote the recognition and protection of local government in the state parties’ constitutions. Accordingly, this article explains the status of local government in Africa and its impact on strengthening democracy in African states.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
О. В. Батанов ◽  
В. В. Кравченко

In the article, taking into account foreign experience of development of modern systems of municipal management and practice application of the provisions of new legislation on decentralization highlights the conceptual problems of reforming local government and territorial organization of power in modern Ukraine. Describes the char-acteristics of the legal status of the territorial community as the primary subject of the municipal authorities in Ukraine and foreign countries. Analyzed the current state of the legal status of the territorial community, the basic of the modern constitutional project initiatives in part on local self-government in Ukraine from the position of the principles of classical muncipalism. We separately consider the possible risks with the possibility of introduction in Ukraine of Institute of the prefects and new mechanism of control over activity of local governments, draws attention to the shortcomings of legal support of process of formation of territorial basis of local government - the creation of local com-munities who owned the resource base necessary to ensure compliance with the tasks and powers transferred to local government during the decentralization. Proposed separateproposals to prevent possible conflicts of laws and organizational conflicts that can arise in the application of the provisions of the law of Ukraine «On Association of territorial communities».


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (01) ◽  
pp. 1650010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Nicklas ◽  
Thomas Schwarz ◽  
Bernhard Mitschang

On-the-fly data integration, i.e. at query time, happens mostly in tightly coupled, homogeneous environments where the partitioning of the data can be controlled or is known in advance. During the process of data fusion, the information is homogenized and data inconsistencies are hidden from the application. Beyond this, we propose in this paper the Nexus metadata model and a processing approach that support on-the-fly data integration in a loosely coupled federation of autonomous data providers, thereby advancing the status quo in terms of flexibility and expressive power. It is able to represent data and schema inconsistencies like multi-valued attributes and multi-typed objects. In an open environment, this best suites the application needs where the data processing infrastructure is not able to decide which attribute value is correct. The Nexus metadata model provides the foundation for integration schemata that are specific to a given application domain. The corresponding processing model provides four complementary query semantics in order to account for the subtleties of multi-valued and missing attributes. In this paper we show that this query semantics is sound, easy to implement, and it builds upon existing query processing techniques. Thus the Nexus metadata model provides a unique level of flexibility for on-the-fly data integration.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
Li’izza Diana Manzil

One sign of the rapidly growing world of medical science is its success in making one discovery about Deoxrybo Nucleid Acid (DNA). Islam does not prohibit the practice of DNA identification because it can be used in determining the legal status of relative relationships and related marital prohibitions among families because of the similarity of DNA genes between parents and their children. In Islam marriage prohibition can also occur between brothers and sisters. DNA identification can be done between siblings as a result of the presence of gene elements in breast milk. In addition, breast milk can also develop bone and grow meat if breastfeeding at least five times suction. But the results of DNA tests conducted between siblings cannot be more accurate if done to find relationships of parents and children. From this it clearly proves that Islamic medicine has an urgent value to Islamic law. This can be seen from one of its axiology in determining the status of brotherhood.


2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Anna Trembecka

Abstract Amendment to the Act on special rules of preparation and implementation of investment in public roads resulted in an accelerated mode of acquisition of land for the development of roads. The decision to authorize the execution of road investment issued on its basis has several effects, i.e. determines the location of a road, approves surveying division, approves construction design and also results in acquisition of a real property by virtue of law by the State Treasury or local government unit, among others. The conducted study revealed that over 3 years, in this mode, the city of Krakow has acquired 31 hectares of land intended for the implementation of road investments. Compensation is determined in separate proceedings based on an appraisal study estimating property value, often at a distant time after the loss of land by the owner. One reason for the lengthy compensation proceedings is challenging the proposed amount of compensation, unregulated legal status of the property as well as imprecise legislation. It is important to properly develop geodetic and legal documentation which accompanies the application for issuance of the decision and is also used in compensation proceedings.


The author analyzes the legal status of the organizers of artistic creation, enshrined in the Russian legislation de lege lata, and develops the legal status of the organizer of scientific activities de lege ferenda. It is proposed to consider the organizer of scientific activity as only the head of the temporary scientific team, the purpose of which is to solve a specific scientific problem. A set of elements of the legal structure is formulated, which may be fixed in a normative manner in order to ensure uniformity of legal regulation of the activities of temporary research teams. The status of the organizer of scientific activity is determined on the base of his organizational efforts to guide the creative activities of the team (a distinction is made between the creative and organizational contribution of the head of the scientific team to the overall result). Various options for modeling the legal status of the organizer of scientific activities are discussed: inclusion of the organizer among the co-authors the scientific results obtained by the team; inclusion of the organizer among the co-authors in case if he / she has a creative idea (topic) of academic search; granting the organizer related intellectual rights to the entire result obtained by the team. It is presumed that the organizer of scientific activity is the author of the idea of scientific search for solving the task set for the temporary team. It is concluded that the organizer of scientific activity (the head of the temporary scientific team) must be endowed with related intellectual rights: 1) the exclusive right to use the scientific result obtained by the team as a whole, and 2) the personal non-property right to indicate his name in any use of this result. The author substantiates the content, non-turnover and special validity period of the exclusive right of the organizer of scientific activity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 26-34
Author(s):  
E. V. Gerasenko ◽  

Employees of the federal courts' apparatus, in accordance with the current regulations, are public civil servants. In practice and in existing scientific research there is an approach to determining the legal status of this category of public servants through their duties, without specifying the specific requirements for candidates for the position to be filled. The purpose of this study is to define additional qualification requirements to be imposed on the applicant for the position of State Civil Service «Court Secretary» in court, in addition to those contained in the Federal Law «On State Civil Service of the Russian Federation» and orders of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The tasks of this work are to study the theoretical foundations of the concept of «status of a State civil servant », to compare federal legislation, decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, decisions and other acts of ministries and departments in the field of the State civil service in the apparatus of federal courts; Justification for the need to include in the status of a public servant serving in the court apparatus additional requirements for the level of education. The methodological basis of the present study was the general scientific methods such as analogy, derivation, system analysis, as well as the private scientific methods: formal-logical, technical-legal and comparativelegal in their various combinations. The study concluded that it was necessary to distinguish the status of federal court staff according to the level of education required to replace a public civil service post, in particular the «Registrar of the Court».


Author(s):  
Ирина Викторовна Евстафьева

В статье исследуются вопросы попечительства в отношении несовершеннолетних, отбывающих наказание в виде лишения свободы. Проблема, поднимаемая автором настоящей статьи, многогранна, касается различных аспектов отбывания наказания несовершеннолетними в воспитательных колониях и требует комплексного исследования, способного ответить на определенно значимый вопрос: является ли колония законным представителем находящихся в ней несовершеннолетних со всеми вытекающими из статуса законных представителей последствиями. При этом необходимо обращать внимание на специфику правового статуса лиц, отбывающих наказание в воспитательных колониях, которые, во-первых, являются несовершеннолетними, то есть не обладают дееспособностью в полном объеме и нуждаются в особой заботе, защите и представительстве, а во-вторых, осуждены за совершение тяжкого или особо тяжкого преступления, влекущего изоляцию от общества и определенные ограничения и лишения. Отечественное законодательство достаточно детально регламентирует особенности режима отбывания наказания в виде лишения свободы несовершеннолетними, не определяя при этом статуса воспитательных колоний, кем они являются: воспитателями, попечителями или исключительно учреждениями исполнения наказаний. Между тем правильное понимание значения и роли воспитательной колонии в жизни находящихся в ней несовершеннолетних преступников, по мнению автора, поможет избежать ряда проблем, объективно складывающихся в учреждениях подобного рода. С этой точки зрения предлагаемая тема представляет интерес не только для ученых-теоретиков, но и для практиков - сотрудников соответствующих учреждений. Особо следует подчеркнуть, что исследований по данной тематике в специальной литературе нет. Отдельные исследования, встречающиеся в современной литературе, касаются исключительно общего гражданско-правового статуса несовершеннолетних осужденных. Однако это обстоятельство может свидетельствовать только о новизне данной темы, но никак не об отсутствии самой проблемы. The article analyzes the issues of the status of educational colonies as guardians of minors serving a sentence of imprisonment. In fact, the problem raised by the author of this article is multifaceted, concerns various aspects of the serving of punishment by minors in educational colonies and requires a comprehensive study that can answer, it seems, a definitely significant question: whether the colony is the legal representative of the minors in it with all the consequences arising from the status of legal representatives in the form of duties and responsibilities. At the same time, it seems, it is necessary to pay attention to the specifics of the legal status of citizens serving sentences in educational colonies, who, firstly, are minors, i.e. do not have full legal capacity and need special care, protection and representation, and, secondly, are convicted of committing a serious or particularly serious crime, entailing isolation from society and certain restrictions and deprivation. Domestic legislation regulates in sufficient detail the peculiarities of the regime of serving sentences in the form of deprivation of liberty by minors, without determining the status of educational colonies. Who are they: educators, Trustees or only institutions of execution of punishments. Meanwhile, the correct understanding of the importance and role of the educational colony in the life of juvenile offenders in it, according to the author, will help to avoid a number of problems that objectively develop in institutions of this kind. From this point of view, the proposed topic is of interest not only for theoretical scientists, but for practitioners-employees of relevant institutions. It should be emphasized that there are no studies on this subject in the special literature. However, this circumstance can testify only about novelty of the given subject, but in any way about absence of the problem. It seems that the relevance and importance of a problem is not always measured by the number of studies devoted to it. Sometimes these its traits are manifest only under particularly careful consideration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Blesson Varghese ◽  
Nan Wang ◽  
David Bermbach ◽  
Cheol-Ho Hong ◽  
Eyal De Lara ◽  
...  

Edge computing is the next Internet frontier that will leverage computing resources located near users, sensors, and data stores to provide more responsive services. Therefore, it is envisioned that a large-scale, geographically dispersed, and resource-rich distributed system will emerge and play a key role in the future Internet. However, given the loosely coupled nature of such complex systems, their operational conditions are expected to change significantly over time. In this context, the performance characteristics of such systems will need to be captured rapidly, which is referred to as performance benchmarking, for application deployment, resource orchestration, and adaptive decision-making. Edge performance benchmarking is a nascent research avenue that has started gaining momentum over the past five years. This article first reviews articles published over the past three decades to trace the history of performance benchmarking from tightly coupled to loosely coupled systems. It then systematically classifies previous research to identify the system under test, techniques analyzed, and benchmark runtime in edge performance benchmarking.


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