When too many are not enough: Human resource slack and performance at the Dutch East India Company (1700–1795)

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (11) ◽  
pp. 1293-1315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stoyan V Sgourev ◽  
Wim van Lent
Keyword(s):  
Human Resource ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Operational Reliability ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
Performance Effects ◽  
Resource Slack ◽  
And Performance

Slack is an elusive concept in organizational research, with studies documenting a variety of relationships between slack and firm performance. We advocate treating slack not as a resource, but as a practice – a sequence of events and responses over time. A longitudinal analysis of the Dutch East India Company (1700–1795) highlights the use of slack as a response to a resource constraint (the shortage of skilled labor). After documenting the negative performance effects of skill shortage, we identify a trade-off in the use of human resource slack (number of sailors above what is operationally required), in which slack enhanced operational reliability, but reduced efficiency. Derived from a historical context, this trade-off has contemporary relevance and is helpful in reconciling contradictory evidence on slack.

Learning Against the Wind: Diversity and Performance on the Ships of the Dutch East India Company

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 330-347
Author(s):  
Filippo Carlo Wezel ◽  
Martin Ruef
Keyword(s):  
East India Company ◽  
Work Practices ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Diverse Workforce ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Data Tracking ◽  
The Individual

Learning is of paramount importance to organizations, often hinging on the accumulation of experience among workers. The returns from experience, however, are far from certain in large groups, marked by complex interdependencies and composed of a demographically diverse workforce. How do organizations manage to learn and improve their performance under these conditions? We claim that the standardization of work practices and procedures provides two key advantages. First, it magnifies the positive returns that a unit reaps from the experience of its workers. Second, standardization anchors the accumulated experience of workers to organizational routines that transcend the individual units in which they have worked. Increasing experience eases coordination among workers and attenuates the negative effects of diversity on a unit’s performance. We test these arguments using data tracking the composition of ship crews in the Dutch East India Company, an organization that witnessed significant efforts at standardizing work practices and procedures in the face of increasing national diversity. We find preliminary support for our hypotheses from analyses of the time to completion of 2,200 voyages to Asia during the period between 1700 and 1796.

A famine in Surat in 1631 and Dodos on Mauritius: a long lost manuscript rediscovered

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Winters ◽  
J. P. Hume ◽  
M. Leenstra
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into

In 1887 Dutch archivist A. J. Servaas van Rooijen published a transcript of a hand-written copy of an anonymous missive or letter, dated 1631, about a horrific famine and epidemic in Surat, India, and also an important description of the fauna of Mauritius. The missive may have been written by a lawyer acting on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It not only gives details about the famine, but also provides a unique insight into the status of endemic and introduced Mauritius species, at a time when the island was mostly uninhabited and used only as a replenishment station by visiting ships. Reports from this period are very rare. Unfortunately, Servaas van Rooijen failed to mention the location of the missive, so its whereabouts remained unknown; as a result, it has only been available as a secondary source. Our recent rediscovery of the original hand-written copy provides details about the events that took place in Surat and Mauritius in 1631–1632. A full English translation of the missive is appended.

Rancangan Sistem Pengukuran Kinerja Berbasis Human Resource Scorecard Pada Universitas Muhammadiyah Luwuk

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
Nurhaeda Abbas ◽  
Anggraini Sukmawati ◽  
Muhammad Syamsun
Keyword(s):  
Performance Measurement ◽  
Human Resource ◽  
Performance Measurement System ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Strategic Objectives ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Right ◽  
Hierarchy Process ◽  
The Relationship

Today the performance measurement of Muhammadiyah Luwuk uUniversity’s performance has not formulated yet based on University’s vision and mission. It will affect the strategic steps needed and performance improvement efforts in the future.  Human resource scorecard is the right system to be applied in Muhammadiyah Luwuk University. The purpose of this study is to designed a performance measurement system at Muhammadiyah Luwuk University using the Human Resource Scorecard with four perspectives: stakeholder, academic management and kemuhammadiyaan, operational and innovation, as well as and learning. Data was analyzed by analytical hierarchy process method. This research was conducted by distributing questionnaires, focus group discussions and in-depth interview with stakeholders at Muhammadiyah Luwuk University. The results showed that there were 14 strategic objectives and 33 key performance indicators to be achieved by the priority objectives, which are: empowerment and development of faculty, increased administrative process quality, improved sound budget performance and, improvement of the relationship with stakeholders.

Inventing the English Massacre

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Games
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
English Language ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Violent Event ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
British Culture

This book explains how a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese co-conspirators who allegedly plotted against the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean in 1623 produced a diplomatic crisis in Europe and became known for four centuries in British culture as the Amboyna Massacre. The story of the transformation of this conspiracy into a massacre is a story of Anglo-Dutch relations in the seventeenth century and of a new word in the English language, massacre. The English East India Company drew on this new word to craft an enduring story of cruelty, violence, and ingratitude. Printed works—both pamphlets and images—were central to the East India Company’s creation of the massacre and to the story’s tenacity over four centuries as the texts and images were reproduced during conflicts with the Dutch and internal political disputes in England. By the eighteenth century, the story emerged as a familiar and shared cultural touchstone. By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna Massacre became the linchpin of the British Empire, an event that historians argued well into the twentieth century had changed the course of history and explained why the British had a stronghold in India. The broad familiarity with the incident and the Amboyna Massacre’s position as an early and formative violent event turned the episode into the first English massacre. It shaped the meaning of subsequent acts of violence, and placed intimacy, treachery, and cruelty at the center of massacres in ways that endure to the present day.

scholarly journals GRAM

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Nhut-Minh Ho ◽  
Himeshi De silva ◽  
Weng-Fai Wong
Keyword(s):  
Performance Improvement ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Accuracy Requirement ◽  
Output Error ◽  
Fine Grain ◽  
Mixed Precision ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Effective Use

This article presents GRAM (<underline>G</underline>PU-based <underline>R</underline>untime <underline>A</underline>daption for <underline>M</underline>ixed-precision) a framework for the effective use of mixed precision arithmetic for CUDA programs. Our method provides a fine-grain tradeoff between output error and performance. It can create many variants that satisfy different accuracy requirements by assigning different groups of threads to different precision levels adaptively at runtime . To widen the range of applications that can benefit from its approximation, GRAM comes with an optional half-precision approximate math library. Using GRAM, we can trade off precision for any performance improvement of up to 540%, depending on the application and accuracy requirement.

Selecting packaging material for dry food products by trade‐off of sustainability and performance: A case study on cookies and milk powder

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 303-318
Author(s):  
Maarten Baele ◽  
An Vermeulen ◽  
Dimitri Adons ◽  
Roos Peeters ◽  
Angelique Vandemoortele ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Milk Powder ◽  
Food Products ◽  
Packaging Material ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Dry Food ◽  
And Performance
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