scholarly journals Efficiency Analysis of Project Management Offices for Large-scale Information System Projects: Insights for Construction Megaprojects

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 34-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joong-Hoon Ko ◽  
Sung-Hun Park ◽  
Dae-Cheol Kim

In this study, the efficiencies of Project Management Offices (PMOs) in large-scale information system (IS) projects are addressed by using data envelopment analysis. Moreover, the potential improvement levels for each input and output factors of inefficient PMOs are examined. The effects of performance levels of PMO functions on project outcomes with respect to efficiency levels are also analyzed. A total of forty-nine PMOs are analyzed for this study. The result shows that twenty-four PMOs are found to be efficient. As a result of analyzing the impact of efficiency on project performance depending on the functional levels of PMOs, those groups with a high degree of efficiency show higher outcomes compared with the groups with a low degree of efficiency regardless of the functional levels of PMOs. Furthermore, the gap in outcome between the groups with a high degree of efficiency and the groups with a low degree of efficiency is maintained at almost the same level, regardless of the functional levels of PMOs, with the exception of the case of practice management. This indicates that even those groups with a low degree of efficiency could expect high outcomes in terms of schedule and cost compliance if their level of practice management is high.

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 626-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizaveta Sivak ◽  
Maria Yudkevich

This paper studies the dynamics of key characteristics of the academic profession in Russia based on the analysis of university faculty in the two largest cities in Russia – Moscow and St Petersburg. We use data on Russian university faculty from two large-scale comparative studies of the academic profession (‘The Carnegie Study’ carried out in 1992 in 14 countries, including Russia, and ‘The Changing Academic Profession Study’, 2007–2012, with 19 participating countries and which Russia joined in 2012) to look at how faculty’s characteristics and attitudes toward different aspects of their academic life changed over 20 years (1992–2011) such as faculty’s views on reasons to leave or to stay at a university, on university’s management and the role of faculty in decision making. Using the example of universities in the two largest Russian cities, we demonstrate that the high degree of overall centralization of governance in Russian universities barely changed in 20 years. Our paper provides comparisons of teaching/research preferences and views on statements concerning personal strain associated with work, academic career perspectives, etc., not only in Russian universities between the years 1992 and 2012, but also in Russia and other ‘Changing Academic Profession’ countries.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 631-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adela Soliz

This study is the first large-scale examination of the impact of for-profit colleges on the enrollment and outcomes of students at other postsecondary institutions. Using data primarily from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and a differences-in-differences approach, I estimate the effect of a new for-profit college opening on community college enrollments and degree completions, as well as county education levels. My results suggest that community college enrollments and degree completions do not decline when a new degree-granting for-profit college opens nearby. Furthermore, I find evidence that the county-level production of short- and long-term certificates increases after a new for-profit college opens, though the number of associate’s degrees does not increase. This evidence should serve to broaden conversations about the role of for-profit colleges in the larger landscape of the American higher education system.


Galaxies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
George Heald ◽  
Sui Mao ◽  
Valentina Vacca ◽  
Takuya Akahori ◽  
Ancor Damas-Segovia ◽  
...  

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will answer fundamental questions about the origin, evolution, properties, and influence of magnetic fields throughout the Universe. Magnetic fields can illuminate and influence phenomena as diverse as star formation, galactic dynamics, fast radio bursts, active galactic nuclei, large-scale structure, and dark matter annihilation. Preparations for the SKA are swiftly continuing worldwide, and the community is making tremendous observational progress in the field of cosmic magnetism using data from a powerful international suite of SKA pathfinder and precursor telescopes. In this contribution, we revisit community plans for magnetism research using the SKA, in light of these recent rapid developments. We focus in particular on the impact that new radio telescope instrumentation is generating, thus advancing our understanding of key SKA magnetism science areas, as well as the new techniques that are required for processing and interpreting the data. We discuss these recent developments in the context of the ultimate scientific goals for the SKA era.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 695-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Morency-Laflamme ◽  
Theodore McLauchlin

Abstract Does ethnic stacking in the armed forces help prevent military defection? Recent research, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, suggests so; by favoring in-groups, regimes can keep in-group soldiers loyal. In-group loyalty comes at the cost of antagonizing members of out-groups, but many regimes gladly run that risk. In this research note, we provide the first large-scale evidence on the impact of ethnic stacking on the incidence of military defection during uprisings from below, using data on fifty-seven popular uprisings in Africa since formal independence. We find clear evidence for the downside: ethnic stacking is associated with more frequent defection if out-group members are still dominant in the armed forces. We find more limited support for the hypothesized payoff. Ethnic stacking may reduce the risk of defection, but only in regimes without a recent history of coup attempts. Future research should therefore trace the solidification of ethnic stacking over time.


Author(s):  
Jia-Lang Seng

This chapter describes a data warehouse planning project to develop a large-scale management information system for a Taiwan government agency in managing a nationwide multi-billion science and technology project management and control process. The planning and consulting period lasted through the time period of 1997 and 1998. The outsourcing and implementation tasks are expected to continue through 2000. In this chapter, we present the framework and model of the data warehouses developed by the committee during the planning and consulting stage. Our focus is on the data design and module design for a multi-dimensional database system. The data design aims to provide an integral model for the internal and external data sources. A core view of the multi-dimensional database is developed. The module design attempts to give an analytic model of the field, division, project, and agent performance along the dimension hierarchies. Actual versus budget and actual versus forecast analysis along with the time series analysis and ad hoc analysis are supported in the systems.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (12) ◽  
pp. 2837-2850 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Mannucci ◽  
C. O. Ao ◽  
X. Pi ◽  
B. A. Iijima

Abstract. We study the impact of large-scale ionospheric structure on the accuracy of radio occultation (RO) retrievals. We use a climatological model of the ionosphere as well as an ionospheric data assimilation model to compare quiet and geomagnetically disturbed conditions. The presence of ionospheric electron density gradients during disturbed conditions increases the physical separation of the two GPS frequencies as the GPS signal traverses the ionosphere and atmosphere. We analyze this effect in detail using ray-tracing and a full geophysical retrieval system. During quiet conditions, our results are similar to previously published studies. The impact of a major ionospheric storm is analyzed using data from the 30 October 2003 "Halloween" superstorm period. At 40 km altitude, the refractivity bias under disturbed conditions is approximately three times larger than quiet time. These results suggest the need for ionospheric monitoring as part of an RO-based climate observation strategy. We find that even during quiet conditions, the magnitude of retrieval bias depends critically on assumed ionospheric electron density structure, which may explain variations in previously published bias estimates that use a variety of assumptions regarding large scale ionospheric structure. We quantify the impact of spacecraft orbit altitude on the magnitude of bending angle and retrieval error. Satellites in higher altitude orbits (700+ km) tend to have lower residual biases due to the tendency of the residual bending to cancel between the top and bottomside ionosphere. Another factor affecting accuracy is the commonly-used assumption that refractive index is unity at the receiver. We conclude with remarks on the implications of this study for long-term climate monitoring using RO.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
Mahfuza Khatun

This paper examines the impact of education on the age earnings profiles of self-employed Bangladeshi men, using data from a survey carried out by the first author in 2010. Its results strongly support the perception that educational attainment and on-the-job experience are strongly complementary rather than mutually substitutable in increasing the likelihood of achieving a high income level. Yet the high degree of earnings heterogeneity among well-educated respondents in the sample also indicates that academic excellence is a catalyst but not a guarantor for entrepreneurial success, and that levels of education that are formally equivalent may nevertheless have very different implications for the likelihood of prosperity in business.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wei-Shan Hu ◽  
Yen-Hsien Lee ◽  
Ying-Chuang Chen

This investigation studies the impact of mutual fund herding on the returns achieved by contrarian strategy from 1990 to 2015 in the Chinese stock market. The relationship between the profit gained by the contrarian strategy and the macroeconomic environment is also examined. First, the returns of the contrarian strategy in China’s stock market are found to be significant. Second, most loser stocks with a high degree of mutual fund herding outperform loser stocks with a low degree of mutual fund herding, revealing that the profitability of an investment portfolio depends on the degree of mutual fund herding. Third, investors should buy loser stocks with a high degree of herding and sell winner stocks with a low degree of herding during a two-year formation period, over which zero-cost contrarian strategies yield the significantly highest return. Finally, the payoff of contrarian strategies is positively related to the herding effect and negatively related to macroeconomic variables.


Author(s):  
Nguyen Van Tan

This paper examines the impact of equitization on financial and operating performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Vietnam. Previous related privatization theories have not explained whether there is an improvement in financial and operating performance of equitized SOEs compared to non-equitized SOEs or not. This study proposes to use with-without comparison method through the average treatment effect measuring the impact of equitization on financial and operating performance of SOEs. By using data of 114 SOEs equitized in the period from 2012 to 2014, the author finds that equitized SOEs can not improve profitability, operating efficiency, and output when considering non-equitized SOEs. There is also no evidence for a reduction in the number of employees of equitized SOEs after equitization. These findings are in contrast to previous studies in Vietnam, but there are similarities with the results of studies in China. This is because equitized SOEs in the early post-equitization period in Vietnam are still monitored by the Vietnamese government, as well as the equitized enterprises in the period 2012-2014 are mainly large-scale ones with slow change of operating objectives, monitoring mechanism and weak competitiveness after equitization. However, equitization can help equitized SOEs operate more efficiently than non–equitized SOEs when considering non-listing status or industry group. This research provides implications for the Vietnamese government to encourage non-equitized enterprises to participate in the equitization program actively. The research results also help investors to have appropriate long-term investment strategies in equitized SOEs. This paper also has some limitations for further research.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 2525-2565 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Mannucci ◽  
C. O. Ao ◽  
X. Pi ◽  
B. A. Iijima

Abstract. We study the impact of large-scale ionospheric structure on the accuracy of radio occultation (RO) retrievals of atmospheric parameters such as refractivity and temperature. We use a climatological model of the ionosphere as well as an ionospheric data assimilation model to compare quiet and geomagnetically disturbed conditions. The largest contributor to ionospheric bias is physical separation of the two GPS frequencies as the GPS signal traverses the ionosphere and atmosphere. We analyze this effect in detail using ray-tracing and a full geophysical retrieval system. During quiet conditions, our results are similar to previously published studies. The impact of a major ionospheric storm is analyzed using data from the 30 October 2003 "Halloween" superstorm period. The temperature retrieval bias under disturbed conditions varies from 1 K to 2 K between 20 and 32 km altitude, compared to 0.2–0.3 K during quiet conditions. These results suggest the need for ionospheric monitoring as part of an RO-based climate observation strategy. We find that even during quiet conditions, the magnitude of retrieval bias depends critically on ionospheric conditions, which may explain variations in previously published bias estimates that use a variety of assumptions regarding large scale ionospheric structure. We quantify the impact of spacecraft orbit altitude on the magnitude of bending angle error. Satellites in higher altitude orbits (≧700 km) tend to have lower biases due to the tendency of the residual bending to cancel between the top and bottomside ionosphere. We conclude with remarks on the implications of this study for long-term climate monitoring using RO.


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