Concept of Education Management: Positioning-Differentiation-Brand (PDB) for the Advancement of Islamic Education (Study at SMK Muhammadiyah 7 Gondanglegi, Malang)

Educational progress is produced by a strategic and quality process. To produce educational progress, the concept of educational management is needed with the Positioning-Differentiation-Brand strategy. This study aims to formulate a theoretical model: 1) positioning strategy developed by SMK Muhammadiyah 7 Gondanglegi to improve school competitiveness 2) differentiation strategy by SMK Muhammadiyah 7 Gondanglegi so as to strengthen the attractiveness of new students 3) branding strategy at SMK Muhammadiyah 7 Gondanglegi to make it known easier and become the hope of society 4) management strategy and reconstruction of Positioning-Differentiation-Brand (PDB) SMK Muhammadiyah 7 Gondanglegi so as to achieve the success of graduates being accepted by the industry and achieving school progress. This study uses a qualitative phenomenological approach in order to give birth to a phenomenological model formulation. Data collection techniques used: 1) direct observation, 2) documentation study, and 3) in-depth interviews. Data analysis using data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The validity and reliability of the research results are measured by four criteria: 1) Credibility, 2) Transfermability, 3) Dependability, and 4) Confirmability.The results of this study indicate: 1) positioning strategy: on the customer (customer); on internal capabilities and strengths (company); over competitors (competitors); on changes (change); be a power of differentiation (clarity); compete for the products owned (consistency); have high credibility (credibility), and have superior products (competitiveness). 2) differentiation strategy: unique and different performance and design (product differentiation); friendly service with speed and convenience (service differentiation); capabilities in distribution channels (channel differentiation); Reliable Human Resources (HR) (people differentiation); courage to act (progressive differentiation); Iduka curriculum is always updated (content), industrial cooperation (context), and technology with other facilities (infrastructure: inabler) 3) branding strategy; innovative (core identity); open (extended identity); public trust (value proposition). 4) Positioning-Differentiation-Brand (PDB) management and reconstruction.Keywords: Education Management, Positioning-Differentiation-Brand (PDB), Educational Progress. The findings of this study are the reconstruction of the education management concept model with the Positioning-Differentiation-Brand (PDB) strategy for the advancement of Islamic education.

Effect of service differentiation on QoS in IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access: a simulation approach

The enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) protocol is a supplement to IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC), ratified by IEEE 802.11e task group to support quality of service (QoS) requirements of both data and real-time applications. Previous research show that it supports priority scheme for multimedia traffic but strict QoS is not guaranteed. This can be attributed to inappropriate tuning of the medium access parameters. Thus, an in-depth analysis of the EDCA protocol and ways of tuning medium access parameters to improve QoS requirements for multimedia traffic is presented in this work. An EDCA model was developed and simulated using MATLAB to assess the effect of differentiating contention window (CW) and arbitration inter-frame space (AIFS) of different traffic on QoS parameters. The optimal performance, delay, and maximum sustainable throughput for each traffic type were computed under saturation load. Insight shows that traffic with higher priority values acquired most of the available channels and starved traffic with lower priority values. The AIFS has more influence on the QoS of EDCA protocol. It was also observed that small CW values generate higher packet drops and collision rate probability. Thus, EDCA protocol provides mechanism for service differentiation which strongly depends on channel access parameters: CW sizes and AIFS.

On Designing a Socially Optimal Expedited Service and Its Impact on Individual Welfare

Problem definition: We consider the problem faced by a welfare-maximizing service provider who must make a decision on how to split a fixed quantity of resources between two variants of the service: a standard variant and an expedited variant. The service is mandatory, but customers can choose between the two variants. Choosing the expedited variant requires enrollment that incurs a fixed cost per period. Customers are strategic and have the same cost of waiting but are heterogeneous in the rate at which they use the service. Academic/practical relevance: The option of expedited security at U.S. airports (TSA PreCheck) is an instance where this problem arises. As has been the case with the PreCheck program, providers that offer expedited service may face criticism from customers, with the main concern being that the diversion of resources to expedited services increases wait time for regular customers. This has important policy implications for the provider, especially a government organization such as the TSA. Existing literature has focused on service differentiation as a means to maximize profit or overall social welfare, but its effect on individual customers has received little attention. Methodology: We find customer’s equilibrium decisions for any allocation choice made by the provider. Using the equilibrium result, we solve for the allocation choice that maximizes social welfare. Results: Even when customers behave strategically, an expedited service offered in parallel to a standard service cannot only increase overall welfare, but also do so for each customer individually. We also find that in a scenario where some customers lose out because of the expedited service, improving the efficiency of the expedited service is more effective than decreasing the enrollment cost to help those who are worse off. Managerial implications: The gains from offering expedited service do not have to come at the expense of regular customers. When they do, we provide recommendations for which decision levers are most effective at making the system fair.

Mergers by family firms and managerial delegation: a Cournot model and empirical evidence from Spain

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse a key research hypothesis: Do firms ruled by managers have a greater rationale to implement a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) than (family) firms managed by their owners? Design/methodology/approach This paper uses an organizational-delegation-quantity oligopoly game to examine the profitability of M&As for firms that strategically delegate production decisions to managers versus family firms with no strategic delegation. This paper delimits the condition for delegation as aimed at increasing merger profitability: non-family CEOs will implement mergers more frequently than family CEOs and more so for inefficient firms because these require fewer synergies. The paper tests the main propositions with data on all M&As by small and medium firms in Spain in 2017 and 2018. Findings The greater the average operating margin of a firm, the more likely a merger, which is also more likely between non-family firms. The evidence of higher ex post synergies by firms is not statistically significant due to large variability, suggesting that some family firms did not obtain the expected ex ante synergies. The lesson is that family firms competing in an environment of high marginal costs (e.g. industries in the early stage of the life cycle) seeking to grow through inorganic means such as M&As have an incentive to professionalize management. Research limitations/implications This paper models competition in a Cournot fashion, representative of industries where firms compete in terms of sales growth and increased market share. Other results might hold in industries where firms are oriented to price competition or to service differentiation. The empirical research uses proxies for key variables such as the form of firm governance and unit costs, while hypotheses on ex ante synergies driving merger decisions had to be tested through ex post synergies. Originality/value M&As by small firms and family firms remain largely unexplored in the literature. This paper contributes with both a theoretical model and empirical research that highlight the implications of strategic delegation contracts for M&A deals.

New Mobility Model for Mobile and Geographic Cross-layer Architecture for Mobile IoT Networks

In this article, we propose a new mobility model, for a mobile and geographic cross-layer architecture. This cross-layer architecture allows service differentiation between real-time and best-effort traffic, for a mobile internet of things ( IoT ) network. We present a mathematical model, which works on the parameters of the MAC layer and the network layer. The mathematical model makes it possible to calculate the throughput between a source object and a destination object (gateway), under conditions of stable queues. We use the positional (geographic) information in the mathematical model of the proposed cross-layer architecture, to study the impact of mobility on the performance of the proposed mathematical model. The proposed mobility model defines two time intervals, the first interval for communication (transmission and reception of data without mobility at the same time), and the second time interval for the mobility of objects of the IoT network (without communication at the same time). The results show that the calculated throughput depends on the position of the objects, as well as the probability of transmission. Finally, we study the effect of distance and speed on the performance of the proposed cross-layer architecture.