Foreign direct investment has a strong impact on the level of employment and its structure in companies. The article presents the structure of factors regulating and adjusting the employment scale to real productivity needs. The presentation is based on one of the best examples of foreign direct investment in Poland - GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, Joint Stock company. The privatization process is like a mirror of destabilized economy. The correction of employment structure inside the company reflects the overall employment fluctuation in economy and even the structural unemployment classification. The model built on the GSK example, describes the 8 years long process of employment adjustment and can be recognized as a benchmark for the employment transition in foreign companies in Poland.
Our objective is to examine the consequences of soy rust to the U.S. agriculture in the next 2-5 years. In 2000, the U.S. harvested approximately 2.8 billion bushels of soybeans from almost 73 million acres of cropland, accounting for more than 50 percent of the world's production. The crop generated $12.5 billion dollars, $6.66 billion in exports. Soy rust established itself in the south last November and is expected to disseminate and deposit in the crops during this years planting season. The extent of outbreaks depends upon climatic conditions. Early detection is crucial since soy rust is deadly to the soy plant within 48 hours. Monitoring systems will warn farmers of the presence of the spores and farmers are instructed on how to identify and treat it. There is uncertainty regarding the sufficient and timely availability of fungicide. In addition to historical data, we incorporate observations of on going planting and harvesting. Parameter ranges in the model are narrowed as more information becomes available and existing uncertainties dissipate. The impact of soy rust is analyzed in aggregate, looking at overall production and market share contrasted against natural noise in the yields.
Traditional global models address important global problems using highly aggregated measures, but it may be argued that the world is strongly non-homogeneous at least at some fundamental level: developing (South) nations and developed (North) nations may have very different, asymmetric problems, goals and structures. This study aims to investigate these two distinct groups of economies in a context of global sustainability. We identified population, economic growth, welfare gap, energy supply and pollution as key issues and analyzed them in a systems perspective. A dynamic feedback model, which discriminates these two groups of nations, is constructed based on WORLD-3 model in order to study the dynamics of key parameters related to these issues for the period 1975-2050. Simulation experiments reveal that population characteristics of South and current mode of economic activity, which is extensively dependent on non-renewable energy resources constitute serious obstacles for the sustainability of the system. Hence, stabilizing the population growth in South, transition to alternative energy resources and investment support to South for this transition are vital for closing the welfare gap between blocks and sustaining the global system.
Effects-based Operations (EBO) is becoming the centerpiece of Western military thinking. The concept is based on influencing the behavior of adversary complex adaptive systems (such as terrorist networks) in dynamic environments. Mission analysis is the foundation of campaign planning. This paper suggests a process to improve how campaign planners identify effects necessary to yield a desired endstate during EBO mission analysis. The process is based on using a modified version of Soft Systems Methodology to structure the problem by providing planners a high-level initial understanding of the dynamic complexity associated with 4th Generation Warfare threats. Planners use this understanding to identify and diagnose specific adversary behavior inconsistent with the directed endstate. Potential system changes to modify problematic behavior are next identified and debated. Finally, the changes are converted into effects that serve as the input into more detailed planning efforts. The process uses group learning and shared understanding as a hedge against the ambiguity associated with 21st Century military planning.
In this paper, the typical anchor (expected value of the outflow or expected loss) used in the most popular decision rule of the stock management modeling, the Anchoring and Adjustment Rule is studied for structures including a decaying stock. A new anchor (equilibrium value of loss) is proposed and compared with the expected loss formulation. We demonstrate that equilibrium value of loss formulation helps bringing the control stock to its desired level more rapidly. In addition, we show that managing a decaying stock in a stable way is difficult when the supply line is discrete. Standard stock adjustment and supply line adjustment terms anchored around expected loss can yield highly unstable oscillations. Counter-intuitively, for some cases, ignoring the supply line adjustment term may completely eliminate unwanted oscillations. If equilibrium value of loss is selected as the anchor and when the decay time (life time) is small enough, management of the stock can even be done by ignoring all the adjustment terms.