Ranking mechanisms for assessing the competitiveness of listed companies in the Philippines: A comparative analysis

The article aims to substantiate the concept that one of the key prerequisites for implementing quality management system in higher education institutions and making productive management decisions for updating higher education in Ukraine is the formation of an objective ranking mechanism. The challenges and risks in higher education in the case of ignoring the ranking mechanism applied to measure the quality, performance or effectiveness of higher education have been identified.The study subject is the analysis of ranking as a criterion tool for managing higher education institutions. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the importance of ranking for building an effective management system for higher education institutions. The basic study methods are systemic and comparative analysis – systemic tools reveal the importance of ranking as one of the key elements in the management system of higher education institutions, and the comparative method verifies the interdependence of ranking indicators and quality of educational services. Research findings indicate the need for continuous improvement for ranking mechanisms applied to measure the quality, performance or effectiveness of higher education. In the era of globalization, the ranking of higher education institutions is becoming an important tool for assessing the quality of higher education; it serves to mobilize the university function as the locomotive of social development. The research findings can be used to improve the ranking mechanisms and create an effective management system for higher education institutions. The findings help to draw correlations between the effectiveness of ranking tools and the effectiveness of the management system for higher education institutions.Keywords: ranking; ranking tools for assessing the quality of higher education; criteria; correlative dependence; system connections; prospects for modernization of higher education in Ukraine.

Water hammer represents a complex hydraulic phenomenon with significant consequences on the proper functioning and safety of operation for pipe and conduit systems. The complexity and intricate physics of water hammer translated into significant difficulties associated firstly, with finding a proper solution for understanding the mechanism of its occurrence and, secondly, relating to proposing technically and economically viable design methods and devices that would help reduce and mitigate water hammer effects. In this context, the present thesis deals with the numerical modeling of the transient behaviour of water pipe segments. Following an extensive literature review of the state-of-the-art on the water hammer mechanisms and past work on experimental, analytical and numerical analysis of this phenomenon, a three dimensional numerical model of the water hammer in a pipe which considers the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) is developed using a Finite Element Method – Finite Volume Method (FEM-FVM) technique. Structural and fluid computational results based on rapid and slow gate closure scenarios are compared with existing closed-form solutions of the water hammer. A parametric study is also performed on a simply supported pipe segment to determine the influence of various design parameter. A systematic sensitivity analysis was conducted and a ranking mechanism was established for the importance of each parameter on the fluid fields and structural response. A first comparative analysis is conducted on horizontally and vertically bent elevated pipe segments to quantify the influence of the bend angle on the results. A second comparative analysis is performed on a horizontally bent segment buried in soil to determine the influence of the pipe interaction with the soil on the response. It is observed that the thickness, span, initial velocity and bend angle had a significant impact on the pressure and structural response. The presence of soil was observed to have a significant benefit in decreasing the von-Mises stresses.

The Citarum River Basin (DAS Citarum) in Indonesia faces significant challenges in waste management, necessitating a circular economy-based approach to reduce land-based pollution, which is critical for achieving the sustainability goals of the blue economy in the basin. This study addresses the complexity and inherent uncertainty in decision-making processes related to this challenge by developing a novel hybrid model, namely the Weighted Fuzzy N-Soft Set combined with the COmbinative Distance-based Assessment (CODAS) method. The model synergistically integrates the weighted 10R strategies in the circular economy, obtained via the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), the capability of Fuzzy N-Soft Sets to represent uncertainty granularly, and the robust ranking mechanism of CODAS. Applied to a case study covering 16 types of waste in the Citarum River Basin, the model effectively processes expert assessments that are ambiguous regarding the 10R criteria. The results indicate that single-use plastics, particularly plastic bags (HDPE), styrofoam, transparent plastic sheets (PP), and plastic cups (PP), are the top priorities for intervention, in line with the high AHP weights for upstream strategies such as Refuse (0.2664) and Rethink (0.2361). Comparative analysis with alternative models, namely Fuzzy N-Soft Set-CODAS, Weighted Fuzzy N-Soft Set with row-column sum ranking, and Weighted Fuzzy N-Soft Set-TOPSIS, confirms the superiority of the proposed hybrid model in producing ecologically rational priorities, free from purely economic value biases. Further sensitivity analysis shows that the model remains highly robust across various weighting scenarios. This study concludes that the WFN-SS-CODAS framework provides a rigorous, data-driven, and reliable decision support tool for translating circular economy principles into actionable waste management priorities, directly supporting the restoration and sustainability goals of the blue economy in river basins. The findings suggest that targeting the high-priority waste types identified by the model addresses the dominant fraction of riverine pollution, indicating the potential for significant waste volume reduction. This research was conducted to directly contribute to achieving multiple targets under SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 14 (Life Below Water).

The results of an assessment of a building incorporating a number of sustainability features using two different building rating systems (the UK Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) and the international Leadership in Energy and Environmental Development (LEED), as developed by the Canada Green Building Council) are described. The building scored well under both systems, although the credits achieved were more equally distributed in the Leed Canada assessment than under Breeam. A number of differences between the schemes are highlighted; the categories achieving the highest percentage credits under both tools were water, energy and occupant health. The paper concludes that, while the two schemes may differ in name, applications style and ranking mechanisms, the tools are more similar than dissimilar and provide broadly comparable assessments.

The article deals with the higher education institutions national aggregate rating constructing problem. This task is relevant in terms of improving management processes in educational organizations. This problem is formulated as a collective choice problem. Proposed to use voting in small groups as aggregation procedures, which satisfies the Condorcet principle. Three collective choice rules description is given in the paper. Obtained on the Bord, Copeland and Kemeny basis procedure salternatives final orderings stability is illustrated by concrete examples. The empirical mean is considered as a Kemeny median approximation. The Bord procedure instability with respect to changes in the initial scores obtained by universities in the ranking mechanisms under consideration is illustrated by examples. This paper presents the results of applying the described small-group voting procedures to a limited sample. This sample consists of data from 15 higher educational institutions from one of the Russian Federation regions. Universities constructed three aggregated ranks proximity degree was evaluated using two metrics - Kendall's rank correlation coefficient and Kemeny's distance. Based on the obtained results comparative analysis, it was made a conclusion about the expediency of using Condorcet-consistent collective selection procedures when constructing educational organizations aggregate ranking.

Purpose Due to its computational rigor, evidenced by strong mathematical foundations and demonstrably tractable results, the Weighted Influence Non-linear Gauge System (WINGS) method has attracted interest in applications where problems can be modeled as systems with components that have interdependent relationships. Given the ambiguities inherent in eliciting judgments within WINGS, integrating fuzzy set theory presents a straightforward agenda, leading to the development of the fuzzy WINGS method. Despite its advantages, methodological gaps remain, including the assumption of a neutral decision-maker and the potentially counterintuitive metric used for priority ranking. This work aims to bridge these gaps by developing a fuzzy WINGS variant called fWINGS-PR. This variant considers the degree of optimism among decision-makers while promoting an interpretable ranking mechanism using a compromise solution on an evaluation based on L2-norm. Design/methodology/approach In our proposed fWINGS-PR, the translation of triangular fuzzy numbers into real numbers associates an index of optimism, serving as a behavioral tuning knob that allows decision-makers to position themselves on either the safe or hopeful side. In addition, we use two metrics as inputs to the ranking process, generating positive and negative ideal solutions and evaluating the distance of each component from these points. A proposed metric derives a compromise priority ranking of the components. To demonstrate the efficacy of fWINGS-PR, a case study was implemented to evaluate the 10 adoption enablers of woodworking machinery that aid teaching-learning processes. Findings The results of the case study reveal that the innovativeness of the design, worker comfort, ease of use and portability are the top-priority adoption enablers, while aesthetic design and durability are given lower priority. These findings suggest that the design team must prioritize affordability, ease of use, safety and adaptability to institutional constraints over visual appeal and long-term durability. Both sensitivity and comparative analyses demonstrate the stability of the results in response to changes in the model parameter and consistency with other well-established methods, which highlight the practical value of the proposed approach. Originality/value This work introduces a novel variant of the fuzzy WINGS method that integrates decision-makers’ optimism levels and facilitates a more interpretable priority ranking mechanism based on the distances of system components to two ideal solutions.

. This article analyzes the necessity and possibility of creating an information-algorithmic platform for the effective promotion and placement of information about scientific events. Through a comparative analysis of existing platforms, such as "Conferences.ru" and "Scientific Conferences of Russia", the study aims to identify key requirements for the development of a new platform. The main focus is on analyzing the functionality of existing solutions, including filtering systems, flexibility in creating event pages and article ranking mechanisms. The study suggests the need for a platform that provides a flexible form for organizing events, a developed catalog of scientific conferences with filtering and sorting capabilities, and functionality for recommending scientific events based on user interests using algorithms such as k-means. .

Automated author ranking mechanism in a given research domain has key applications like automatic faculty selection in an institution, selection of outstanding researcher in a particular research domain, selection of domain experts for reviewing articles or project proposals, etc. The advantage of automated mechanism is that it is transparent and free from personal intervention. On the other hand, temporal analysis of author ranking has importance in the issues like selection of candidates for project grants, selection for life-time achievement awards, etc. This being an era of shared authorship in scientific articles, finding exact contribution of an author in a field is always a challenge. In our present work, we propose a modified pagerank-based author ranking algorithm that may identify the exact contribution of a researcher in terms coauthorship scores and paper citation scores in the research field he/she is working, and validate them using H-index, an already well accepted author ranking strategy, with the help of DBLP data set. In addition, we perform a comparative analysis of the change in author ranking for different part of author spectrum over time.