Appointment Strategies Research Articles

Gate appointment design in a container terminal: A robust optimization approach

Gate congestion is a main challenge faced by container terminals worldwide. In the scenario of gate congestion, the long waiting line of container trucks can block the traffic into the terminal, leading to disrupted terminal operations and unsatisfactory operating efficiency. In this paper, we study a gate appointment design problem that aims to manage the number of trucks allowed to a container terminal over time, so as to minimize the length of the truck waiting line and alleviate gate congestion. To optimize the gate appointment strategy, the truck service plans need also be devised, which involve the decisions for assigning trucks to yard blocks for container transhipment. We develop a two-stage robust optimization model for the problem by taking into account the uncertain service capacities of the yard blocks. Our model considers two decision stages, where the first-stage decision allocates slot capacities for the appointment slots, whereas the second-stage decision designs truck service plans with observed yard service capacity. We solve the two-stage robust model using an adapted column-and-row generation algorithm. In each iteration of the adapted column-and-row generation algorithm, the second-stage decision is generated by means of a pseudo-polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm, while the first-stage decision is generated by a tailored scenario decomposition method. We test the computational performance of the proposed solution method on instances generated from real terminal operation data, and reveal managerial insights that would inspire terminal operators in the management of truck appointment for gate congestion mitigation.

Tree barks for retrospective measurement and source appointment of airborne perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances

Tree bark is a useful bioindicator of atmospheric pollution. It is specially suitable for airborne perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) investigation due to persistence of ionic PFASs. The present work firstly systematically studied tree barks as a bioindicator of airborne PFASs. Comparison with the regular active and passive samplers found barks could produce long-term measurement of airborne PFASs, and could record the historical emission of PFASs with retrospective time frame as long as decades. Factors, e.g. tree type, trunk diameter, and sampling depth, can affect PFAS accumulation in barks, and these factors should be kept consistent during sampling. In a study area spatial distribution of airborne PFASs can be obtained by interpolation of bark results, and the concerned region can be located. Properties of the emission sources can be characterized, and the potential sources can be tracked based on the bark results. Their contributions can be further estimated by the source appointment strategies. In the economically and industrially developed study area of the present study, eight cities of southern Jiangsu Province of China, total ionic PFAS concentration of camphor bark samples collected in 34 sites was 0.44–359 ng/g dw (dry weight), dominated by perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs). Two types of possible sources were characterized as with long-chained PFCAs and PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) as the main components respectively. The sources were appointed as fluoropolymer manufacturing and textile industries, the important PFAS application fields, and their relative contribution was estimated as 32.5% and 67.5% respectively. The present study can provide useful advice to the method framework of using barks for long-term occurrence investigation, concerned region location, and emission source appointment of airborne PFASs in a study area. Based on the bark results, effective strategies can be further made for PFAS pollution elimination and risk control.

Policy-making ou recompensas? Nomeações políticas nos governos municipais brasileiros

Abstract Brazil has 5,570 municipalities, and each local government has a stock of appointed positions. This study adopted descriptive and inferential statistics to observe the variations in the political strategies adopted when filling these positions. The research identified (1) different political appointment strategies, from those based on reward (high scope/low education level) to strategies based on policy-making (reduced scope/high education level), (2) a robust relationship between HDI and political appointments with a policy-making profile inferring lower coordination costs and informational asymmetries for principals/voters, and (3) party and electoral competition variables showed modest results as potential explanatory factors to adopting reward-based strategies. Also, the adoption of reward-based strategies - cases where municipalities’ employees presented a higher proportion of appointees with lower education levels - did not affect the odds ratios of incumbents in the next municipal elections.

Auditor Appointment Strategy and Intragroup Value Transfers: Evidence From Family Business Groups

Family business groups (FBGs) typically control several member firms and can hire a single auditor or multiple auditors to audit their member firms. This article examines what type of auditor appointment strategy constrains intragroup value transfers within FBGs. Analyzing related-party transactions (RPTs) within FBGs in Hong Kong, this study provides evidence that FBGs with multiple auditors undertake more intragroup value transfers than FBGs with a single auditor. However, the adverse effect of multiple-auditor appointments is mitigated by a stronger board and higher financial reporting comparability among member firms. Using an alternative measure of intragroup value transfers, we also find that the market perceives multiple-auditor appointments as impairing audit effectiveness. Overall, our findings offer the new insight that controlling families can exploit the appointment of multiple auditors as a “divide and conquer” strategy which undermines the monitoring role of auditors against intragroup value transfers, but stronger corporate governance of member firms can mitigate the adverse effect.

Container terminal landside operation analysis and discrete event simulation in container terminal in port: a case study of Terminal 3 Ocean-going PT Pelabuhan Tanjung Priok

This study discusses the landside operation and presents the application of Truck Appointment System (TAS) and lane segmentation strategy through discrete event simulation in Terminal 3 Ocean-going PT Pelabuhan Tanjung Priok. This study aims to analyze the operation planning system in Terminal 3 Ocean-going and identify problems that exist on terminal 3. This study also seeks to examine the landside operation process and offer alternative scenarios to solve the congestion problem in the terminal. Alternative scenarios provided are a combination of Truck Appointment System (TAS) and lane segmentation strategy. Truck Appointment Strategy (TAS) with 100% utilization is proved to reduce average total time in the system by 76% and reduce average total time in peak days by 88%, from 151.5 minutes to 38.4 minutes per truck. Truck Appointment System (TAS) is also proved to reduce queue length by 97%, from 162 trucks to 5 trucks.

The electoral logic of governor rotations in Ukraine: rulers’ authority, party strength, and regional polarization

ABSTRACTHow and under what conditions do authoritarian rulers use the state apparatus to help ensure victory? To answer this question, this paper examines electoral mobilization as a rationale for the appointment of governors in hybrid regimes. Given their absolute authority to use administrative resources, autocratic rulers prefer governors who can perform well in mobilizing the electorate in their favor. However, several circumstances make this strategy suboptimal or impossible. To provide empirical evidence supporting this argument, this study conducts a survival analysis using an original dataset of gubernatorial appointments and dismissals in Ukraine from 1996 to 2017. The results confirm that electoral performance was the primary driver of governor appointments during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma. In addition, it is demonstrated that various institutional conditions, such as party strength, the weak authority of the ruler within the central government, and regional polarization resulted in the adoption of different appointment strategies by subsequent presidents.

A critical examination of Christian leadership in the light of recent trends within the Church of England

ABSTRACTRecent trends within the Church of England have led many to criticize the rise of management techniques within the appointment and development strategy of the Church. At the heart of this debate is a general suspicion of the goals and aims of leadership as a whole, and a specific question as to how consistent these are with the work of the gospel. In this article, I have identified several of the key issues and, considering the work of key voices on Christian leadership, suggested that leadership is on the whole neither specifically good nor bad but can be used for either. The key for Christians is an awareness of the dangers and a willingness to engage with all sides with a pastoral and prophetic outlook and voice. What cannot be tolerated, however, is the trend of managerialism, which surged through leadership theory in the twentieth century.

Does one size fit all? An analysis of portfolio allocation in the Brazilian multiparty presidential system

Presidents face a dilemma of whom to appoint for cabinet positions. They need to secure legislative support for their government and at the same time achieve their goals in terms of public policy. This work analyzes the portfolio allocation of Brazilian presidents in Brazil’s multiparty system. This study tests some hypotheses using multinomial logistic regression to identify appointment strategies adopted by the presidents in four different governmental sectors from 1990 to 2016. To do so, first, we create an index of ministerial politicization (IMP) and aggregate the ministries in these four sections, employing cluster analysis. The results show that appointments to the core positions in government tend to be less politicized. Moreover, the president’s personal nominations were greater in the presidential units that carry out the political coordination and typical functions of the State.

L-PowerGraph: a lightweight distributed graph-parallel communication mechanism

In order to process complex and large-scale graph data, numerous distributed graph-parallel computing platforms have been proposed. PowerGraph is an excellent representative of them. It has exhibited better performance, such as faster graph-processing rate and higher scalability, than others. However, like in other distributed graph computing systems, unnecessary and excessive communications among computing nodes in PowerGraph not only aggravate the network I/O workload of the underlying computing hardware systems but may also cause a decrease in runtime performance. In this paper, we propose and implement a mechanism called L-PowerGraph, which reduces the communication overhead in PowerGraph. First, L-PowerGraph identifies and eliminates the avoidable communications in PowerGraph. Second, in order to further reduce the required communications L-PowerGraph proposes an edge direction-aware master appointment strategy, in which L-PowerGraph appoints the replica with both incoming and outgoing edges as master. Third, L-PowerGraph proposes an edge direction-aware graph partition strategy, which optimally isolates the outgoing edges from the incoming edges of a vertex during the graph partition process. We have conducted extensive experiments using real-world datasets, and our results verified the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism. For example, compared with PowerGraph under Random partition scenario L-PowerGraph can not only reduce up to 30.5% of the communication overhead but also cut up to 20.3% of the runtime for PageRank algorithm while processing Live-journal dataset. The performance improvement achieved by L-PowerGraph over our precursor work, LightGraph, which only reduces the synchronizing communication overhead, is also verified by our experimental results.

Experiential Learning and Presidential Management of the U.S. Federal Bureaucracy: Logic and Evidence from Agency Leadership Appointments

AbstractPresidents become increasingly effective at managing the bureaucracy because of the information and expertise that they acquire from on‐the‐job experience. In their appointment choices, this theory predicts that presidents become better at reducing information asymmetries incurred from the bureaucracy (Agent Selection Learning), improve the vertical balance of leadership agent traits between top supervisory positions and subordinates directly beneath them (Agent Monitoring Learning), and place a greater relative premium on loyalty in response to horizontal policy conflict between the White House and the Senate (Common Agency Learning). This logic obtains empirical support from the analysis of bureaucratic agent traits for Senate‐confirmed presidential appointees serving in leadership positions covering 39 U.S. federal government agencies from 1977 to 2009. Presidents’ appointment strategies reflect their increasing effectiveness at managing the bureaucracy, thus complementing their increasing reliance on administrative mechanisms to achieve policy objectives as their tenure in office rises.

Patrons, Clients, and Technocrats: A Study of the Effects of Regime Type on Bureaucratic Appointment Strategies

Available evidence indicates that there is considerable variation among autocracies in the extent to which subnational officials are rewarded for economic growth. Why is economic performance used as a criterion for appointment in some autocracies but not in others? Using data on turnover among high-level economic bureaucrats in Russia’s 89 regions between 2001 and 2012, we find that performance-based appointments are more frequent in less competitive regions. In more competitive — though still autocratic — regions, the political imperatives of maintaining a political machine that can win semi-competitive elections may lead regime leaders to abandon cadre policies that promote economic development.

Managing Uncertainty: Executive Appointments in Foreign Subsidiary Environments

This study examines how MNCs use strategic human capital appointments in the subsidiary executive team to manage tension between effective monitoring and local knowledge utilization when faced with subsidiary environment uncertainty. Using a sample of executives from 75 subsidiaries of 34 U.S. and European banks over 5 years, we find that MNCs appear to seek balance through a deliberate configuration of expatriates and local executives in the subsidiary executive team. Overall, we find that environmental uncertainty is not directly linked with a one-size-fits-all executive appointment strategy. Instead, higher levels of uncertainty arising from complexity and competition are associated with a reduced preference for local executives in monitoring and control-oriented functional roles. With rising environmental complexity, this effect appears to be counterbalanced by a greater preference for local executives in implementation-oriented functional roles. However, we do not find evidence of a significant relationship between environmental turbulence and functional role appointments.

Modelling and simulation of blood collection systems: improvement of human resources allocation for better cost‐effectiveness and reduction of candidate donor abandonment

This study addresses the modelling and simulation of blood collection for fixed blood collection sites in a medium-sized large French city, as well as mobile blood collection in urban and rural environments. Formal Petri net models were used to describe all relevant donor flows of the various blood collection systems; the Petri net models were converted onto discrete-event simulation models, allowing the evaluation of a large number of scenarios and configurations of blood collection systems. Quantitative models were proposed that encompassed all components of the blood collection systems, such as the donor arrival process, resource capacities and performance indicators. Appropriate experimental designs and cost-effectiveness analyses were used to determine the best configurations of human resources and donor appointment strategies. The donor service level depended on both adequate human resources capacity and appropriate appointment strategies. These decisions depend on the distribution during the day of walk-in donors. Models permit to improve management of blood collection; they have now partially entered the real situation, awaiting further implementation.

Opinion Competition and Judge Replacement on Collegial Courts

It is common to think that replacing a judge with a new appointment nearer an ideological extreme will pull outcomes on the court in the ideological direction of the new appointment. This paper argues that this intuition is not always correct, at least for a class of close cases. The model developed here predicts that, in certain close cases, appointing a conservative (liberal) to replace a moderate may result in a loss for the court’s conservative (liberal) wing. What drives this outcome is expressive costs: judges incur a cost for signing opinions distant from their own ideal points, so that a judge nearer the swing vote can better afford the compromises required to win. The model holds implications for judicial appointment strategies and helps explain findings that have puzzled other scholars.

A survey of national, regional and hospital chief pharmacists on consultant pharmacist appointment strategy and performance in the united kingdom

BackgroundConsultant pharmacists were introduced in hospitals in 2005 to provide the best care for patients and retain experienced pharmacists in practice. The framework stated that posts had to be approved...

Modeling and simulation of blood collection systems

This paper addresses the modeling and simulation of blood collection systems in France for both fixed site and mobile blood collection with walk in whole blood donors and scheduled plasma and platelet donors. Petri net models are first proposed to precisely describe different blood collection processes, donor behaviors, their material/human resource requirements and relevant regulations. Petri net models are then enriched with quantitative modeling of donor arrivals, donor behaviors, activity times and resource capacity. Relevant performance indicators are defined. The resulting simulation models can be straightforwardly implemented with any simulation language. Numerical experiments are performed to show how the simulation models can be used to select, for different walk in donor arrival patterns, appropriate human resource planning and donor appointment strategies.

Party Fundraising, Descriptive Representation, and the Battle for Majority Control: Shifting Leadership Appointment Strategies in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1990–2002*

Objective. Analyze the long‐term, coalition‐building versus short‐term, fundraising strategies in leadership appointments by party leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives.Methods. Estimate a logistic regression model of leadership appointments in the U.S. House from 1990 to 2002.Results. The expensive battle for majority party control that followed the 1994 House elections prompted leaders to balance descriptive representational concerns with fundraising ability in making appointments to the extended leadership organization. This represents a shift from the pre‐1994 period, when—absent an intense battle for control of the House—leaders gave greater weight to descriptive representation in making appointments.Conclusions. Congressional party leaders make appointments in part in response to the external political environment and their appointment strategies adapt as the environment changes.

The Mandatory Representation of Minority Shareholders on the Board of Directors of Italian Listed Corporations: An Empirical Analysis

At the end of 2005 the Italian legislator modified the rules on the appointment of the members of the board of directors of listed corporations. Now these legal entities are not free to design the appointment strategies of the members of the board, but it is mandatory for listed corporations to reserve at least one seat on this corporate body to persons not appointed by the majority or by the controlling shareholder. In this paper we use some descriptive and regression analyses to investigate the situation of Italian listed corporations before and after the introduction of the mandatory representation of minority shareholders on the board of directors. We analyze data collected on December 31, 2005, few days before the enactment of the reform, and on December 31, 2006, one year after the enactment of the reform and six months before the end of the transitory period. Our goal is to investigate the characteristics of Italian listed corporations that implemented the representation of minority shareholders during the first twelve months of the transitory period that followed the enactment of this reform. In particular, we study the relationship between the appointment on the board of directors of a representative of minority shareholders and the following explanatory variables: the percentage of non-executive members sitting on the board, a dummy variable that indicates whether the corporation examined is included in the S&P Mib Index, another dummy variable that indicates whether the corporation examined is a bank, the capitalization of the corporation, the number of the members of the board of directors and the existence of a single shareholder that owns more than the 50% of the shares of the corporation. We conclude this study discussing the results of these analyses and examining the first reactions of Italian listed corporations to the 2005 reform of corporate governance.

Scoring points: politicians, activists, and the lower Federal Court appointment process

This book explores how the lower federal court appointment process became vastly politicized in the modern era. Scherer develops a theory of mobilization, positing that lower court appointments have always been used by politicians for electoral purposes, but because of two historic changes to American institutions in the 1950s and 1960s-the breakdown of the old party system, and a federal judiciary reception to expanding individuals' constitutional rights-politicians shifted from an appointment system dominated by patronage to a system dominated by new policy-oriented appointment strategies. The use of these new strategies not only resulted in partisan warfare during the nomination and confirmation stages of the appointment process, but also led to party-polarized voting in the lower federal courts. Employing exclusive data of judicial decision-making from the New Deal era through the present, Scherer demonstrates that there was little party-polarized voting in the lower federal courts until the late 1960s, and that once politicians began to use elite mobilization strategies, significant party-polarized voting in the lower federal courts resulted. Accordingly, elite mobilization strategies have affected not only politics in Washington, but also the way justice is distributed across the country.

Presidential Success Through Appointments To The United States Courts Of Appeals

An enduring legacy for any president is achieved by appointing judges with similar policy preferences who then maintain those policy preferences during their tenure on the bench and long after leaving office. This process provides one of the few democratic checks on the judiciary. Some authors demonstrate that in the areas of social and economic policy, Supreme Court justices’ policy votes are concordant with their appointing presidents over time. We explore whether presidents are as successful at the courts of appeals level and find that they are. We also explore the influences on presidential success in nominating judges to these courts who then vote in concordance with their policy preferences; we find that the presence of a home-state senator of the president’s party substantially constrains presidential success. However, neither presidents’ appointment strategies, presidential popularity, nor the party composition of the Senate affected the degree of concordance between presidential policy preferences and judicial voting records.