Different Degrees Of Centralization Research Articles

The Effects of Team Structural Adaptation on Team Problem Solving Performance

Using a computer simulation, I explore how different team structural adaptations relate to team performance and investigate the intervening mechanisms and process by which different degrees of centralization of team decision making serve to balance the tradeoffs between flexibility and stability. I find that the permanently decentralized team has the short-run advantage compared to the permanently centralized team, while the permanently centralized team outperforms significantly the permanently decentralized team in the long run. Teams that couple decentralization that fosters flexibility with eventual centralization that promotes stability outperform those that rely exclusively on decentralization or centralization or those that rely on decentralization eventually. The reintegrated and elastic adaptation perform the best because they gain the benefits of efficiency and exploration realized by decentralization, while they also achieve the benefits of integration for internal fit caused by centralization. The elastic structure is more appropriate to respond to the high stability demands, while the reintegrated structure is more appropriate to respond to the high flexibility demands.

Hybrid green-blue-gray decentralized urban drainage systems design, a simulation-optimization framework

Recent studies suggested hybrid green-blue-gray infrastructures (HGBGI) as the most promising urban drainage systems that can simultaneously combine reliability, resilience, and acceptability of gray infrastructures (networks of pipes) with multi-functionality, sustainability, and adaptability of green-blue infrastructures (GBI). Combining GBI and gray measures for designing new urban drainage systems forms a nonlinear multimodal mixed integer-real optimization problem that is highly constrained and intractable. For this purpose, this study presents a simulation-optimization framework to optimize urban drainage systems considering HGBGI alternatives and different degrees of centralization. The proposed framework begins with the characterization of the site under design and drawing the base graph. Then, different layouts with different degrees of centralization are generated and hydraulically designed using a recent algorithm called hanging gardens algorithm. After introducing the feasible GBI to the model, we now perform second optimization to find the optimum distribution of GBIs in a way that minimizes total life cycle costs of GBIs and pipe networks. Finally, resiliency and sustainability of different scenarios are evaluated using several design storms that provide material for final assessment and decision-making. The performance of the proposed framework is evaluated using a real large-scale case study, a part of the city of Ahvaz in Iran. Finally, results are presented and discussed with recommendations for future studies.

Institutional Developments in the Russian System of Social Security: Organizational and Interorganizational Aspects

In the course of the present transition in Russian society, a new system of social security has been developed. The previous Soviet system has been replaced by a system of four more or less independent social funds, covering the main branches of social security. These funds are supposed to be run according to insurance principles and to be financed by contributions, mainly from employers. Given the difficult economic and social situation of the country, there have been increasing demands for effectiveness in the management of the different funds and also in the management of the whole social security system. The results of this study show that the social funds have developed different organizational structures with different degrees of centralization and decentralization. Only one of the funds seems to be relatively well‐functioning and effective, while the others have experienced more or less serious problems in fulfilling their main tasks and functions. The most serious problems, however, seem to stem from the structure of the social security system as a whole, which is perceived as fragmented and badly coordinated. In order to improve the coordination of the system, there have been proposals to merge two or more funds into a unified social security organization. This strategy is open to question, however, since it would increase the bureaucracy of the system. There are other ways in which the structure of the social security system might be advanced. Such developments should be based on an analysis of the system from the perspective of the individual client or patient.

Heavy investment and high pollution as rational choices under socialism

This paper attempts a rational explanation of the big stylized facts that were the hallmark of the socialist economies: high investment rates, high levels of environmental depletion and defense expenditure. In contrast to the dominant approach in comparative economics, which relies on bureaucratic and/or political preferences, a simple median-voter model yields this structure of national output as the utility-maximizing choice of a decisive voter faced with a redistribution of income that takes the form of collectivization of capital accumulation, whose burden is borne more than proportionally by higher-income groups. This basic model is then extended to deal with different specifications of the political process, different degrees of centralization of decision-making, and the territorial dimension of redistribution.

Economics of Exposure Management of Foreign Subsidiaries of Multinational Corporations

The economic exposure of financial assets and liabilities of a foreign subsidiary depends mainly on the currency denomination and the commodity composition of future transactions. Country of residency of shareholders and parent corporations are of secondary interest. Accordingly, management of exposure presumes information about the denomination of future cash flows and future purchases. The decision on whether to centralize or decentralize exposure management must take into account the costs of collecting relevant information of this kind at different degrees of centralization.

Health care facility planning: Some developmental considerations

A model of the provision of health care facilities is outlined. This model is based on a framework developed in central place theory and is concerned with the scale, frequency and service area structure of health care facilities. Certain modifications to the model are proposed and this provides a framework for dealing with the problem of adjustment in systems of service provision. Three types of adjustment, all involving different degrees of centralization, are considered. Each type of adjustment results in a particular modification to the spatial structure of the hierarchical system. Consideration is then briefly given to a number of ways in which this general approach may be made more realistic, in order to deal with actual systems of service provision.

Ethno-territorial Protest Movements and the Politics of Accommodation in Centralized and Decentralized Political Systems

The main purpose of the paper is to explain the divergent paths of development of ethno-territorial protest movements in modern democratic political systems. By focusing on the interaction between these movements and the state, the different systems of accommodation between the relevant regional and central elites will be analyzed. The study concentrates on the case studies of Québec (Canada) and Corsica (France). The paper is divided into three parts. The first part describes the traditional systems of accommodation in France and Canada. The second part is focused on the process of socio-economic modernization in the 1950s and 1960s in those countries that threatened the established patterns of elite accommodation. The third part deals with the consequences for the established patterns of elite-accommodation and new concepts of territorial management that the central states tried to establish. By looking at the different degrees of centralization and decentralization in the mentioned political systems, the question of access to the political system by new social and political actors will be discussed in detail.