Latent Need Research Articles

Algunas experiencias exitosas en latinoamérica relacionadas con la estandarización contable

<span>Este trabajo presenta de manera panorámica los procesos que han seguido algunos países latinoamericanos, con el fin de estandarizar sus procesos e información contable. Es evidente el protagonismo en las últimas décadas de las Normas Internacionales de Información Financiera (NIIF) y de la Normas Internacionales de Contabilidad (NIC) a raíz de los acontecimientos económicos, políticos y comerciales experimentados en el mundo y la región. El documento insiste en anotar que existe una necesidad latente de establecer un sistema de información contable internacional que minimice las discrepancias surgidas entre las normas contables nacionales y las internacionales; y que a la vez sea adoptado como herramienta homogenizadora global de la información contable.</span>

A spatial structural equation model with an application to area health needs

Indices of population ‘health need’ are often used to distribute health resources or assess equity in service provision. This article describes a spatial structural equation model incorporating multiple indicators of need and multiple population health risks that affect need (analogous to multiple indicators–multiple causes models). More specifically, the multiple indicator component of the model involves health outcomes such as hospital admissions or mortality, whereas the multiple risk component models the impact on the need for area social and demographic indicators, which proxy population-level risk factors for different diseases. The latent need construct is allowed (under a Bayesian approach) to be spatially correlated, though the prior assumed for need allows a mix of spatially structured and unstructured influences. A case study considers variations in need for coronary heart disease (CHD) care over 625 small areas in London, using recent mortality and hospitalization data (the ‘indicators’) and measures of general ill-health, income and unemployment, which proxy variations in population risk for CHD.

The Tipping Points of Business Strategy:: The Rise and Decline of Competitiveness

T he idea of competitive advantage has evolved over the past 30 years. Concepts such as core competence, unlocking hidden value, customer-driven focus, fast responsiveness, capabilities-driven strategy, and hyper-competition are all commonplace phrases in the business vernacular. These concepts draw from fields such as economics, industrial organization, organizational theory, and behavioral finance. The continuous onslaught of best-selling business books promulgatingNew-Agestrategiesoften fails to take into account leaders’ visions, the influenceofpowerful internal departments and/or external forces, and the evolution of technology itself. Nonetheless, firms of all sizes struggle in their search for new sources of competitive advantage or ignore the latent need to do so. Successful firms are like psalms— that is, their parts fit together harmoniously by focusing on a particular theme to offer customers compelling value. Firms build competitive advantage when they take actions that enable them to gain an edge over rivals in attracting customers in an industry. These actions vary frommaking the highest quality product, to providing the best customer service, to producing at the lowest cost, or devoting resources toa specific segment of the industry. Thus, competitive advantage accrues from the firms’ development of strategic capabilities at the business level. Regardless of the product or service offered, every firm faces the constant, inexorable forces of externally induced change that can render a strong source of competitive advantage obsolete. A powerful force that influences firms is the nature of the product life cycle. Although life-cycle stages are found in each industry, with their own distinct signatures (e.g., duration, timing of transition from one stage to another), these stages are to some extent predictable. Every product evolves through the states of introduction, growth, maturity, and decline at its own rate. The rate of technological change also dramatically impacts firms’ competitive advantage by redefining how products and processes are designed, created, and evolved. The rate of technological change refers to the extent to which new products and processes evolve in ways that are completely different from their predecessors. In this article, we demonstrate that managers need to understand the nature of their industry’s dynamics to formulate effective business strategies. Business strategies, in turn, are formulated with a focus on competing within a given industry. At its core, business strategy addresses the fundamental question: How do we build competitive advantage in our industry? In response to these dynamics, managers need to rethink how to innovate, bundle their firm’s capabilities, create value, and capture customers. To help managers assess this task, we present an integrative approach to analyzing, framing, and managing a company’s set of value-creating capabilities that address many of the strategic tensions that managers now confront when designing effective business strategies.

Gene Therapy for Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma: Present and Future

Malignant pleural mesothelioma is relatively rare in frequency but one of the intractable diseases linked with asbestos exposure. Clinical outcomes with the present treatment modalities are unsatisfactory and no effective prevention method has been reported. Growing numbers of the patients in the Western countries with a long latent period need development of a novel therapeutic strategy. Gene therapy is a candidate for mesothelioma treatment because of its easy accessibility of a vector-mediated gene medicine into the intrapleural cavity. Several preclinical studies demonstrated that the gene medicine produced antitumor effects, suggesting the feasibility in clinical settings. In this article, we review the current status of gene therapy and clinical trials targeting mesothelioma and address possible directions to improve the efficacy.

Using dialogues with customers as sources of knowledge

AbstractEvery day organizations have numerous dialogues with (potential) customers. The representatives of the organization see themselves presented with the daunting task of how to identify and use the most relevant information that the customer communicated. Equally vexing for these dialogue participants is how to ensure that what is intended with a certain utterance in a dialogue is understood in the way the speaker intended. It is therefore not surprising that not all dialogues lead to satisfactory results for the participants. Customers tell organizations in dialogues (via media like e‐mail, telephone, letters or ‘physical’ visits) what they expect that the organization needs to know to be able to serve them in a satisfactory way. Equally, organizations would like to know whether the message they are communicating is understood in the way the organization intended and if the products or services they are providing matches any persistent (latent) need of a selected (group of) customer(s). This research is aimed at developing a computational instrument to come to terms with these issues. The seminal theory of Clark (1996) might assist us in this endeavour. In particular, the concepts of common ground and larger purpose present possibilities that could support us in our attempts to gain more knowledge from dialogues with customers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How dotcoms can be winners: A customer dissatisfaction approach to analysis

The rise and fall of a number of dotcoms has also severely impacted the VC industry, but there does not seem to have been any in-depth study to understand the economic logic of dotcom businesses. Using the dotcom as a context, this paper argues that the attractiveness of an entrepreneurial opportunity depends on the extent to which it eliminates customer dissatisfaction with the existing alternatives. Building on this logic, the paper examines how dotcoms can work towards elimination of customer dissatisfaction. A close analysis of these businesses shows that many of them did not have a sound business model and that many of their assumptions were questionable. This paper attempts to provide an explanation of dotcom failures using newly developed concepts such as mature latent need, zero customer dissatisfaction and the customer dissatisfaction chain. It argues that many firms failed because they did not establish whether there existed any customer dissatisfaction and hence the opportunity for a dotcom firm to eliminate this dissatisfaction. Furthermore, when they focused on eliminating dissatisfaction at one point firms did not see their capabilities to provide overall positive value. The paper concludes that dotcoms and in turn VCs can be real winners if they apply the logic and concepts discussed here.

A participatory approach to sanitation: experience of Bangladeshi NGOs.

This study assesses the role of participatory development programmes in improving sanitation in rural Bangladesh. Data for this study came from a health surveillance system of BRAC covering 70 villages in 10 regions of the country. In-depth interviews were conducted with one adult member of a total of 1556 randomly selected households that provided basic socioeconomic information on the households and their involvement with NGO-led development programmes in the community. The findings reveal that households involved with credit programmes were more likely to use safe latrines than others who were equally poor but not involved in such programmes. The study indicates that an unmet need to build or buy safe and hygienic latrines existed among those who did not own one. Such latent need could be raised further if health education at the grassroots level along with supervised credit supports were provided to them. Unlike conventional belief, the concept of community-managed jointly owned latrines did not seem a very attractive alternative. The study argues that social and behavioural aspects of the participatory development programmes can significantly improve environmental sanitation in a traditional community.

Exploring the CI value equation

To quantify the added value that competitive intelligence provides, focus on four key “I” variables: information, interpretation, insight, and impression. Providing unbiased, filtered, and relevant information is the core of intelligence efforts, but without analytical interpretation, information is often useless. And unless the findings provide specific competitive insight, the intelligence is limited. Overall, the impression you make can be enhanced through professionalism in presentation, as well as by possessing and using advanced analytical and methodological toolkits. To best demonstrate value, CI practices should heavily engage internal customers. Moreover, they should integrate all available resources for collecting intelligence, including frontline employees such as customer service reps and maintenance technicians. Findings should be distributed to a wide range of users, rather than limited to a small group, as often there is a large, latent need for intelligence by peripheral departments within the enterprise. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Nondirectiveness and genetic counseling.

AbstractNondirectiveness is the generally required and professed standard for genetic counseling. However, studies are lacking in the field of human genetics and in other disciplines which address either the theory or practice of this type of therapeutic procedure in the context of genetic counseling. Moreover, there is no indication the further development this concept has undergone in client‐centered therapy has been acknowledged in human genetics. This could be due tot he historical development of genetic counseling, its inherent conflicts and often undefined goals, and the latent need of human geneticists to defend themselves against being accused of eugenic tendencies. Nondirectiveness and directiveness, however, can neither adequately describe what takes place in genetic counseling, nor can they — according to their original meaning — be used to define an ethical standard of genetic counseling. Starting with the writings by Carl Rogers (1942), an experiential approach is described, in which counseling is seen as a process of influence, which is wished by all the persons involved, during which activities are oriented toward the experience of the client, and which allows the counselor to communicate openly and directly with the client. The present study illustrates the use of the experiential approach in genetic counseling and shows that it can uphold the principle of ethics, which nondirectiveness demands and, at the same time, prevent the inevitable and unresolvable contradictions. This means that in their training genetic counselors must learn to recognize and constantly reflect on the influence they can and want to exert. In order to be able to use this influence in a responsible manner, genetic counselors must also learn to have a certain degree of flexibility so that they are able to check at any time how their client responds to this influence.

Paupers in Sweden

Abstract Official Swedish statistics in the late 1960s showed a considerable rise in the number of people in receipt of public assistance, at a time which was generally regarded as fairly prosperous and when unemployment figures were steadily falling. The most widely accepted explanation is that recently enacted social reforms required local authorities to be more active in seeking out and visiting those groups in society which had previously hesitated to apply for help from public funds, but the Uppsala sociologist Rolf Stat rejects this as too simple. In this thesis he stresses the importance of the boom conditions which characterised the period: the economic and political climate favoured the expansion of social welfare in the mid-1960s and a greater proportion of the latent need for relief could therefore be satisfied.

The dialysis branch of a transplantation unit.

Active treatment of chronic uremia in a program in which renal transplantation is the ultimate treatment for uremia has caused a substantial increase in the need for dialysis in spite of a continuous increase in the dialysing capacity. Active treatment of chronic uremia with dialysis and transplantation is needed in about 70% of all uremic patients aged 16–65 years but only 40% actually received this treatment between 1966 and 1968. This latent need for active treatment necessitates an increasing dialysing capacity. For economic reasons, there is an acute need for home dialysis, especially in sparsely populated areas, as well as for dialysis at night in centers outside the hospital in order to reduce psychiatric, family and social complications. The complications of hemodialysis, the physical and psychical strain of the patient together with the risk of developing an unfavourable immunity with respect to a coming renal transplantation makes an increased effort towards prophylactic treatment of renal disea...