Relative Scarcity Of Resources Research Articles

The effect of resource slack on organizational decline of large Brazilian companies: the moderating effect of the industry’s dynamic

ObjetivoA Qual é o impacto da folga de recursos no declínio de grandes empresas brasileiras? Para responder a essa pergunta, testamos hipóteses separadamente para três tipos de folga de recursos: disponível, potencial e recuperável. Essas folgas consistem em recursos além do necessário para manter a organização funcionando.Projeto/metodologia/abordagemDesenvolvemos um estudo empírico quantitativo e longitudinal com dados de empresas brasileiras de 1997 a 2008. Adotamos o método de pares combinados, compondo a amostra de pesquisa com um grupo de empresas de capital aberto que declinaram (43 empresas) e outro que não declinou (40 empresas) no período.ResultadosDescobrimos que a disponibilidade de recursos mais líquidos reduz a possibilidade de declínio. O efeito moderador na folga de recursos potenciais para empresas em indústrias dinâmicas pode mitigar o declínio.OriginalidadeEsta pesquisa contribui para uma melhor compreensão do efeito da folga sobre possíveis recuperações. A extensão dos estudos de folgas de recursos para o contexto de empresas brasileiras mostrou a influência que a folga exerce em um ambiente institucional relativamente menos explorado. Seja financeiro, humano ou tecnológico, a escassez de recursos é mais pronunciada do que em empresas de países desenvolvidos. Esta pesquisa chama a atenção para o fato de que o declínio de empresas brasileiras é analisado sob uma perspectiva mais ampla. Decisões sobre como a empresa usa seus recursos podem afetar positiva ou negativamente o declínio das empresas, reforçando a importância de discutir essa relação.

Climate change–induced population pressure drives high rates of lethal violence in the Prehispanic central Andes

Understanding the influence of climate change and population pressure on human conflict remains a critically important topic in the social sciences. Long-term records that evaluate these dynamics across multiple centuries and outside the range of modern climatic variation are especially capable of elucidating the relative effect of—and the interaction between—climate and demography. This is crucial given that climate change may structure population growth and carrying capacity, while both climate and population influence per capita resource availability. This study couples paleoclimatic and demographic data with osteological evaluations of lethal trauma from 149 directly accelerator mass spectrometry 14C-dated individuals from the Nasca highland region of Peru. Multiple local and supraregional precipitation proxies are combined with a summed probability distribution of 149 14C dates to estimate population dynamics during a 700-y study window. Counter to previous findings, our analysis reveals a precipitous increase in violent deaths associated with a period of productive and stable climate, but volatile population dynamics. We conclude that favorable local climate conditions fostered population growth that put pressure on the marginal and highly circumscribed resource base, resulting in violent resource competition that manifested in over 450 y of internecine warfare. These findings help support a general theory of intergroup violence, indicating that relative resource scarcity—whether driven by reduced resource abundance or increased competition—can lead to violence in subsistence societies when the outcome is lower per capita resource availability.

Unraveling a century of global change impacts on winter bird distributions in the eastern United States.

One of the most pressing questions in ecology and conservation centers on disentangling the relative impacts of concurrent global change drivers, climate and land-use/land-cover (LULC), on biodiversity. Yet studies that evaluate the effects of both drivers on species' winter distributions remain scarce, hampering our ability to develop full-annual-cycle conservation strategies. Additionally, understanding how groups of species differentially respond to climate versus LULC change is vital for efforts to enhance bird community resilience to future environmental change. We analyzed long-term changes in winter occurrence of 89species across nine bird groups over a 90-year period within the eastern United States using Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC) data. We estimated variation in occurrence probability of each group as a function of spatial and temporal variation in winter climate (minimum temperature, cumulative precipitation) and LULC (proportion of group-specific and anthropogenic habitats within CBC circle). We reveal that spatial variation in bird occurrence probability was consistently explained by climate across all nine species groups. Conversely, LULC change explained more than twice the temporal variation (i.e., decadal changes) in bird occurrence probability than climate change on average across groups. This pattern was largely driven by habitat-constrained species (e.g., grassland birds, waterbirds), whereas decadal changes in occurrence probabilities of habitat-unconstrained species (e.g., forest passerines, mixed habitat birds) were equally explained by both climate and LULC changes over the last century. We conclude that climate has generally governed the winter occurrence of avifauna in space and time, while LULC change has played a pivotal role in driving distributional dynamics of species with limited and declining habitat availability. Effective land management will be critical for improving species' resilience to climate change, especially during a season of relative resource scarcity and critical energetic trade-offs.

Immediate effects of COVID-19 on the global dairy sector

CONTEXTThe emergence and rapid spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an unprecedented threat to both societies and economies. The dairy sector is an example of the challenges that food supply chains have faced due to the pandemic. OBJECTIVEThis study aims to provide primary evidence of the immediate effects of COVID-19 on the global dairy sector, particularly focusing on the outcome of the implemented response mechanisms, and the potential medium and long-term implications of the pandemic on the sector. METHODSWe employed a longitudinal qualitative analysis framework that combines the use of questionnaires, media-search, focus-group discussions, semi-structured interviews, and secondary evidence reviews. Information was gathered at two points in time: three months after the beginning of the outbreak and one year later. We applied this framework in five different geographical regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSOur study indicates that the pandemic has been perceived as a series of episodes affecting the sector from both demand and supply sides. These waves have impacted the sector differently depending on regions and countries’ trade profiles, relative resource scarcity, per capita income, and market structure. Although in one year the sector has mostly recovered from the shock, the analysis concludes that the pandemic has accelerated on-going structural changes taking place in the dairy sector. SIGNIFICANCEThe study expands existing knowledge about the effects of the pandemic on the dairy sector and adds to the newly evolving literature about the medium and long-term effects of the COVID-19 on food systems across the globe. Despite the preliminary nature of the results, they provide important insights to inform sectorial policy discussions.

Individual Conditioning Factors of Political Protest in Latin America: Effects of Values, Grievance and Resources

Theories about political protest point to three sets of variables responsible for promoting engagement in such actions: resources, grievance and values. There is consensus on the importance of resources, but the influence of grievance and values remain inconclusive. Discontent alone is not enough to motivate protest, but in societies at intermediate levels of development, grievance could be an explanatory variable. By contrast, values would have a limited effect, given that value change in developing countries could only be incipient. In view of the new cycle of protest in the region and wishing to contribute to the debate on the subject, we aim to discover what the relationship is between these three sets of variables as regards Latin Americans’ predisposition to protest. Given that these countries find themselves at an intermediate level of economic and social development, it would seem that the primary motivation for protest is discontent, as under such circumstances the relative scarcity of resources presents little obstacle to mobilization. On the other hand, as the societies in question are not advanced industrial societies, the associated low dispersion of emancipatory values would exercise limited effect. To test these hypotheses, we looked at data from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey with reference to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. The results suggested that grievance was irrelevant as an explanatory factor. Participation in protests in the region is determined by the mobilization of resources and values.

Should I stay or should I go? The emergence of partitioned land use among human foragers.

Taking inspiration from the archaeology of the Texas Coastal Plain (TCP), we develop an ecological theory of population distribution among mobile hunter-gatherers. This theory proposes that, due to the heterogeneity of resources in space and time, foragers create networks of habitats that they access through residential cycling and shared knowledge. The degree of cycling that individuals exhibit in creating networks of habitats, encoded through social relationships, depends on the relative scarcity of resources and fluctuations in those resources. Using a dynamic model of hunter-gatherer population distribution, we illustrate that increases in population density, coupled with shocks to a biophysical or social system, creates a selective environment that favors habitat partitioning and investments in social mechanisms that control the residential cycling of foragers on a landscape. Our work adds a layer of realism to Ideal Distribution Models by adding a time allocation decision process in a variable environment and illustrates a general variance reduction, safe-operating space tradeoff among mobile human foragers that drives social change.

MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF PRICE POLICIES FOR FISH IN EGYPT

Prices reflect the relative scarcity of resources in terms of planning is based under the free-market mechanisms for price and market signals as an essential mechanism in the allocation of resources and guidance system, Price is also working on consumer directed toward maximizing satisficing the resources available to them, which leads to maximizing the well-being of the community. The research problem is in direct government intervention in price policy, which may give rise to a variation in the local and indirect world prices lead to non-optimal utilization of the resources used in the production process, which affects the welfare of producers and consumers, as well as on government revenue and the outcome of the state foreign trade. research aims to identify the price differences between local and world prices resulting from price, The policies fish and by estimating the partial equilibrium model to examine the effect influence of the policies of government intervention at all stages of fish flow in the market, by measuring the efficiency of the product, the consumer, the community level, and measurement of well-being at the community level, as well as measurement of government revenues and this may help to measure the efficiency of these policies in achieving its objectives and examine the effects on producers, consumers and the overall economy. The results showed the following The average nominal protection for fish rate during the study period (1998-2013) amounted to 0.67 i.e. it is greater than zero, which means that the state supports the producers of fish by about at 67% in favor of the producers of fish on the expense of the consumer represented in the higher domestic price for the world price, The results indicate that the concern of the State on promoting fish producers to reduce the size of the gap and reduce the import of foreign currency into force. The study showed also that the expansion of fish production leads to increased foreign exchange earnings by reducing imports and reduce the food gap, where the maximum fish production reached amounted to 1372.0, 1454.4 during the years 2012.2013, respectively, while the maximum foreign exchange earnings reached a maximum in 2012, 2013 amounted to 27067.03. The results of the welfare check gains in producer excess as the average change in the product excess amounted to 3.1336 billion pounds, which reflects the impact of price policy applied, while under the negative values of consumer excess has been achieved loss in consumer surplus, bringing the average loss during the study period of about 5566.88 million pounds. Decline in consumer surplus was due to the local consumer bear the superiority of market forces and the presence of protectionist policy to support the product and taxing the consumer, leading to increased consumer spending as a result of the purchase of small quantities at high prices, leading to lower prices of consumer welfare.

Syllabification and parameter optimisation in Zulu to English machine translation

We present a series of experiments involving the machine translation of Zulu to English using a well-known statistical software system. Due to morphological complexity and relative scarcity of resources, the case of Zulu is challenging. Against a selection of baseline models, we show that a relatively naive approach of dividing Zulu words into syllables leads to a surprising improvement. We further improve on this model through manual configuration changes. Our best model significantly outperforms the baseline models (BLEU measure, at p < 0.001) even when they are optimised to a similar degree, only falling short of the well-known Morfessor morphological analyser that makes use of relatively sophisticated algorithms. These experiments suggest that even a simple optimisation procedure can improve the quality of this approach to a significant degree. This is promising particularly because it improves on a mostly language independent approach — at least within the same language family. Our work also drives the point home that sub-lexical alignment for Zulu is crucial for improved translation quality.

Radical Social Movements in Western Europe: A Configurational Analysis

There has been little comparative research on the differences across radical social movements in the context of consolidated democracies. This paper analyses the squatting movement, as an exemplary case of contemporary radical movement. This study aims to identify the causal contexts that explain the differences of strengths within these movements across 52 large cities in Western Europe. It examines three main hypotheses drawn from the literature on social movements concerning the characteristics of political systems, the availability of resources and the presence of economic grievances. We use fuzzy sets qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify configurations of causal conditions. The findings show that diverse contexts (multi-causation) lead to strong movements. A first causal context combines grievances, resources and closed or unresponsive institutions, and is typically found in Southern European cities. A second context highlights the presence of robust far-right parties in combination with less severe grievances and relative scarcity of resources, and is typically found in Northern European cities. These findings demonstrate that resources and grievances are quasi-necessary conditions for strong radical movements, although polarization can lead to a similar outcome where these characteristics are not present.

Diverse Workplaces and Interethnic Friendship Formation—A Multilevel Comparison across 21 OECD Countries

We study how workplace diversity affects how native-born populations form interethnic friendship relations. Drawing on network elasticity research, the relationship between functional and cognitive interdependencies, and intergroup contact theory, we argue that diverse workplaces—because they restrict individuals' opportunities to act on tendencies towards homophily more than other social units—have a particularly strong potential for integration. We test our argument by analysing data from the first round of the European Social Survey with multilevel modelling. In line with expectations, we find that individuals who work at diverse workplaces are more likely than individuals who work at homogenous workplaces to have immigrant friends; that workplace diversity is more efficacious than neighbourhood diversity in generating interethnic friendship relations; and that the association between workplace diversity and the likelihood of having immigrant friends is stronger among individuals who have a low level of education, feel economically vulnerable, and who live in countries characterized by relative resource scarcity.

Collaborative green innovation in emerging countries: a social capital perspective

Purpose– The new paradigm for green innovation has already shifted to a collaborative model. This study aims to examine how environmental collaboration across organizational boundaries affects green innovation from the social capital perspective.Design/methodology/approach– This study used structural equation modeling method to analyze the innovation performance of 237 Taiwanese firms. Non-response bias was also assessed statistically and appropriate measures taken to minimise the impact of common method variance.Findings– The empirical results showed that: structural capital and cognitive capital have a positive influence on relational capital, relational capital plays a significant role in green management and in turn leads to greater innovation. To achieve effective green innovation, companies should leverage their social capital in order to produce additional competitive advantages through environmental collaboration.Originality/value– With the relative scarcity of resources and the increased pressures for environmental sustainability, there is an increasing interest in studying collaborative green innovation in emerging countries. Unlike many other empirical studies, this study makes an important contribution to the literature by examining how environmental collaboration in emerging countries affects green innovation from the social capital perspective in a detailed manner.

Examining Factors that Impact Mississippi Counties' Unreserved Fund Balance during Relative Resource Abundance and Relative Resource Scarcity

Although using some of the same organizational and financial factors examined by prior researchers to build and test models that explain factors influencing change in the general fund unreserved balance for smaller, rural, and less affluent counties in Mississippi, the rationale of this study is to build additional support that applying the recommended 5–15 percent savings benchmark across all jurisdictions is not a sufficient guide. Overall, Mississippi counties maintain unreserved fund balances ranging from a negative balance to over one hundred percent of their current expenditures. Counties also increase reserves during times of relative resource abundance and decrease them during relative resource scarcity. Moreover, they tend to address short‐term needs and resident demands when revenues are plentiful. During relative resource scarcity, however, they are more cost‐conscious and focus on maintaining rather than expanding current expenditures. This research shows that counties using the Beat system, a political form of government, are more likely to behave more frugally than counties using a Unit system, an administrative form of government.

Jack-of-all-trades or master of one? Variation in foraging specialisation across years in Darwin’s Tree Finches (Camarhynchus spp.)

Theory predicts that species should have wider foraging niches during conditions of resource scarcity. However, empirical evidence to date has shown mixed patterns, including studies of Darwin’s finches that have found narrower foraging niches during conditions of resource scarcity. Here, we compare foraging behaviour in three species of Darwin’s Tree Finches (Camarhynchus spp.) in a dry versus wet year on Floreana Island to examine the change in foraging breadth under conditions of resource scarcity. We provide descriptive data on diet, foraging substrate, technique, height, and foraging time across the Small Tree Finch (C. parvulus), Medium Tree Finch (C. pauper), and Large Tree Finch (C. psittacula). During dry versus wet years, we made the following predictions: (1) lower intraspecific niche breadth (that is, a higher level of specialisation), (2) lower interspecific overlap in all foraging parameters, and (3) longer foraging times due to relative resource scarcity. Our findings showed that the Small and Medium Tree Finches were generalist foragers, while the Large Tree Finch was a specialist. Resource specialisation varied across years of differing rainfall: both generalist species were less specialised (higher Shannon diversity index) during the dry year, while the specialist species was more specialised (lower Shannon diversity index).

The End of Cost Allocations As We Know Them

Cost allocations have befuddled managers around the world for over a century. The need for objective, actionable accounting data is frustrated not just by the difficult theoretical issues in distinguishing among various classes of cost, but also by informational asymmetries and agency conflicts between operating managers and corporate managers. Despite the obstacles, there are good reasons for allocating costs. Properly structured, allocations or other transfer pricing schemes can serve the same purposes as market prices, i.e., communicating useful information about the relative scarcity of resources within an organization, thereby helping to balance supply and demand for those resources. Most transfer pricing schemes, like Activity-Based Costing, attempt to solve the problem through costly refinement of standard cost measurement models. This paper offers a contrasting model that begins with the recognition that post-hoc allocations inevitably involve subjective assignment of costs to activities, and that whatever objectivity can, in principle, be brought to bear on said assignments are undermined by internal incentives. The author offers, instead, transfer prices that arise from negotiations between two parties to an internal exchange under a particular set of decision rules reinforced by a performance measurement and reward system that gives both parties positive incentives to reveal their reservation prices for the goods or services being exchanged. For multiple parties, the author has created a simple, but sophisticated transfer auction process to facilitate investments in shared facilities or services that lead, prospectively, to efficient allocations of operating or capital costs.

The End of Cost Allocations as We Know Them

Cost allocation issues have befuddled management around the world for over a century. And, because of “informational asymmetries” and agency conflicts between operating management and headquarters, there is no clear theoretical solution to the problem. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for allocating costs. If properly structured, transfer‐pricing schemes can serve the same purpose as a market price. By communicating useful information about the relative scarcity of resources within an organization, they can serve to balance supply and demand for the product or service being priced.Unfortunately, most transfer‐pricing approaches, like Activity Based Costing, attempt to solve the problem by refining standard cost measures. In contrast to ABC, this article begins by recognizing that efforts to develop more precise cost allocations are bound to be frustrated by the information and incentive problems noted above. And in place of more precisely formulated measures of cost, the author proposes a process of negotiation between two parties to an exchange—a process that is reinforced by a performance measurement system that gives both parties incentives to reveal their “reservation” prices for the good or service in question. For transfers involving multiple users of a given service or products, the author recommends a transfer auction process that is also designed to make would‐be users reveal their assessments of value.

The transient village in southern New Zealand

Abstract Southern New Zealand is a cool‐temperate insular region, first colonized about 800 BP by hunter‐gatherers. Archaeological data, particularly from the site at Shag River Mouth, show that small villages, established early in the settlement sequence, were occupied only briefly and that by about 400 BP village habitation had ceased. Ethnographic observations and some archaeological evidence show that villages were re‐established late in the sequence, by about 200 BP. It is argued that these phases of sedentary settlement largely reflect different responses to relative scarcity of resources. In the early phase, transient villages were established close to rich resource clumps, notably of seals and moas, and these were depleted serially until that settlement mode was no longer practical. In the later phase, villages were sustained by long‐distance movement of dispersed resources, in a system facilitated by new socio‐political conditions.

Supervillage Formation in the Amazonian Terra Firme: The Case of Asenona

The relatively small size of settlements in the terra firme2 zone of the South American tropical forest has been the subject of much study and debate (see, for example, Steward & Faron 1959; Meggers 1957, 1971; Carneiro 1960, 1961; Lathrap 1968; Leeds 1969; Gross 1975, 1983; and Roosevelt 1980). In general, the size of settlements (as well as settlement mobility and location) in the terra firme has been viewed as an adaptation to the natural environment (see Hames 1983:393-405 for a succinct review of influencing factors). Regardless of the factors considered by researchers, the primary focus of investigation has been to explain why settlements are small, generally having 50 to 150 inhabitants (Steward 1949:676, Map 19), and why settlements are moved frequently (for example, every five to twenty years) (Gross 1983:429). The limiting influences of the world's tropical rain forest environments on cultural development have also received considerable attention from researchers who now recognize that the tropical rain forest biome is not a homogeneous entity and that significant variation in its natural environmental potential is present (see Parker et al. 1983, for Amazonia). Large settlements (even cities in some locales) existed in the tropical rain forests of Africa, Southeast Asia, Mesoamerica, and South America in the precolonial period. Therefore, the limitations imposed by the tropical rain forest environment on human population concentrations have been overcome in many instances. However, even when compared to other tropical rain forest zones, the Amazonian terra firme is still regarded as exceptionally resource-poor (Meggers 1971; Sponsel 1986). This view is based partially upon ecological research in terra firme areas that has shown them to be relatively less rich in natural resources than other tropical rain forest environments. Moreover, since ethnographic data for the precolonial period are lacking, the relative scarcity of resources in the terra firme has been inferred from ethnographic analogy. Researchers have tended to accept the proposition that the precolonial situation of human societies in the terra firme was similar to that encountered among extant, relatively unacculturated, groups. Since these groups live in small, impermanent settlements with seemingly simple sociopolitical systems, it is believed that this has always been the case in the area (Roosevelt 1989:30-34). Thus, the circular reasoning is that because humans in the area have not developed larger settlements and more complex sociocultural systems, the natural environment of the terra firme must be too limited in natural resources to permit such development. The ethnocentric and evolutionary bias of such a proposition must be recognized. It is based upon the idea that humans are naturally progressive. Progress, in this case, is toward permanent and large population settlements and more complex sociocultural systems. Although much valuable ecological

Comparative ecology of the six albatross species breeding on the Crozet Islands

Six species of albatrosses breed sympatrically at the Crozet Islands. The population size, masses and measurements of adults, nesting habitats and coloniality, laying, hatching and fledging dates, duration of incubation and brooding shifts are compared. The growth of chicks, diets and feeding methods of the six species are reviewed. Their distribution in the south Indian Ocean is described in relation to the feeding frequency of chicks. Various aspects of ecological isolation among the species are analysed. Overlaps exist in the timing of breeding in the small albatrosses and to a lesser extent in their diet. Differences in the foraging zones at sea appear to be the most important factor in reducing interspecific competition. It is shown that the effective division of resources results from a relative scarcity of resources around the Crozet Islands. Finally the close interrelationship between foraging strategy, breeding biology, diet, chick growth and breeding frequency in the small albatrosses is demonstrated.

Vernon W. Ruttan. Agricultural Research Policy. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. 1982. xiv + 369 pp.Price: $ 13 .95 paper back.

This book makes an important contribution to the literature on the development and transfer of new technology for profitable farming the world over. Professor Ruttan has had a distinguished career in research and its administration in a number of institutions. He brings that experience to bear on his analysis of a variety of issues in agricultural research. While much of the material contained in the book has already appeared in his earlier writings, it is well organized here around three themes. The rust is the induced innovation model: that the type of technology developed and adopted in a country reflects a rational response to relative scarcity of resources. New agricultural technology helps in substituting the relatively scarce factors by those that are relatively abundant. The signals are created mainly in the market-place. It is not, however, clear how the induced-innovation model can help in making current decisions about allocating resources to agricultural research.

Moral and Political Economies in Rural Southeast Asia A Review Article

Over the course of the past few decades, analyses and comparisons of agrarian politics and insurrections have been of central concern within political science, sociology, and related disciplines. Especially in the last ten years, these concerns have been informed and recast in light of theoretical advances and paradigmatic shifts within various academic fields, and as a consequence of tumultuous, realpolitik developments impinging upon or otherwise involving large numbers of peasants. In the case of Southeast Asia, for instance, the most recent decade has witnessed the emergence of substantive challenges to long established models and epistemological assumptions underlying our basic understandings of agrarian rebellion as well as our very discourse on the logic of peasant political strategies and seemingly communalistic traditions. Certain of these challenges range well beyond explicitly political matters and speak to a much broader set of issues. On the one hand, such issues pertain to the characteristic features of peasant economics and exchange, the nature of structural ties linking rural sectors with the world market, and the overall nexus of peasant welfare levels, ideologies, and adaptations in the context of colonial and postcolonial states. On the other hand, and yet clearly related to the foregoing, the questions posed by recent critics of received knowledge bear upon motivation and decision making, particularly in light of cultural perceptions of legitimacy and attitudes toward the taking and sharing of risk. Indeed, what we seem to have is essentially a clarion call for a complete reassessment of peasant responses both to upward shifts in demographic pressure and relative resource scarcity, and more generally, to the large-scale transformation of agrarian relations that is commonly associated with the