Competitive Skills Research Articles

The Need for Geriatric Dental Education

Dear colleagues. Wish you all a happy, prosperous and a productive year!! An eventful year has passed by. And yet there is so much more to be achieved!! And so much more to give back to the society. There is a rapid growth of the geriatric population amidst us. The report, by the United Nations Population Fund, found the number of over-60s in our country will increase from around 100 million today to more than 300 million by 2050 and warned the government to prepare for the additional strain this will put on families and health and welfare services. It also predicted the number of over-80s will increase seven fold. “These findings underline that with a growing elderly population in the country there is a need to strengthen geriatric care services in the existing public health system so that the increasing care demands of the elderly can be met,” the report warned. It also said the government must increase the availability and take-up welfare benefits for the elderly poor [1]. The rapid growth in the elderly population in a developing country such as India poses social and financial challenges by causing a shift towards non-communicable diseases and increase in chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes and cancer. The link between oral health and general health are particularly pronounced in older populations and impairs their quality of life [2]. To address the increasing health challenges and demands of a growing geriatric population, undergraduates and graduate students in dental schools should be given comprehensive or holistic health assessment training. Cost-effective modern educational strategies and educational tools such as problem-based learning will help to overcome the dearth of trained faculty in geriatric dentistry [3]. Multidisciplinary health-care approaches and extended health-care team work are of vital importance to older patients who could benefit physically and psychologically from more efficient dental treatment. Measures to help older people remain healthy and active are a necessity in developing countries such as India for effective social and economic development [4]. The need for geriatric dental education was realized in the late 1970s. Yellowitz and Saunders [5], Kress and Vidmar [6] and Ettinger [7] were the pioneers who championed the cause for special education needs for geriatric dentistry. Geriatric dentistry is better developed in most of the developed nations such as the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and the European nations, as compared to the developing world. As stated by Nitschke [8], gerodontology does not compete with other traditional specialties but only complements them. They have identified eleven domains in which geriatric dentistry was included in various basic sciences and clinical subjects of dentistry after analysis of the undergraduate curriculum in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. This can provide the starting point to develop a curriculum for various categories of courses in geriatric dentistry. In developing countries, geriatric dentistry has not received the attention of dental professionals and policymakers, though one-sixth of the total world population of elderly now lives in the developing countries of Southeast Asia [4]. It is time that the academicians and policy makers promote geriatric dentistry education at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in our country whereby the teaching of geriatric dentistry starts right from the first year BDS. Therefore the society at large would benefit if we stress the need to educate our students so that they will be equipped with competitive skills which will enable them to treat the growing geriatric population. In this way we can contribute to enhancing the quality of life of the elderly population.

A Theoretical Assessment on Emotional Intelligence as a Competitive Managerial Skill


 
 
 Emotion as the main motive underlying the human behaviors is a concept that has been researched by many disciplines in the social sciences. Deriving from behavioral studies on emotions, Emotional Intelligence as a critical concept in organizational behavior studies is attached to the assestment of employee motivation and performance drivers. In this study, a theoretical framework for the emotional intelligence in workplace has been assessed. The major contribution of the concept in competitive business strategies from managerial scope has been evaluated.
 
 

How environmental regulations affect innovation in the Australian oil and gas industry: going beyond the Porter Hypothesis

The impact of environmental regulation on innovation is of central interest to many industries and policy makers alike. While traditional research adopts a top-down view of regulation and attempts to measure the innovation response, the more bottom-up view of contemporary theory argues that firms produce innovations that exceed compliance levels as a competitive strategy. We approach this dichotomy by investigating innovation introduced by Australian oil and gas firms in light of environmental regulatory compliance burden and firm-level characteristics, including competitive capabilities. Analyses of survey responses, executive-level interviews and conference proceedings reveal both regulatory (top-down) and competitive advantage (bottom-up) perspectives explain innovation in this industry. Regression analyses reveal that product/service and novel innovations (all types) are related to a high compliance burden, competitive skills, research and development activity, and engagement in formal collaborations. Interview and conference data add nuance to our findings revealing collaborative compliance frameworks result in similar innovation outcomes.

The role of competitive intelligence on improving exports

Article history: Received January 20, 2014 Accepted 30 August 2014 Available online September 15 2014 Competitive intelligence is the art of gathering, processing and analyzing the information about the competitors and environment in order to create and sustain the competitive advantage. The application of competitive intelligence in export companies can provide a complete picture of current and future competitive status for managers in addition to obtaining the most appropriate strategic decisions, which could ultimately lead to the improved exports in these companies. This study investigates the role of competitive intelligence for improvement of exports in Iranian industries. Using structural equation modeling, the study has detected six factors including understanding the competitive environment, intelligent response, superior features, customer orientation, managerial skills and competitive advantage. © 2014 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Competitive Intelligence Improved Exports Decision Making Competitiveness

The Perceived Gap between Academics and Professionals about Accounting Education System in Iran

The spread and acceptance of globalization and the great improvements in the information technology has caused incredible changes in the state of business. These changes have brought about new challenges not only in accounting as a career but also in its education. Schools educating future accountants are responsible for causing the gaps between adoptive skills in the universities and the perceived skills in the profession and worldwide markets. This research tries to identify the challenges that accounting education brings in educating students in regard to possessing knowledge and skill at a competitive level in response to the market’s needs. These challenges justify why the competitive skills of the accountants must improve. Accounting education in its current situation and the skill level of the graduates of the field is not parallel to what is needed in the dynamic atmosphere of the world’s trade. That is why it is necessary to search for a plan in order to fill the gap between adoptive knowledge and skills and the expected knowledge and skills so that it prepares the students facing the challenges in the new state of the global business. In this paper, accounting education challenges are scientifically investigated and a strategic plan is proposed in order to overcome them. This issue is addressed first by considering the curriculum of prominent universities around the world and then by evaluating the current Iranian curriculum for the accounting major at the master level using questionnaires.

Lean Manufacturing and Business Performance in Brazilian Firms

In this paper, we examine the relationship among lean manufacturing management,competitive skills, and business performance from the perspective of managers of companies doingbusiness in Brazil. We conduct a survey of 68 Brazilian companies that use lean manufacturing andanalyze data using structural equation modeling based on partial least squares method. Results show,considering competitive skills as mediating variable, a positive relationship between lean manufacturingand business performance. Results also suggest that managers lack awareness about the importance ofthe competitive skills to enhance business performance.DOI: 10.12660/joscmv6n1p91-105URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.12660/joscmv6n1p91-105

Global policy developments towards industrial policy and skills: skills for competitiveness and growth

There is a rising interest in both skills policy and industrial policy in OECD countries following the economic downturn. But how can skills policy best support industrial growth? In the UK, the coalition government is arguing for an industrial policy which is bottom-up, supporting networks of employers and helping to build productive local supply chains. There is simultaneous investment in a more ‘employer-led’ skills policy, in order to better tackle skills shortages and gaps. But is an employer-led skills policy the best way of boosting industrial growth in all UK regions? Are there potential market failures in employer-led policies of which the public sector should be aware? This article warns against taking an overly simplistic approach to skills development, arguing that while skills policies should be flexible to the needs of employers, there is still justification for investing in a broad educational curriculum at the local level. Further, policy-makers may need proactively to help employers to better use skills in some regions in order to boost productivity and growth.

Is father–child rough-and-tumble play associated with attachment or activation relationships?

The activation relationship theory, primarily focused on parental stimulation of risk-taking along with parental control during exploration, predicts that boys will be activated more than girls by their fathers. This theory may explain why fathers engage in rough-and-tumble play (RTP) with children more frequently than mothers, especially with boys. Thus, the main objective of this study is to verify the existence of a positive association between the father–son activation relationship and the frequency of father–son RTP. Given that RTP is thought to encourage the development of competition skills, it was anticipated that no association would be found between the father–child attachment relationship and the frequency of father–child RTP. The Strange Situation (SS) and Risky Situation procedures were conducted with 58 father–child dyads (22 boys and 36 girls) during toddlerhood to evaluate the attachment relationship and the activation relationship, respectively. The fathers completed a play questionnaire when children were three years old to assess RTP. Results show that the more optimally activated boys are by their fathers in toddlerhood, the more they engage in RTP with them at the age of three years. As it was anticipated, there is no association between the father–child attachment relationship in toddlerhood and the frequency of father–child RTP in the preschool period. In addition, the tendency of avoidant children to engage in more RTP with their fathers supports the hypothesis that the SS evaluates something different when used with father–child dyads instead of mother–child dyads.

National construction of global education: a critical review of the national curriculum standards for South Korean global high schools

In this paper, the authors investigate what global visions of education are reflected in the selected national curriculum standards, with special reference to two seemingly contradictory forces: globalization and nationalism. This paper examines the socio-economic and cultural foundations of the curriculum and explains how the national curriculum for South Korean global high schools symbolically appropriates global education for the purpose of national competitiveness. Our findings show that, although the selected curriculum document alludes to the importance of international understanding and of global citizenship education, its primary objective is to provide students with knowledge and skills for national competitiveness and to uphold, rather than weaken, national identity in reaction to global pressures. This phenomenon is closely linked to the historical background of Koreanized globalization, in which the concept of segyehwa has been used as a catalyst for undertaking global education for the ends of global competiveness and national pride.

Manufacturing Systems: Skills & Competencies for the Future

Recent studies have presented clear evidence of the relationship between human capital qualifications and competitiveness. At the same time, there have been frequent reports on the shortage of skilled manufacturing personnel. This paper introduces some approaches to building skills and competences in manufacturing. The importance of human capital skills for industry's competitiveness is first discussed, providing an overview of the current situation in different world regions. Modern approaches to manufacturing education are shortly reviewed. The need for young people to be enlightened about the exciting character of manufacturing, with real life problems being addressed under business conditions, via scientific approaches and cutting edge technologies, is discussed. A “Teaching Factory” paradigm is being introduced as a distance-learning knowledge delivery mechanism of bringing the real factory into the classroom. The activities of the KNOW-FACT project aiming to deliver a pilot implementation of the Teaching Factory paradigm as a 2-way “learning channel” connecting industry and academia are further discussed.

Human Resource Management in the Indian Banking Sector

Efficient human resource management is one of the most essential requirements for survival in this competitive world. In this paper, an attempt has been made to test the hypothesis for administrative skills, competitive advantage and human resource development (HRD) policies. This study reveals that Indian bank managers have good administrative skills for industrial competitiveness. Also, they have good administrative skills to manage HRD policies.

Exploring entrepreneurial skills and competencies in farm tourism

Diversification to farm tourism is increasingly seen as a viable development strategy to promote a more diverse and sustainable rural economy and to counter declining farm incomes. However, the dynamics of the modern farm tourism business and the entrepreneurial and competitive skills farmers require in making the transition from agriculture to a diversified enterprise remains limited. This article explores the range of skills and competencies that farmers in the North West of England identify as important when adopting a diversification strategy to farm tourism. The findings indicate that, whilst a range of managerial skills are valued by farmers, they lack many of the additional business and entrepreneurial competencies required for success. The article acknowledges the need to generate consensus on the requisite skill-set that farm tourism operators require.

SURVIVAL OF THE WEAKEST IN N- PERSON DUELS AND THE MAINTENANCE OF VARIATION UNDER CONSTANT SELECTION

The persistence of extensive variation in nature seems to stand against the most general principle of evolution by natural selection: in antagonistic interactions, the stronger type is expected to replace the weaker. Game theory shows that, however, in contrast to this intuitive expectation for interactions between two players, strategic considerations on fitness maximization in repeated pairwise interactions between three players (truels) or more (N-person duels) lead to what can be dubbed "survival of the weakest": the weakest individual can have the highest fitness. A paradox arises: competitive skills cannot be improved by natural selection, unless we assume mutations with strong effects or unless we assume that interactions are exclusively between two individuals. The paradox disappears, however, with more realistic assumptions (a mixture of duels and truels; the attacked individual backfires; the contest can end without a winner; defensive and offensive skills are correlated; players not directly involved in the contest suffer collateral damage). An unexpected new result emerges: the weaker types can persist in a population in the absence of recurrent mutations, migration, and fluctuating selection. Game theory and the analysis of N-person duels, therefore, help understand one of the most enduring puzzles in evolutionary biology: the maintenance of variation under constant selection.

Effectiveness of Street Youth Reintegration in East Africa

Youth unemployment in Africa challenges governments and development partners alike. This problem is hard to tackle because of the lack of reliable data and related analysis on scale, distribution and complexity of employment, unemployment and livelihood situation as well as effective policies, programmes and approaches for young women and men (F. Chigunta, J. Schnurr, D. James-Wilson and V. Torres, 2005). In addition to youth unemployment, there are other vulnerable groups of young people such as those on the Streets. Street youth are products of poverty, political instability, war, urbanization, HIV/AIDS amongst other causes. Many participate in crime, sex and drug peddling because of limited income generation alternatives. According to the United Nations 40 percent of young people in the developing countries live on less than USD 1 per day (UNICEF, 2000). There are also over 100 million youth worldwide working and sometimes living on the streets. The focus of this study is on the effectiveness of reintegration practices amongst the street children organizations in East Africa. Most institutions care for street children and reintegrate them once they become young adults, leaving them to find jobs and to fend for themselves. Some institutions reintegrate the children immediately they finish primary school while others while they are undergoing their secondary schooling or tertiary education. Unfortunately, for many children, at the time of reintegration they may not have adequate skills for competitiveness in the job markets (KARDS, 2006). This study will find out the nature of reintegration strategies and existing reintegration activities. Lastly the study intends to generate recommendations to improve the street youth reintegration in East Africa. The study uses a set of data collected by Koinonia Advisory Research and Development Service (KARDS) in 2006. KARDS is a Nairobi based community development consultancy. This data is based on the work-activities for 122 street children institutions in Nairobi and its surrounding areas. The data was collected between May and July 2006. Various operational activities for street children institutions such as rehabilitation, street work, outreach and reintegration were captured in this data. This study only uses the section of the data that focuses on reintegration.The study found out that while there were many rehabilitation activities for street children, reintegration activities for maturing street youth were very minimal on the overall constituting only 2% of the total institutional activities. Disengagement from programme benefits for most institutions is sudden and unplanned and may also be linked to punishments. Disengaging the children is a challenge for institutions because of the fear of what may happen to them once they are on their own.It is hoped that this study could be used to inform practitioners in order to improve their insights on reintegration; the government may use it to formulate policies based on evidence. Lastly it may provide useful insights to the donor community interested in helping reducing the vulnerability faced by street youth.

Intergenerational externalities, sustainability and welfare—The ambiguous effect of optimal policies on resource depletion

This paper studies an endogenous growth model with exhaustible resources, overlapping generations and human capital externalities. In the competitive equilibrium, selfish behavior and inefficient skills accumulation may prevent sustained growth. Implementing the utilitarian optimum likely induces sustainability via increased knowledge formation, but resource depletion may be faster or slower than under laissez-faire depending on the social discount rate. Heavy (modest) social discounting delays (anticipates) the achievement of net welfare gains for newborn agents and successors. The reason is that human capital accumulation magnifies the positive growth effects of policies that lower the rate of resource destruction, preserving the welfare of newborn agents. Resource-depleting policies, instead, hamper growth and reduce lifetime welfare of early-in-time generations—the first loser being the currently young.

The ontogeny of social skills: experimental increases in social complexity enhance reproductive success in adult cowbirds

The social environment can act as an important selective force on both morphological and behavioural traits by conferring a reproductive advantage on individuals that successfully navigate social interactions. The ontogeny of these social traits is poorly understood. We examined whether increasing exposure to more complex social environments could hone competitive skills and ultimately increase reproductive success in adult brown-headed cowbirds, Molothrus ater. We created two types of flocks (‘Dynamic’ and ‘Stable’) that differed in social complexity. In Dynamic flocks, birds were regularly exchanged across groups, whereas in ‘Stable’ flocks, the composition of birds remained static throughout a year. Social networking analyses revealed that males in the Dynamic flocks had larger and more variable singing networks during the manipulations than did the males in the Stable flocks. When we put males from the two conditions together into new environments with unfamiliar females, the Dynamic-condition males had greater mating success. Our results establish a link between social competence and reproductive success and suggest that social skills are extremely flexible characteristics, even in adulthood.

Trounced Talent: Tajikistan's Youth Troubled by Transition

A steady rise in the youth segment of the population is projected for the next 15–20 years in the Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan. The youth of the country's mountainous communities are endowed with immense sporting talent but fewer opportunities to harness and groom those skills optimally. When given opportunities many talented youth have proved their skills in provincial, national, regional and international competitions. Such a reservoir of talent deserves to be turned into examples of living healthily, constructively and competently. Some encouragement and basic facilities can help widen youth's participation and also develop a pool of talented youth who can be groomed to compete and excel in international competitions. This could contribute to encouraging healthy living to pre-empt any deviant tendencies like drug addiction among youth living along the mountain frontiers.

Inginkah Anda Mempunyai Banyak Pasien ?

In this global era the quality of dental service in Indonesia has become increasingly competitive, which can be reflected in the increasing number of traditional dental service, private dental practice, public health service, 24 hour health clinic, dental clinic, specialist dental clinic and dental spa. Dentists need to consider an appropriate service method and to determine the patient’s specific target so that they could become a loyal customer. The first important consideration in order to satisfy customer a dentist has to be updated with the latest dentistry development, dental equipment and material, so that he is able to apply the latest dental techniques with sophisticated equipment and materials. The second point is the dental service quality, the dentist meticulousness and carefulness to execute every case. The third point is the best dental service of the dentist and his team, hospitality, punctuality, strategic practice location and interior practice hygiene. The last important point is to determine the patient’s specific target market based on dentist’s competitive skill and local people characteristic. DOI: 10.14693/jdi.v15i3.26

Ships without a shore: America's undernurtured children

Childhood in America has changed, and not for the better. From day care for babies, to the exhausting array of activities for children, to the storm of lurid and violent shows now deemed appropriate for the young, to the expectation that teenagers build resumes, childhood has been thoroughly redefined. Anne R. Pierce argues that this radical re-definition has been embraced with remarkably little discussion about what children, by nature, need. Pierce submits that we have latched onto opinions about childrearing that are potentially harmful to children. If traditions are choices to be embraced or abandoned at our discretion, and adult self-fulfillment is a primary determinant in those choices, the fundamentals of the well-wrought childhood are easily forgotten. Steeped in intellectual permissiveness, we have convinced ourselves that parental substitutes are as good as parents themselves at caring for children, that the concepts of nurture and of the maternal are archaic and irrelevant, that more lessons and sports are better than less and that the earlier one embarks upon them the better, and that innocence and knowledge are less important than worldly attitudes and competitive skills. Understanding and challenging the theories and agendas behind childrearing trends is a pressing need, and the subject of this book. Pierce takes an honest look at the evidence on the effects of daycare and of hyper-structuring children. She gives voice to the many intelligent and estimable educators, child-development experts, researchers, and social commentators who are ignored because their conclusions are hard to bear. Equally important, Pierce says, is attention to that inner tug of love and conscience, which many of us have been programmed to ignore. Modern American children are expected to adjust and to understand as adults would the complexities and vicissitudes of public as opposed to private life. For them, childhood is fast becoming a distant memory. Could it be that America's thrust forward leaves children without a solid foundation upon which to grow? This is the sobering question asked, and answered, in this challenging book.

The Faces of Innovation

Innovation is a highly diversified phenomena. A survey of innovation strategies in over 1000 firms and research organizations allowed the authors to identify six very different innovation archetypes, each characterized by a basic strategy or innovation game. The games are defined by two dimensions, whether the innovation is incremental or market-creating and whether it is associated with a stand-alone product or with a product that is part of an open or of a closed system. Each of the six games (Eureka!, System breakthrough, Battle of architectures, New and improved, Pushing the envelope, and Mass customization) is characterized by a specific ecosystem. Preliminary findings also suggest that incremental innovations have an economic contribution significantly bigger than market-creating disruptive innovations. At any given time, an industry is dominated by a particular game, although it can change games from time to time. The ability to execute a game and the ability to recognize the salient game are critical competitive skills. From a public policy perspective, the breakdown of innovation into six different games, has significant implications, for the effectiveness of specific policies will differ greatly from one game to another.