Practical Applications of Commodity ETFs: Do They Add Value?

This study focuses on Human Capital Management (HCM). It provides Added value (AV) indicator considering HCM, tools to utilize them and also verify robustness of the tools. The aim of this study is to provide a quantitative technique for managers to make decisions by objectively evaluating HCM as well as projecting profit increase, which is generated by HCM. AV has been often used as a value measurement. However, profit structure supported by tangible assets has been changed to be supported by intangible assets in recent years. It is necessary to redefine AV for considering influence of intangible assets. Therefore, this study provides Personnel adjusted AV (PAV); AV indicator considering HCM. It also creates tools to utilize them using statistical methods. Then, verify the robustness of the tools. In the process of verifying robustness, this study extracts particular indices. It is possible to obtain suggestions for social issue from particular indices.

Mobile payment (m-payment) apps have been introduced as an innovative alternative payment method that extends in-store payment options available to consumers. Despite being marketed as convenient and secure, recent research reports that m-payment uptake has gone far below earlier forecasts. This is due to consumers perceiving little added value relative to existing payment options, such as contactless cards. Augmenting m-payment with value added services (VAS) has been suggested as a way to add value to m-payment and boost demand. However, empirical investigation about the role and effect of VAS on consumers’ perceptions of m-payment value remains scant. This study attempts to fill this gap by employing a deductive qualitative approach through the lens of perceived value theory, extended with perceived trust and risk. A total of 23 interviews were conducted with UK adopters and nonadopters of m-payment. The findings suggest that the perceived added value of the augmented m-payment service was mainly derived from utilitarian values associated with the additional functionalities offered by VAS. Additionally, the augmentation of m-payment has enhanced perceptions of trust in the service provider as a result of integrating additional features that tackle issues associated with the payment experience. This study advances knowledge of the concept of added value in the m-payment context and provides practical suggestions to m-payment providers for increasing the consumer perceived value.

The effective delivery of support services for international students has been the subject of professional discourse for nearly a century (Wheeler, King & Davidson, 1925). While scholars have long examined the problem of student attrition, early retention models (Spady, 1970; Tinto, 1988) applied anthropological, psychological and sociological theories in ways that mostly ignored the intuitional responsibility and capacity to serve culturally diverse individuals. Furthermore, an analysis of fifty years of student affairs research found that international students were mostly excluded (Pope, Mueller and Reynolds, 2009). It was not until the establishment of the Journal of International Students that international students began to receive regular attention within the academic literature. International student advisors have an important role to play in helping international students adjust to their host communities and institutions. However, changes to student immigration regulations has resulted in an increased emphasis on immigration compliance (Boyd, 2008; Rosser, Hermsen, Mamiseishvili, & Wood, 2007) and lowered the capacity of some international student offices to provide non-immigration services. The quality of international student services, whether immigration or not, is generally dependent on formal and informal processes of which multiple stakeholders are a part. Thus, a small change to one element has the potential to affect the whole. In order to maximize efficiency and effectiveness of services offered, international student advisors may benefit from applying a systems perspective as summarized by the following formula: ISS = [PM + (LM + I + V)] + CI International Student Services = [Process Mapping + (Lean Mindset + Intentionality + Value)] + Continuous Improvement Process Mapping Process mapping is a useful tool for understanding the interrelationships of all the specific elements that allow for a specific service. For instance, a process map may be used to visualize the series of steps, decisions and delays that begin when someone applies for admission as an international student and ends when that person receives the necessary documents to apply for a student visa. The elements are each mapped individually and their relationships to each other visually mapped to create a workflow diagram. This dynamic flowcharting activity makes it possible to understand how each part contributes to the whole and the downstream consequences of interventions. Lean Mindset International student advisors should strive to develop a lean mindset. This includes commitment to identifying and eliminating wastes from programs and services offered to international students. Such wastes may include requiring international students to complete actions that are unnecessaryor overly burdensome. For instance, requiring a student to obtain signatures on a paper form in order to request authorization for curricular practical training when free cloud-based solutions exist that would expedite and simply the process for all involved. As the workload of international student advisors increase due to additional immigration compliance requirements, it is critical to be able to maximize capacity by eliminating waste. Intentionality International student services should be considered an important part of the co-curriculum. While an orientation program for new international students may include a shopping trip to the local, an intentional approach to this service would be to leverage the activity as a means for teaching students how to use the local bus system. This would not only accomplish the basic goal of helping students obtain access to needed goods, but it would also help them acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to travel confidently around their host community. Value When analyzing components of international student services, it is important to assess parts of the process using the following criteria: 1. Adds value from the student’s perspective 2. Does not add value from the student’s perspective, but is required 3. Does not add value from the student’s perspective nor is it required The goal of assessing value is to ensure most, if not all, of the components that make up the process are viewed as valuable from the perspective of the student. This helps to ensure a higher level of satisfaction with the services offered and it keeps advisors from engaging in activities that detract from the overall mission of supporting international students. Continuous Improvement The work of enhancing international student services is never complete. Rather, the international student office staff should commit to regularly reviewing and refining the services they offer using the method summarized by the formula. Conclusion A systems perspective is helpful for understanding and ensuring the effectiveness of international student services. While international student advisors may be exceptional as individual contributors to a given process, failure to see the interdependencies between their work and the work of others who touch the process can result in misalignment in expectations and experiences on the part of the student.

This study analyzes the effect of Intellectual Capital Efficiency on firm performance of IT companies in India. NSE-IT index, consisting 10 IT companies was chosen for the study, the ICE was gauged using Value Added (VA) and Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC TM ). The study uses secondary data for 10 years from 2007 to 2016 and empirically analyses the relationship of VA, VAIC TM and the components of VAIC TM with Firm performance indicators (ROA, ROE and NPM) of IT sector. The result of the study reports the presence of a positive relationship among both VAIC TM and VA with firm performance indicators. The presence of relationship between components of VAIC TM and financial performance indicators shows a positive relationship of Value Added Structural Capital (STVA) with ROA and Net Profit Margin (NPM) but a negative relationship with ROE. Value Added Human Capital (VAHC) shows positive relationship with ROA and negative relationship with ROE. Value Added Capital Efficiency shows no significant relationship with any of the Performance measures.

The increasing popularity of lean thinking has made the analysis of value-adding (VA) and non-value adding (NVA) a popular activity to eliminate waste and improve productivity. Despite the great success of the Taiichi Ohno’s waste taxonomy and its adaptation and diffusion into the maintenance sector, a systematic classification of VA and NVA remains as a significant challenge for lean practitioners. The aim of this research is to develop a system to classify VA and NVA activities for lean applications in turnaround maintenance (TAM) projects. First, a comprehensive literature review was conducted on existing methods of defining and classifying value and waste. As a result of this review, an initial system to classify VA and NVA in TAM was proposed, which was then refined in three focus group studies conducted with a group of TAM participants. The improved classification system was evaluated by applying value stream mapping (VSM) in terms of the ontology effectiveness and efficiency using a sample case. The classification system contributes to an accurate classification of value, and waste and the relevant root causes in the TAM processes. The classification system provides an insight on a consolidated understanding and classification of VA and NVA in TAM projects.

Evolution of the bilateral trade situation between Belt and Road countries and China

During the 20th century, radiologists enjoyed relationships with clinicians and patients through daily face-to-face communication. As specialist consultants, radiologists were naturally integral members of the care team. The widespread availability of information technology, notably PACS, has disrupted the fundamental radiologist-clinician axis. New generations of radiologists must respond to this disturbing trend by (re)learning how to "add value" by rekindling personal professional relationships, developing global leadership skills, and becoming involved in health care system design and implementation.

This chapter considers the intersection between planning and commercial real estate in the UK, and how it has evolved, adapted and responded to globalisation and consequent regulatory and industry changes after the global financial crisis. We consider the implications of the broader changes that have taken place in London, in particular the influence of dynamic capital flows and ‘financialisation’. The rapidly changing investment and development context in London over the last decade has wide-ranging implications for planning practice, which seeks to balance sustainable social and economic real estate impacts, and successfully ‘add value’. The chapter reflects on how global drivers of change in the planning and real estate markets find expression in London, drawing on interviews with professionals in commercial real estate and planning.

We report on the development of a middle school life sciences inquiry module, Sensing the Environment. This ‘data-enriched’ inquiry module includes a series of activities exploring the nature of science, photosynthesis, transpiration, and natural selection, which culminates in students' querying authentic environmental data to support a scientific argument. This inquiry module results from a framework we devised to promote use of authentic data in the classroom. Our framework includes three elements: (a) an online tool, enabling authentic data to be easily searched, visualised, stored, and used to substantiate a scientific argument; (b) an online instructional teacher guide, providing support for teaching through inquiry; and (c) a dynamic data gathering/delivery system, allowing for expansion of the data and enabling students, teachers, scientists, or the public to ‘add value’ to the data. Based on our experience with Sensing the Environment, we suggest our framework can be a means for facilitating integration of rich, dynamic, and authentic data into science instruction.

Time is an increasingly important element in logistics strategy development. Service reliability and performance can give a real competitive edge. They can also reduce inventory and total distribution costs. Marketeers are now looking to distribution to ‘add value’. Alan Braithwaite of Logistics Consulting Partners describes the use of a new software tool STELLA which can be applied to provide the time dimension in planning logistics.

The argument made in the previous chapter was a culmination of those made before it and it consisted of five core elements: 1. Musicians organised as ‘acts’, seek audiences. Audiences bring recognition and the possibility of acclaim for ability, sensibility and inventiveness, but they also offer the monetary income to sustain the role of a musician. 2. In organising themselves to be ‘used’ — to be attended to and enjoyed — musicians offer themselves as a text in their totality. The value users find in a music act derives from its textual totality and so involves the music it makes, how its members present themselves together with the ways in which their actions are explained or contextualised. 3. In order to find audiences acts must enter markets. In entering markets, acts seek to form alliances with companies whose expertise lies in music-market entry. 4. While acts and companies have vested interests in market success, these interests are not identical: musicians may want acclaim above other considerations; companies must seek profit and growth regardless of other considerations. Ultimately, there is a defining tension between the two which always problematises the working alliances they form. 5. In preparing them for market-entry, music companies ‘add value’ to acts. This added value is what converts texts into symbolic goods. To add value to a text involves value adders having access to that text. This ‘access’ cannot fail to be registered as impacts on the original conception of the text. ‘Impacts’ need not necessarily be negative and an act might offer the strongest definition of its own work. Even so, neither eventuality is certain; so it is that the value-adding process is usually a fraught one and always tense because musicians, artist managers and music company representatives might conflict with each other, separately and together, over the finished form of the symbolic good.

Manufacturers ganging up for GaAs modules

Drawing on a fourteen-month ethnographic fieldwork experience along the border of Bangladesh and India, I offer a narrative of daily challenges and uncertainties in the ‘field’. Highlighting my positionality and reflexivity, I suggest that first, although a researcher may use social capital to gain access, it may raise concerns regarding the genuineness of the participant’s response. Second, with careful attention, unplanned moments and spontaneous conversations can be turned into sources for valuable insight. Third, pushing the boundaries of social norms to attain a textbook example of ‘gender balance’ does not necessarily ‘add value’ to the research; instead, is likely to make it more challenging to access the same population for further research. Finally, I reaffirm that being from the same region with a similar background does not make the researcher an ‘insider’. Rather, their positionality becomes more ‘fluid’ and constantly shifts between an insider, an outsider, both, and sometimes none.

Co-creation, a form of engagement in which stakeholders jointly generate value, has increasingly received attention as a way to enhance responsible research and innovation (RRI). To explore the extent to which co-creation might support RRI, this paper analyses three co-creation workshops with different types of stakeholders in the area of nanotechnology for health. The analysis considers the potential of co-creation to enhance the legitimacy of and add value to innovation based on the four dimensions of RRI: reflexivity, inclusion, anticipation, and adaptation. The results show that it is difficult to address all the dimensions at once. A trade-off between creating legitimacy and added value can be detected: a co-creation process focusing on added value requires deliberation early in the innovation process, a certain specificity and an action-oriented perspective. This comes at the cost of the inclusion and anticipation of societal values, which are important dimensions of a legitimate innovation process.

This article argues that the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) adds value to international efforts to protect populations from genocide and mass atrocities, but not in the ways commonly thought. It suggests that RtoP is not particularly effective as a ‘rallying call’ that mobilises action in cases where international society may be initially reluctant to act. Where it does add value is in helping to reshape states’ identities and interests such that consideration of the protection needs of populations, in relation to the threat of genocide and mass atrocities, has been internalised to some extent by the UN Security Council. As such, RtoP is best seen as being a ‘habit former’. The principle does not, however, determine particular behaviours or guarantee international consensus because decision-making is heavily influenced by contextual factors. The argument proceeds in three parts. The first examines instances where RtoP has been invoked since early 2006. The second explores the role of context in shaping how the UN Security Council responds to particular crises. Finally, to amplify the points made in these sections, the third section considers the UN Security Council’s response to the crisis in Somalia after 2006.