A framework for the establishment of organizational risk indicators

Organizational risk indicators are proposed as a tool for risk control during operation of offshore installations, as a complement to QRA-based indicators. An organizational factor framework is developed based on a review of existing organizational factor frameworks, research on safety performance indicators, and previous work on QRA-based indicators. The results comprise a qualitative organizational model, proposed organizational risk indicators, and a quantification methodology for assessing the impact of the organization on risk. The risk indicators, when validated, will aid in a frequent control of the risk in the periods between the updating of the quantitative risk assessments.     

Scientometric indicators for evaluating medical research output of mid-size countries

The medical research output of eleven mid-size countries were compared with the aid of scientometric indicators. Papers published by clinical medicine journals and those of professors working at clinical faculties were used for comparison. The professors proved to be more productive authors than average scientists of the same country, but no particular eminence of the professors could be revealed. A correlation was found between the quality of clinical medicine papers (as reflected by their relative citation rate) and the infant mortality of the countries in question.     

Patents as indicators for the evaluation of industrial research output

Patent indicators are used in the evaluation of industrial research at many different levels of aggregation. They are used in policy-level applications to look at industrial research capability from a national or regional viewpoint comparing, for example, EU regional technology with that of Japan and North America. They are used in strategic-level applications to look at industrial research from a company viewpoint. For example, CHI Research, Inc. has used them to compare auto company research output company-by-company and technology-by-technology. They are used in tactical-level applications, typically involving technology tracing—where the performance of research groups is measured against one another within the domain of a specific technology. At the tactical level these indicators can characterize industrial research in three planes or stages: The early Precursor Plane, the current Technology Plane and the future-oriented Successor Plane. Finally, at the most precise level of evaluation, patent indicator techniques are now beginning to be used in the United States in establishing the value of patent portfolios for cross-licensing purposes, and in patent infringement litigation, where citation techniques demonstrate the importance and utility of patented technology.     

Comparing implementations of global and local indicators of spatial association

Functions to calculate measures of spatial association, especially measures of spatial autocorrelation, have been made available in many software applications. Measures may be global, applying to the whole data set under consideration, or local, applying to each observation in the data set. Methods of statistical inference may also be provided, but these will, like the measures themselves, depend on the support of the observations, chosen assumptions, and the way in which spatial association is represented; spatial weights are often used as a representational technique. In addition, assumptions may be made about the underlying mean model, and about error distributions. Different software implementations may choose to expose these choices to the analyst, but the sets of choices available may vary between these implementations, as may default settings. This comparison will consider the implementations of global Moran’s I, Getis–Ord G and Geary’s C, local \(I_i\) and \(G_i\), available in a range of software including Crimestat, GeoDa, ArcGIS, PySAL and R contributed packages.     

Quantitative risk analysis offshore—Human and organizational factors

Quantitative Risk Analyses (QRAs) are one of the main tools for risk management within the Norwegian and UK oil and gas industry. Much criticism has been given to the limitations related to the QRA-models and that the QRAs do not include human and organizational factors (HOF-factors). Norway and UK offshore legislation and guidelines require that the HOF-factors are included in the QRAs. A study of 15 QRAs shows that the factors are to some extent included, and there are large differences between the QRAs. The QRAs are categorized into four levels according to the findings. Level 1 QRAs do not describe or comment on the HOF-factors at all. Relevant research projects have been conducted to fulfill the requirements of Level 3 analyses. At this level, there is a systematic collection of data related to HOF. The methods are systematic and documented, and the QRAs are adjusted. None of the QRAs fulfill the Level 4 requirements. Level 4 QRAs include the model and describe the HOF-factors as well as explain how the results should be followed up in the overall risk management. Safety audits by regulatory authorities are probably necessary to point out the direction for QRA and speed up the development.     

Relative indicators and relational charts for comparative assessment of publication output and citation impact

Cross-field comparison ofscientometric indicators ¹ is severely hindered by the differences in publication and citation habits of science fields. However, relating publication and citation indicators to proper field-specific reference standards,relative indicators can be built, which may prove rather useful in the comparative assessment of scientists, groups, institutions or countries. The use ofrelational charts in displaying the indicators broadens the scope of such assessments. Relative indicators of chemistry research in 25 countries are presented as an illustrative example.     

Influences of tooth spalling or local breakage on time-varying mesh stiffness of helical gears

Time-varying mesh stiffness (TVMS) provides important information about the health condition of geared systems. Tooth faults, like crack, pitting, spalling and breakage, will change the TVMS. This work aims to reveal the influences of tooth spalling and local breakage on the TVMS of helical gears. Firstly, an analytical model is developed to incorporate the faults by combining slicing method, discrete integral method and potential energy method. Then, parametric study is conducted. Finally, conclusions are arrived and the results indicate that length, width and location of these defects are very important parameters that need to be considered for calculating TVMS of helical gears. This study provides a theoretical basis for fault diagnosis of helical geared transmissions.     

Median and percentile impact factors: A set of new indicators

Summary In a recent article Sombatsompop et al. (2004) proposed a new way of calculating a synchronous journal impact factor. Their proposal seems quite interesting and will be discussed in this note. Their index will be referred as the Median Impact Factor (MIF). I explain every step in detail so that readers with little mathematical background can understand and apply the procedure. Illustrations of the procedure are presented. Some attention is given to the estimation of the median cited age in case it is larger than ten year. I think the idea introduced by Sombatsompop, Markpin and Premkamolnetr has a great theoretical value as they are - to the best of my knowledge - the first ones to consider impact factors not using years as a basic ingredient, but an element of the actual form of the citation curve. The MIF is further generalized to the notion of a percentile impact factor.     

Research output evaluation of two University Departments in Greece with the use of bibliometric indicators

The results of a study for evaluating research performance of two Greek University Departments of Mathematics are presented. In order to achieve this elements from the Sussex and Leiden methodologies of constructing and using bibliometric indicators were used. Comparison of the two groups were based on their similarities. The convergence of bibliometric indicators procedure as applied in Leiden methodology together with a number new bibliometric indicators were used. Results shown that bibliometric indicators if applied properly may give very interesting information on the research performance and nature of research carried out in University Departments.     

Bibliometric profiles for British academic institutions: An experiment to develop research output indicators

In this paper, we report the results of an exploratory study commissioned by the Advisory Board for the Research Councils to produce bibliometric research profiles for academic and related institutions within the UK. The approach adopted is based on the methodology developed by CHI Research whereby publications from a given institution are weighted according to the influence of the journal in which they appear. Although certain technical limitations were encountered with the approach, the study nonetheless yielded potentially useful information on the comparative research output of British universities and polytechnics.The findings and conclusions presented are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of their institutions or the Advisory Board for the Research Councils. Correspondence concerning the paper should be addressed toMartin at SPRU.     

On the quantification of the effects of organizational and management factors in chemical installations

The quantitative effects of organizational and management factors in chemical installations are assessed through a linking of the results of a safety management audit with the basic events of a quantified risk assessment (QRA). A safety management audit establishes the relative position of the organizational and management aspects of a particular chemical installation with respect to an ideal management scheme, and for a number of failure causes and failure prevention combinations. A quantitative risk analysis including detailed system analysis offers a plant-specific decomposition of the plant-damage-state frequencies into events like hardware failures, maintenance-related failures, operation-related failures and so on. The basic events incorporated in the QRA are then categorized into classes similar to those explored by the management audit and are quantitatively linked to the audit results. Knowledge of these quantitative links would allow for the reflection of the deficiencies or strengths that might exist in the safety management system on the quantitative risk indices. A case study of an ammonia storage facility that has been audited demonstrates that the sensitivity of the risk indices to the value of the quantitative links is extremely high and that hence great care should be exercised in assessing these links.     

耦合PZT/GMM微动力构件及其输出力影响因素测试

在压电陶瓷(PZT)和超磁致伸缩材料(GMM)两种功能材料的特性研究基础上,设计一种耦合PZT/GMM微动力构件。通过分析微动力构件的工作原理,得知其输出力受到电压、气隙、温度等因素的影响。该文就电压和气隙两种影响因素分析微动力构件的输出力,通过对比理论分析和实验结果得到:在10~120 V电压调节范围内,电压升高微动力构件输出力呈非线性增长,且这种增长效应在气隙越小时表现越明显;恒定电压条件下,在0~1.2 mm微动力构件气隙增大,微动力构件输出力呈非线性减小。     

A study on the critical factors of ISO 9001:2000 and organizational performance of Indian manufacturing firms

This study explores the critical factors of ISO 9001:2000 and investigates the effect of ISO certification on organizational performance, as perceived by the management. In order to gain more insight into the investigation, the study also analyses the relationship between the firm attributes and the critical factors, as well as the relationship between firm attributes and the indicators of organizational performance.     

A comparison of Australian university output using journal impact factors

We weighted the output of SCI items from Australian universities using journal impact factors. This provides us with an accessible quality indicator of science journal publishing, and allow us to scale for institutional size in terms of output and research staff. Use of this indicator for the 20 pre-1987 Australian universities demonstrates that although some universities rank highly on output, when scaled for institutional size they are overtaken by some of the smaller, more recently established universities.     

A cross-cultural study of organizational factors on safety: Japanese vs. Taiwanese oil refinery plants

This study attempts to identify idiosyncrasies of organizational factors on safety and their influence mechanisms in Taiwan and Japan. Data were collected from employees of Taiwanese and Japanese oil refinery plants. Results show that organizational factors on safety differ in the two countries. Organizational characteristics in Taiwanese plants are highlighted as: higher level of management commitment to safety, harmonious interpersonal relationship, more emphasis on safety activities, higher devotion to supervision, and higher safety self-efficacy, as well as high quality of safety performance. Organizational characteristics in Japanese plants are highlighted as: higher level of employee empowerment and attitude towards continuous improvement, more emphasis on systematic safety management approach, efficient reporting system and teamwork, and high quality of safety performance. The casual relationships between organizational factors and workers' safety performance were investigated using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results indicate that the influence mechanisms of organizational factors in Taiwan and Japan are different. These findings provide insights into areas of safety improvement in emerging countries and developed countries respectively.     

The role of organizational trust in safety climate's influence on organizational outcomes

Based on elements of social exchange theory and other conceptualizations of trust, a model was developed situating organizational trust as a central component to the relationship that safety climate has with organizational outcomes. Specifically, the model specified that two facets of safety climate - upward safety communication and management attitudes toward safety - would be positively related to organizational trust. Increased levels of trust would then predict increased motivation to engage in safe job-related behaviors, increased job satisfaction, and decreased turnover intentions. Another hypothesis investigated whether job safety relevance would moderate the relationship between safety climate and trust. Online survey research was conducted with 599 employees from 97 workgroups across a New England grocery store chain. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated support for trust mediating the relationship between safety climate and organizational outcomes; further, the relationship between safety climate and trust was stronger within workgroups where safety was more relevant.     

Accident investigation reporting deficiencies related to organizational factors in machinery space fires and explosions

Careful accident investigation provides opportunities to review safety arrangements in socio-technical systems. There is consensus that human intervention is involved in the majority of accidents. Ever cautious of the consequences attributed to such a claim vis-à-vis the apportionment of blame, several authors have highlighted the importance of investigating organizational factors in this respect. Specific regulations to limit what were perceived as unsuitable organizational influences in shipping operations were adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Guidance is provided for the investigation of human and organizational factors involved in maritime accidents. This paper presents a review of 41 accident investigation reports related to machinery space fires and explosions. The objective was to find out if organizational factors are identified during maritime accident investigations. An adapted version of the Human Factor Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) with minor modifications related to machinery space features was used for this review. The results of the review show that organizational factors were not identified by maritime accident investigators to the extent expected had the IMO guidelines been observed. Instead, contributing factors at the lower end of organizational echelons are over-represented.     

The application of bibliometric indicators: Important field- and time-dependent factors to be considered

An analysis of three major problems in the application of bibliometric research performance indicators is made in three separate sections. In the first section, the influence of field-dependent citation practices is analysed. The results indicate that rankings of publications from different fields, based on citation counts, can be affected seriously by differences between citation characteristics in those fields. If certain assumptions hold, one should expect high (short term) citation levels in Biochemistry, Celbiology and Biophysics. Medium citation levels are to be expected in Experimental and Molecular Physics, Physical and Organic Chemistry, Pharmacology and Plant Physiology, and low citation levels in Mathematics, Taxonomy, Pharmacognosy and Inorganic Solid State Chemistry. In the second section time-dependent factors are studied. It is shown that trend-analyses of output and impact based on bibliometric scores can be disturbed by changes in theSCI-database and in publication and citation practices. One of the disturbing factors is shown to be the inclusion of so called Books into theSCI data-base in 1977. Finally, in the third section a case is presented which illustrates the consequences of operating on incomplete bibliometric data in the evaluation of scientific performance. A completeness percentage of 99% for publication data is proposed as a standard in evaluations of the performance of small university research groups).     

The organizational impact of technological change: a comparative theory of national institutional factors

This paper offers a parsimonious theory of national institutionalfactors that promote or inhibit the formation of start-up firmsin the USA and Japan. Three factors are proposed: the technicallabor market, the venture capital market and the structure ofbuyer-supplier ties. Complementarities between these factorscause them to work as a system, while their differences elevateor reduce the level of incentive constraints and appropriabilityconstraints acting on incumbent and start-up firms respectively.As a result, incumbents might be displaced in an industry inone country while incumbent firms in the same industry in anothercountry might persevere, due to the presence or absence of start-upfirms. This suggests that there may be no single best way toorganize for innovation in different institutional settings;rather, firms must seek to exploit the virtues of their environment,even as they act to mitigate the hazards it poses.