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Good Alignment (good + alignment)
Selected AbstractsChanges in Korean Corporate Governance: A Response to CrisisJOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 1 2008E. Han Kim In the last months of 1997, the value of the Korean currency lost over half its value against the dollar, and the ruling party was swept from power in presidential elections. One of the fundamental causes of this national economic crisis was the widespread failure of Korean companies to earn their cost of capital, which contributed to massive shareholder losses and calls for corporate governance reform. Among the worst performers, and hence the main targets of governance reform, were family-controlled Korean business groups known as chaebol. Besides pursuing growth and size at the expense of value, such groups were notorious for expropriating minority shareholders through "tunneling" activities and other means. The reform measures introduced by the new administration were a mix of market-based solutions and government intervention. The government-engineered, large-scale swaps of business units among the largest chaebol,the so-called "big deals" that were designed to force each of the groups to identify and specialize in a core business,turned out to be failures, with serious unwanted side effects. At the same time, however, new laws and regulations designed to increase corporate transparency, oversight, and accountability have had clearly positive effects on Korean governance. Thanks to reductions in barriers to foreign ownership of Korean companies, such ownership had risen to about 37% at the end of 2006, up from just 13% ten years earlier. And in addition to the growing pressure for better governance from foreign investors, several newly formed Korean NGOs have pushed for increased transparency and accountability, particularly among the largest chaebol. The best governance practices in Korea today can be seen mainly in three kinds of corporations: (1) newly privatized companies; (2) large corporations run by professional management; and (3) banks with substantial equity ownership in the hands of foreign investors. The improvements in governance achieved by such companies,notably, fuller disclosure, better alignment of managerial incentives with shareholder value, and more effective oversight by boards,have enabled many of them to meet the global standard. And the governance policies and procedures of POSCO, the first Korean company to list on the New York Stock Exchange,as well as the recent recipient of a large equity investment by Warren Buffett,are held up as a model of best practice. At the other end of the Korean governance spectrum, however, there continue to be many large chaebol-affiliated or family-run companies that have resisted such reforms. And aided by the popular resistance to globalization, the lobbying efforts of such firms have succeeded not only in reducing the momentum of the Korean governance reform movement, but in reversing some of the previous gains. Most disturbing is the current push to allow American style anti-takeover devices, which, if successful, would weaken the disciplinary effect of the market for corporate control. [source] Realizing the Potential of Real Options: Does Theory Meet Practice?JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 2 2005Alexander Triantis The idea of viewing corporate investment opportunities as "real options" has been around for over 25 years. Real options concepts and techniques now routinely appear in academic research in finance and economics, and have begun to influence scholarly work in virtually every business discipline, including strategy, organizations, management science, operations management, information systems, accounting, and marketing. Real options concepts have also made considerable headway in practice. Corporate managers are more likely to recognize options in their strategic planning process, and have become more proactive in designing flexibility into projects and contracts, frequently using real options vocabulary in their discussions. Thanks in part to the spread of real options thinking, today's strategic planners are more likely than their predecessors to recognize the "option" value of actions like the following: , dividing up large projects into a number of stages; , investing in the acquisition or production of information; , introducing "modularity" in manufacturing and design; , developing competing prototypes for new products; and , investing in overseas markets. But if real options has clearly succeeded as a way of thinking, the application of real options valuation methods has been limited to companies in relatively few industries and has thus failed to live up to expectations created in the mid- to late-1990s. Increased corporate acceptance and implementations of real options valuation techniques will require several changes coming together. On the theory side, we need more realistic models that better reflect differences between financial and real options, simple heuristic methods that can be more easily implemented (but that have been carefully benchmarked against more precise models), and better guidance on implementation issues such as the estimation of discount rates for the "optionless" underlying projects. On the practitioner side, we need user-friendly real options software, more senior-level buy-in, more deliberate diffusion of real options knowledge throughout organizations, better alignment of managerial incentives with long-term shareholder value, and better-designed contracts to correct the misalignment of incentives across the value chain. If these challenges can be met, there will continue to be a steady if gradual diffusion of real options analysis throughout organizations over the next few decades, with real options eventually becoming not only a standard part of corporate strategic planning, but also the primary valuation tool for assessing the expected shareholder effect of large capital investment projects. [source] Synthesis of trisubstituted thiophenes designed as progesterone receptor modulatorJOURNAL OF HETEROCYCLIC CHEMISTRY, Issue 5 2006Weiqin Jiang When a known 2-[4-morpholino]-3-aryl-5-substituted thiophene, which showed moderate activity as a progesterone antagonist, was superimposed with a potent steroidal progesterone antagonist Org-33628, it showed a fair alignment in most parts of the molecules. According to the molecular modelling, displacement of the morpholine oxygen atom in the thiophene derivative with a carbonyl group would provide a better alignment with the C-3 carbonyl in Org-33628. Thus, a series of novel trisubstituted thiophenes bearing a cyclic ketone moiety was synthesized. Although these compounds only showed weak activities as progesterone receptor antagonists, all target compounds are novel and are fully characterized. [source] COMPENSATORY RESTORATION IN A RANDOM UTILITY MODEL OF RECREATION DEMANDCONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 4 2010GEORGE R. PARSONS Natural Resource Damage Assessment cases often call for compensation in non-monetary or restoration equivalent terms. In this article, we present an approach that uses a conventional economic model, a travel cost random utility model of site choice, to determine compensatory restoration equivalents for hypothetical beach closures on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Our focus is on closures of beaches on the Padre Island National Seashore and compensation for day-trip users. We identify restoration projects that compensate for beach closures and that have good alignment in terms of compensating those who actually suffer from the closures. (JEL Q26) [source] Evolutionary coincidence-based ontology mapping extractionEXPERT SYSTEMS, Issue 3 2008Vahed Qazvinian Abstract: Ontology matching is a process for selection of a good alignment across entities of two (or more) ontologies. This can be viewed as a two-phase process of (1) applying a similarity measure to find the correspondence of each pair of entities from two ontologies, and (2) extraction of an optimal or near optimal mapping. This paper is focused on the second phase and introduces our evolutionary approach for that. To be able to do so, we need a mechanism to score different possible mappings. Our solution is a weighting mechanism named coincidence-based weighting. A genetic algorithm is then introduced to create better mappings in successive iterations. We will explain how we code a mapping as well as our crossover and mutation functions. Evaluation of the algorithm is shown and discussed. [source] Genomic context of paralogous recombination hotspots mediating recurrent NF1 region microdeletionGENES, CHROMOSOMES AND CANCER, Issue 1 2004Stephen H. Forbes Recombination between paralogs that flank the NF1 gene at 17q11.2 typically results in a 1.5-Mb microdeletion that includes NF1 and at least 13 other genes. We show that the principal sequences responsible are two 51-kb blocks with 97.5% sequence identity (NF1REP-P1-51 and NF1REP-M-51). These blocks belong to a complex group of paralogs with three components on 17q11.2 and another on 19p13.13. Breakpoint sequencing of deleted chromosomes from multiple patients revealed two paralogous recombination hot spots within the 51-kb blocks. Lack of sequence similarity between these sites failed to suggest or corroborate any putative cis -acting recombinogenic motifs. However, the NF1REPs showed relatively high alignment mismatch between recombining paralogs, and we note that the NF1REP hot spots were regions of good alignment bordered by relatively large alignment gaps. Statistical tests for gene conversion detected a single significant tract of perfect match between the NF1REPs that was 700 bp long and coincided with PRS2, the predominant recombination hot spot. Tracts of perfect match occurring by chance may contribute to breakpoint localization, but our result suggests that perfect tracts at recombination hot spots may be a result of gene conversion at sites at which preferential pairing occurs for other, as-yet-unknown reasons. © 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Relation between thermal conductivity and network formation with polymerizable liquid crystalsJOURNAL OF APPLIED POLYMER SCIENCE, Issue 5 2007Takashi Kato Abstract The molecules with the mono- and bi-function at the sides in the acrylic PLC mixtures were aligned by the rubbing method. The alignment was immobilized by the photo polymerization to result the homogeneous acrylic films, which have good alignment with the higher order parameters. The thermal conductivity along the molecular long axis direction showed the larger magnitude of 0.62 W/m · K, which is independent on ratio of the main chain and the side chain fractions. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 103: 3169,3174, 2007 [source] Pre-bent elastic stable intramedullary nail fixation for distal radial shaft fractures in childrenORTHOPAEDIC SURGERY, Issue 3 2010Yi-hua Ge MD Objective:, To investigate the functional and radiographic outcomes of pre-bent elastic stable intramedullary nail in treatment of distal radial shaft fractures in children. Methods:, From January 2006 to December 2008, 18 children with distal radial shaft fracture were treated by close reduction and internal fixation with a pre-bent elastic stable intramedullary nail. The age range was from 5 years to 15 years, with an average of 9 years and 8 months. The minimum follow-up was 12 months. Results:, All fractures maintained good alignment postoperatively, and 94.4% (17/18) of the patients regained a full range of rotation of the forearm. One patient has limitation of rotation to less than 10°, this had improved by final follow-up. Complications included soft tissue irritation at the site of nail insertion in one patient and transient scar hypersensitivity in another. Conclusion:, Fixation with a pre-bent elastic stable intramedullary nail is an effective, safe and convenient method for treating distal radial shaft fractures in children. [source] | |||||||||||||