Nordic Industrial Park: bridging distance across international markets

When a resource-constrained firm enters a high-distance market, it helps greatly if it can utilise a low- distance entry point.

The lure of the Chinese market has led several Western companies to venture into a context that is unfamiliar and bewildering, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lacking the deep pockets of large multinationals. It is useful for SMEs to have a ‘bridge’ into a high-distance market. One way to accomplish this is to use a foreign-owned industrial park (i.e. a space designated for industrial use).

Consider the case of the Nordic Industrial Park (NIP) that provides a physical space for offices and light-manufacturing facilities, and a range of value-added services to set up a business in China. These include legal services (e.g. registering the company and drafting contracts), human resource management (e.g. recruitment, payroll and expat relocation), accounting (e.g. financial reporting), and information and communication technology (e.g. internet access). NIP was co-founded by Ove Nodland, a Norwegian who first came to China in 1994 to manage different ventures. Nodland learnt that even though rules were set in Beijing (the national capital and political centre of China), they were implemented by local officials – and so they mattered greatly. Over the years he invested considerable energies in building close relationships with various officials, and took care to ensure that the ventures he worked for complied with local regulations and aligned themselves with local governmental priorities. Nodland’s local guanxi (network connections) grew rapidly.

After a decade’s experience in China, Nodland realised he was well placed to help European SMEs enter China more broadly. He chose to focus on what he knew best: firms from the Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) setting up a base in Ningbo, a port city in Zhejiang province just south of Shanghai (the commercial centre of China) and renowned for its entrepreneurialism. Thus was born the concept of NIP in 2002, which was sold to Silver Rise Hong Kong Pte Ltd, part of China’s Yinmao Group, in 2013, with Nodland staying on as consultant. In 2015, NIP was selected by the Zhejiang provincial government as one of the first designated ‘international industrial cooperative parks’ which further strengthened its local standing. Going forward, NIP has signalled its intent to attract projects from Nordic universities and achieve an output value in excess of RMB 2bn (€280m, £224m, $364m) by 2017.

From the perspective of a European SME entering NIP, there are multiple benefits:

• Process: L ower start-up costs. NIP leverages its knowledge of the Chinese business environment by hand-holding clients through the complexities associated with starting and running a business in China, thereby allowing firms to focus their time and energies on core business activities.

• Physical environment: A familiar ambience. NIP’s architecture and design mimics Scandinavian features that set it apart from standard Chinese buildings. Not only does this give expat managers a sense of the familiar, it is also a symbolic reminder to Chinese employees that they are part of a Western organisation.

• People: A like-minded community. By virtue of being part of the largest concentration of Nordic companies in China, expat managers have the opportunity to share experiences with and pick up ‘tricks of the trade’ from other managers with a similar cultural background through hallway conversations and lunchtime meetings. Of course, entering a facility like NIP comes at a cost, but offers benefits in terms of ‘reducing distance’.

Questions

1 Consider NIP’s services in light of the CAGE framework and analyse how they may help reduce distance.

2 What might be the drawbacks in being located in an industrial park?

I know how to do this with arrays, but I have trouble moving my code to use with linked lists

Write a C program that will deal with reservations for a single night in a hotel with 3 rooms, numbered 1 to 3. It must use an infinite loop to read commands from the keyboard and quit the program (return) when a quit command is entered. Use a switch statement to choose the code to execute for a valid command. The valid commands are: R or r: reserve a room C or c: cancel a reservation W or w: remove a request from the waiting list L or l: list the current reservations for the night Q or q: quit the program Any other input: print an error message and prompt for another command.

You must use a linked list to represent the reservation list, and another linked list to represent the waiting list. You can determine whether each list will be singly- or doubly linked, and whether each list has just a front pointer, or a front and rear pointer. The two lists do not need to have the same design (that is one could be singly-linked with a front pointer, and the other doubly-linked with front and rear pointers. The reservation list can have at most as many nodes as there are rooms in the hotel Actions taken in response to a valid command (r, c, w, or l) must be implemented using programmer-defined functions, one per command. Any needed data must be passed to the functions, not declared globally. Implement reservation ids using a simple integer counter. Names will have fewer than 15 characters.

Actions for each command are:

Reservation: If there is a free room, reserve a room by inserting a node on the reservation list containing the next reservation id and the name associated with the reservation. When there is space available, print the reservation id for the person at the keyboard, and prompt for and read the name associated with the reservation. If there are no rooms, print an appropriate message and ask if the person wants to be entered on the waiting list. If they do, add a node to the waiting list array, print the reservation id for the person at the keyboard, and prompt for and read the name associated with the waiting list entry. The waiting list must be implemented as a queue (insert nodes at the back of the list and remove nodes from the front of the list when a room becomes available)

Cancellation: If there is a room reserved under that reservation id, cancel the reservation by removing the node associated with the reservation. Otherwise print a message that the id is not valid. If a room is cancelled and there are entries on the waiting list, remove the first entry on the waiting list and insert the data in the reservation list, then print a message indicating that reservation id is now confirmed. Note that, if the nodes on both lists are the same type, you can simply insert the node you removed from the waiting list into the reservation list.

Wait cancellation: If there is a waiting list entry with that reservation id, the node containing that reservation id should be removed from the waiting list. Otherwise print a message indicating that id is not on the waiting list.

List reservations: Print the reservation ids and associated names of all rooms that are reserved. Do not print anything for rooms that are vacant. If there are no rooms reserved, print a message indicating that. If there are any entries on the waiting list you should also print the reservation number and name of all elements on the waiting list.

Quit: end the program by returning from the main function. Any other command: print an error message and prompt for another command.

Use an integer counter for reservation ids that starts at 1. Reservation ids are not reused. Use another integer to keep track of the number of rooms reserved. Your solution will be for a boutique hotel with only 3 (very expensive) rooms. But make liberal use of #define statements so it would be trivial to adapt your solution to a larger hotel.

1. Kilgore’s Deli is a small delicatessen located near a major university. Kilgore’s does a large walk-in carry-out lunch business. The deli offers two luncheon chili specials, Wimpy and Dial 911. At the beginning of the day, Kilgore needs to decide how much of each special to make (he always sells out of whatever he makes). The profit on one serving of Wimpy is $0.4, on one serving of Dial 911, $0.53. Each serving of Wimpy requires 0.2 pound of beef, 0.2 cup of onions, and 5 ounces of Kilgore’s special sauce. Each serving of Dial 911 requires 0.2 pound of beef, 0.35 cup of onions, 2 ounces of Kilgore’s special sauce, and 5 ounces of hot sauce. Today, Kilgore has 15 pounds of beef, 10 cups of onions, 84 ounces of Kilgore’s special sauce, and 55 ounces of hot sauce on hand.

   1. Develop a linear programming model that will tell Kilgore how many servings of Wimpy and Dial 911 to make in order to maximize his profit today. If required, round your answers to two decimal places. For subtractive or negative numbers use a minus sign even if there is a + sign before the blank. (Example: -300)
      

      Let	W = number of servings of Wimpy to make
      	D = number of servings of Dial 911 to make

      Max	W	+	D
      s.t.
      	W	+	D			(Beef)
      	W	+	D			(Onions)
      	W	+	D			(Special Sauce)
      	W	+	D			(Hot Sauce)
      			W, D	≥	0

   2. Find an optimal solution. If required, round your answers to two decimal places.
      
      W =________ , D =________ , Profit = ______$  
      
   3. What is the shadow price for special sauce? If required, round your answers to two decimal places.
      
      $ _________
      
   4. Increase the amount of special sauce available by 1 ounce and re-solve. If required, round your answers to two decimal places.
      
      W =______ , D =_________ , Profit = ______$  
      
      Does the solution confirm the answer to part (c)?
      

1. Kilgore’s Deli is a small delicatessen located near a major university. Kilgore’s does a large walk-in carry-out lunch business. The deli offers two luncheon chili specials, Wimpy and Dial 911. At the beginning of the day, Kilgore needs to decide how much of each special to make (he always sells out of whatever he makes). The profit on one serving of Wimpy is $0.4, on one serving of Dial 911, $0.53. Each serving of Wimpy requires 0.2 pound of beef, 0.2 cup of onions, and 5 ounces of Kilgore’s special sauce. Each serving of Dial 911 requires 0.2 pound of beef, 0.35 cup of onions, 2 ounces of Kilgore’s special sauce, and 5 ounces of hot sauce. Today, Kilgore has 15 pounds of beef, 10 cups of onions, 84 ounces of Kilgore’s special sauce, and 55 ounces of hot sauce on hand.

   1. Develop a linear programming model that will tell Kilgore how many servings of Wimpy and Dial 911 to make in order to maximize his profit today. If required, round your answers to two decimal places. For subtractive or negative numbers use a minus sign even if there is a + sign before the blank. (Example: -300)
      

      Let	W = number of servings of Wimpy to make
      	D = number of servings of Dial 911 to make

      Max	W	+	D
      s.t.
      	W	+	D			(Beef)
      	W	+	D			(Onions)
      	W	+	D			(Special Sauce)
      	W	+	D			(Hot Sauce)
      			W, D	≥	0

   2. Find an optimal solution. If required, round your answers to two decimal places.
      
      W =________ , D =________ , Profit = ______$  
      
   3. What is the shadow price for special sauce? If required, round your answers to two decimal places.
      
      $ _________
      
   4. Increase the amount of special sauce available by 1 ounce and re-solve. If required, round your answers to two decimal places.
      
      W =______ , D =_________ , Profit = ______$  
      
      Does the solution confirm the answer to part (c)?
      

The following three independent random samples are obtained from three normally distributed populations with equal variance. The dependent variable is starting hourly wage, and the groups are the types of position (internship, co-op, work study). We are testing the claim that the starting salaries for new college graduate are different depending on the positions at α=0.2α=0.2 given the following data

1. For this study, we should use Select an answer χ²GOF-Test T-Test 1-PropZInt TInterval 2-PropZInt 2-SampTInt χ²-Test ANOVA 1-PropZTest 2-SampTTest 2-PropZTest
2. 
   
3. Your friend Monique helped you with the null and alternative hypotheses...
   H0: μ1=μ2=μ3H0: μ1=μ2=μ3
   H1:H1: At least one of the mean is different from the others.
   
4. The test-statistic for this data = (Please show your answer to 3 decimal places.)
5. 
   
6. The p-value for this sample =  (Please show your answer to 4 decimal places.)
7. 
   
8. The p-value is Select an answer greater than alpha, less than (or equal to) alpha  αα
9. 
   
10. Base on this, we should Select an answer accept the null hypothesis, reject the null hypothesis, accept the alternative hypothesis fail to reject the null hypothesis  hypothesis
11. 
    
12. As such, the final conclusion is that...
    • Base on the sample data, there is sufficient evidence to conclude the claim that the starting salaries for new college graduate are different depending on the positions at αα = 0.2.
    • Base on the sample data, there is not sufficient evidence to conclude the claim that the starting salaries for new college graduate are different depending on the positions at αα = 0.2.

Levi-Strauss Co manufactures clothing. The quality control department measures weekly values of different suppliers for the percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste when the clothing is made (called run-up). The data is in the following table, and there are some negative values because sometimes the supplier is able to layout the pattern better than the computer ("Waste run up," 2013).

Table #11.3.3: Run-ups for Different Plants Making Levi Strauss Clothing

Do the data show that there is a difference between some of the suppliers? Test at the 1% level

**********************************************************************

Let x₁ = percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste when the clothing is made (called run-up) from plant 1

Let x₂ = percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 2

Let x₃ = percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 3

Let x₄ = percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 4

Let x₅ = percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 5

Let ?₁ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 1

Let ?₂ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 2

Let ?₃ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 3

Let ?₄ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 4

Let ?₅ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 5

(i) Which of the following statements correctly defines the null hypothesis H_O?

A. All five mean percentage differences are equal

B. Two of the mean percentage differences are not equal

C. At least four of the mean percentage differences are equal

D. At least two of the mean percentage differences are not equal

Enter letter corresponding to correct answer

Let ?₁ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 1

Let ?₂ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 2

Let ?₃ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 3

Let ?₄ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 4

Let ?₅ = mean percentage difference of waste between the layout on the computer and the actual waste of run-up from plant 5

(ii) Which of the following statements correctly defines the alternate hypothesis H_A?

A. All five mean percentage differences are equal

B. Two of the mean percentage differences are not equal

C. At least four of the mean percentage differences are equal

D. At least two of the mean percentage differences are not equal

Enter letter corresponding to correct answer

(iii) Enter the level of significance ? used for this test:

Enter in decimal form. Examples of correctly entered answers: 0.01    0.02    0.05    0.10

(iii) Calculate sample mean and sample standard deviation for Plant 1 sample

Enter sample mean in decimal form to nearest hundredth, then comma, then sample standard deviation in decimal form to nearest hundredth. Examples of correctly entered answers:

13.27,2.31

0.27,0.06

-10.30,0.79

(v) Calculate sample mean and sample standard deviation for Plant 2 sample

Enter sample mean in decimal form to nearest hundredth, then comma, then sample standard deviation in decimal form to nearest hundredth. Examples of correctly entered answers:

13.27,2.31

0.27,0.06

-10.30,0.79

(vi) Calculate sample mean and sample standard deviation for Plant 3 sample

Enter sample mean in decimal form to nearest hundredth, then comma, then sample standard deviation in decimal form to nearest hundredth. Examples of correctly entered answers:

13.27,2.31

0.27,0.06

-10.30,0.79

(vii) Calculate sample mean and sample standard deviation for Plant 4 sample

Enter sample mean in decimal form to nearest hundredth, then comma, then sample standard deviation in decimal form to nearest hundredth. Examples of correctly entered answers:

13.27,2.31

0.27,0.06

-10.30,0.79

(viii) Calculate sample mean and sample standard deviation for Plant 5 sample

Enter sample mean in decimal form to nearest hundredth, then comma, then sample standard deviation in decimal form to nearest hundredth. Examples of correctly entered answers:

13.27,2.31

0.27,0.06

-10.30,0.79

(ix) Using technology, determine F ratio test statistic and corresponding p-value.

Use "CTRL-click" to access link. Enter test statistic to nearest hundredth, then enter comma, then enter p-value to nearest thousandth. Examples of correctly entered responses:

12.33,0.004   

7.50,0.000

6.77,0.504

(x) Comparing p-value and ? value, which is the correct decision to make for this hypothesis test?

A. Reject H_o

B. Fail to reject H_o

C. Accept H_o

D. Accept H_A

Enter letter corresponding to correct answer.

(xi) Select the statement that most correctly interprets the result of this test:

A. The result is not statistically significant at .01 level of significance. Sufficient evidence exists to support the claim that there is a difference between some of the suppliers.

B. The result is statistically significant at .01 level of significance. There is not enough evidence to support the claim that there is a difference between some of the suppliers.

C. The result is statistically significant at .01 level of significance. Sufficient evidence exists to support the claim that there is a difference between some of the suppliers.

D. The result is not statistically significant at .01 level of significance. There is not enough evidence to support the claim that there is a difference between some of the suppliers.

You bought a new car and decided to buy an extended warranty a day later. The dealer offers you two alternative payment plans. The first plan requires a $2,000 immediate up-front payment. The second plan requires you to make monthly payments of $100.00, payable at the end of each month for 2 years. What nominal annual interest rate is built into the monthly payment plan?

Illustration Capsule 5.1 discusses Amazon’s low-cost position in the electronic commerce industry. Based on information provided in the capsule, explain how Amazon has built its low-cost advantage in the industry and why a low-cost provider strategy is well suited to the industry.

MBA class. Business Strategy and policy class MB 695.

Book: Crafting and Executive Strategy: The Quest for Competitive advantage: conept and cases, 21st edition by Arthur Thompson

1. Describe, in your own words, how you created your buffer solution. Be sure to reference specific amounts of reagents that you would use

2. What would the pH of the buffer you built above be if you added 10.0 mL of 10.0 M HCl to 100.00 mL of your buffer? (HINT: Your pure buffer initially contains the concentrations of acetic acid and sodium acetate determined in Step 9 above.)

pH: __________