Novartis and the United Nations Global Compact Initiative

The spirit of the Global Compact found fertile ground and has become an integral part of Novartis corporate strategy since the enterprise was formed by the merger of the two large Swiss pharmaceutical companies, Sandoz and Ciba, in 1996. Following a four-year concentration on economic consolidation and performance, Daniel Vasella (Chairman and CEO) signed the Global Compact. Together, productivity-based economic performance and a proactive approach to the expectations of society are envisioned as the key to long-term corporate success in the rapidly integrating global economic, political, and social environment of today’s large multinational corporation. This paper outlines the Novartis strategy and its implementation including the coalescing role of the Global Compact in the drive for sustainable corporate development. Following a review of extending corporate strategy to incorporate social concerns into the economic business model, the process of implementing the strategy will be assessed. In part three, specific examples of this strategic positioning will be outlined.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39911/3/wp526.pd

Novartis and the United Nations Global Compact Initiative

The spirit of the Global Compact found fertile ground and has become an integral part of Novartis corporate strategy since the enterprise was formed by the merger of the two large Swiss pharmaceutical companies, Sandoz and Ciba, in 1996. Following a four-year concentration on economic consolidation and performance, Daniel Vasella (Chairman and CEO) signed the Global Compact. Together, productivity-based economic performance and a proactive approach to the expectations of society are envisioned as the key to long-term corporate success in the rapidly integrating global economic, political, and social environment of today’s large multinational corporation. This paper outlines the Novartis strategy and its implementation including the coalescing role of the Global Compact in the drive for sustainable corporate development. Following a review of extending corporate strategy to incorporate social concerns into the economic business model, the process of implementing the strategy will be assessed. In part three, specific examples of this strategic positioning will be outlined.Novartis, Pharmaceutical Industry, UN Global Compact, Gleevec, Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases

Convergence analysis of block Gibbs samplers for Bayesian linear mixed models with p>Np>N

Exploration of the intractable posterior distributions associated with Bayesian versions of the general linear mixed model is often performed using Markov chain Monte Carlo. In particular, if a conditionally conjugate prior is used, then there is a simple two-block Gibbs sampler available. Rom\'{a}n and Hobert [Linear Algebra Appl. 473 (2015) 54-77] showed that, when the priors are proper and the $X$ matrix has full column rank, the Markov chains underlying these Gibbs samplers are nearly always geometrically ergodic. In this paper, Rom\'{a}n and Hobert's (2015) result is extended by allowing improper priors on the variance components, and, more importantly, by removing all assumptions on the $X$ matrix. So, not only is $X$ allowed to be (column) rank deficient, which provides additional flexibility in parameterizing the fixed effects, it is also allowed to have more columns than rows, which is necessary in the increasingly important situation where $p>N$. The full rank assumption on $X$ is at the heart of Rom\'{a}n and Hobert's (2015) proof. Consequently, the extension to unrestricted $X$ requires a substantially different analysis.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/15-BEJ749 in the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

“Educational Regionalization” and the Gated Global: The Construction of the Caribbean Educational Policy Space

This article draws on “regime theory,” particularly on the concepts of cooperation, compatibility of interests, and proclivity to compromise, to examine the rise of the Caribbean Educational Policy Space (CEPS). In making this argument, with the aid of a content analysis of 26 educational policies from the 15 member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), this article first locates the different policy mechanism of external effects, or policy tools, within the regional policy environment that governs and regulates education at the national level to explain how these policy tools and mechanisms have given rise to a very distinctive form of what I call educational regionalism that frames the regional educational policy space in the Caribbean. The data show that CARICOM utilized the noneconomic process of functional cooperation, and the policy tools of lesson drawing, policy externalization, and policy transfer to respond to pressures of globalization across three different policy cycles and concludes by discussing the implications of such a policy maneuver for the integrative project of economic regionalism

El espacio del Caribe para la educación política: Gradualismo educativo, reformas políticas de suma cero y "lesson-drawing" en pequeños (y micro) estados.

This paper analyses national educational policy discourse in ten of the now 15 Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries and advances that the failed socialist experiments in the small (and micro states) of Guyana, Grenada, and Jamaica during the 1980s ultimately lead to the creation of the Caribbean Educational Policy Space (CEPS). CEPS is intended to engender the movement of service, goods, labor, capital, and the right to establishment – i.e. CARICOM citizens may establish companies and business enterprises in any CARICOM nation and be treated as a local national. This discursively created space employed the external delivery mechanism of ‘lesson-drawing’ through a gradualist approach to educational reforms at the both regional level and national level or what I call educational gradualism–a zero-sum policy reform maneuver that facilitates the creation of predefined educational outcomes. A summative content analysis shows that CEPS, an unintentional byproduct of educational gradualism, was discursively framed historically by the era of ideological pluralism, legally by the 2001 Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, substantively by the enactment of the Caribbean Single Market in 2006, and functionally through functional cooperationEste trabajo analiza el discurso nacional la política educativa de cada diez de los países ahora 15 Comunidad del Caribe (CARICOM) y avanza que los experimentos socialistas fallidos en los pequeños (y micro estados) de Guyana, Granada y Jamaica durante la década de 1980 en última instancia conducir a la creación de Espacio del Caribe para la Educación Política (CEPS). CEPS está destinado a generar el movimiento de servicio, los bienes, el trabajo, el capital y el derecho de establecimiento - es decir, los ciudadanos de la CARICOM pueden establecer empresas y empresas comerciales en cualquier nación CARICOM y ser tratado como un ciudadano local. Este espacio discursivamente creado emplea el mecanismo de entrega externa de ‘lección de dibujo’ a través de un enfoque gradual para las reformas educativas en el tanto a nivel regional como a nivel nacional o lo que yo llamo el gradualismo, una reforma de la política educativa maniobra de suma cero que facilita la creación de predefinido los resultados educativos. Un análisis de contenido sumativo muestra que CEPS, un subproducto no intencional de gradualismo educativa, se discursivamente enmarcado históricamente por la era del pluralismo ideológico, legalmente por el 2001 Tratado Revisado de Chaguaramas, sustantivamente por la promulgación del mercado único del Caribe en 2006, y funcionalmente a través cooperación funciona