Emil Scarlat

Complete analysis of bankruptcy syndrome using grey systems theory

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to realise a complete analysis at the company level using grey systems theory for shaping the relations among variables.Design/methodology/approach – Starting from the symptoms that can be identified and moving forward to causes that determine a specific stage in a companys development and long‐term survival, all the aspects that can appear and affect a companys performance and bankruptcy are taken into account. Also, due to the fact that all the activities that took place in a company are running in an uncertain and a continually changing environment, grey systems theory was chosen to better shape the relations among the implied variables. Even when referring to a companys diagnosis or to its prediction, the involved aspects are presented and depicted. A numeric example is also computed in the last part of the paper.Findings – The results are convincing: not only that the diagnosis of the company can show the main elements, factors that are affecting a companys ...

Grey relational analysis between firm's current situation and its possible causes: A bankruptcy syndrome approach

Purpose – By making an analogy with the human body, the purpose of this paper is to underline the relations between a firms failure causes and its current situation, in terms of the syndrome that can be identified at its level.Design/methodology/approach – For this reason, some elements taken from medicine, such as symptoms, causes and syndromes are presented and characterized from the point of view of the firm.Findings – It is shown that knowing the type of syndrome and the relation between it and the causes that determined its occurrence, a firms situation can be improved and its life can be lengthened. The study was conducted on 19 firms and the results are conclusive.Practical implications – By knowing the main causes that determine a certain type of bankruptcy syndrome, the firms management can properly intervene to establish a new order and a new equilibrium, which can “save” the firm from an imminent collapse, bringing it to a normality situation and even leading it, in future, to increased perf...

Genetic - fuzzy - grey algorithms: A hybrid model for establishing companies' failure reasons

This paper attempts to put forward a hybrid model which combines the advantages offered by grey systems theory, fuzzy theory and genetic algorithm, and tries to identify the causes that are influencing financial failure of a company. For this purpose, a knowledge matrix will be computed. Further, this matrix can be composed with a one-dimensional symptoms matrix for a certain company and so the causes that generate the anomalies can be identified. Knowing the causes, and managing them properly, we can improve companys financial situation and also lengthened its life on the market.

Simulating collective intelligence of the communities of practice using agent-based methods

The modern organizations are facing problems which have caused them to lose personnel. Losing people, the organizations lose knowledge. One of the solutions is to collaborate and share knowledge across time and distance. Knowledge sharing in communities has attracted attention in fields like knowledge management or sociology, in both research and practice. Inter-organizational forms of network organizations are more and more accentuated. The paper focuses on the communities of practice within organizations and how through these communities collective intelligence is stimulated. First, we present the concept of communities of practice and show how multi-agent systems can simulate the behavior of complex systems composed of distinct components. Then we highlight the importance of collective intelligence in communities of practice and suggest a way to model communities of practices dynamics. The main objective of the paper is to simulate collective intelligence capacity using agent-based models, and more specifically, the team of knowledge workers formation.

Companies' quality characteristics vs their performance

Purpose – This paper attempts to identify the strength of the relation between the quality characteristics of companies that are activating in an economy and their performance.Design/methodology/approach – In the quality characteristics sphere were included almost all the elements related to companys behaviour on a market, in an uncertain environment and in the relations developed with stockholders. And what theory can better shape this relation than grey systems theory, a theory of uncertainty and of continual changes? At first, all of these qualitative characteristics that are reflecting companys activity have been divided into six categories for a better reality reflection. A performance indicator was also depicted by taking into consideration each companys managerial objectives.Findings – By applying grey relational analysis (GRA) in a case of eight Romanian firms, the results were convincing: not only that these characteristics determine firms evolution, but, by knowing them and acting properly o...

The diagnosis of firm's “Diseases” using the grey systems theory methods

The core of our proposal is the determination of a “matrix of symptoms”, based on grey systems theory. The symptoms of a firm can be represented by economic-financial ratios, usually used by analysts to make predictions and suggestions. The ability to create such a matrix of symptoms implies that given level of symptoms intensity, we can determinate if the analyzed firm presents some “diseases”. By diseases we understand the causes which generate anomalies at the firm. With the utilization of such a matrix, the activity of the analyst can be really improved.

Mapping knowledge networks for organizational re-design in a rehabilitation clinic

The purpose of this paper is to present a social network approach for identification of micro-organizational re-design interventions to make more efficient and fluid the knowledge flow in a rehabilitation multidisciplinary team. The structural information of different kinds of knowledge networks within a team is augmented with additional analyses aimed at collecting information about the ways through which participants use knowledge, the motivation behind knowledge exchange, and the non-human knowledge sources used by subjects to perform their work. This paperwork was supported by CNCSIS – UEFISCDI, project number PNII – IDEI 810/2008.,The authors propose a definition of knowledge network including human and non-human knowledge source (documents and knowledge repositories) as it is more adequate for the analysis of knowledge flows in multidisciplary medical teams. The mapping and analysis of the network are carried out through: elicitation of knowledge flows between people within and outside the team through a structured questionnaire; mapping of the knowledge flows toward non-human knowledge sources; and identification of critical aspects and proposal of re-engineering interventions to make knowledge flow more efficient and effective.,The analysis of the critical aspects emerged in the field study identifies a number of opportunities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge sharing through the re-design of the team network. The re-design interventions concern three main features of knowledge network: “knowledge centralization,” “Over-reliance on External experts,” “Unshared knowledge tools and sources.”,The originality of the work resides in applying social network analysis (SNA) for healthcare management settings, proving evidence and guidelines to show how healthcare organizations can benefit from the adoption of SNA-based approaches.

Banking sector risks identification via GRA

The present paper gives a new perspective on the banking risks and on their influences on the banking sector as a whole. Due to the actual financial crisis, the banks are facing more and more complex risks, with difficult to measure and manage impacts. Among these risks, the one coming from their inside structure were depicted and analyzed in the paper. The main aim of the research is to find whether there is a strong relation between the identified categories of risks and banks evolution and in an affirmative case to see if this relation depends also on the banking sector. For this, a powerful grey theory tool was used, namely the GRA (grey relational analysis). Also, a case study was considered for a number of 16 banks spread in 4 groups based on the banking sector they belong to. The results were concluding as it can be seen.

A genetic algorithm for community formation based on collective intelligence capacity

Community formation has certainly gained more and more attention from both the researchers and practitioners in the field of complex networks. An efficient algorithm is needed since the number of the possible communities is exponential in the number of agents. Genetic algorithm is a very useful tool for obtaining high quality and optimal solutions for optimization problems, due to its self-organization, self-adaptation and parallelism. The paper proposes a high performance genetic algorithm for community formation. The key concept in our algorithm is a new fitness index, which aims at being a trade-off between intelligence and cooperation, and allows not only community formation but also intelligence to be driving principle in the community formation process.

How Impressionable Are You? - Grey Knowledge, Groups and Strategies in OSN

Today’s leading businesses have understood the role of “social” into their everyday activity. Online social networks (OSN) and social media have melt and become an essential part of every firm’s concerns. Brand advocates are the new leading triggers for company’s success in online social networks and are responsible for the long term engagement between a firm and its customers. But what can it be said about this impressive crowd of customers that are gravitating around a certain brand advocacy or a certain community? Are they as responsive to a certain message as one might think? Are they really impressed by the advertising campaigns? Are they equally reacting to a certain comment or news? How they process the everyday grey knowledge that is circulating in OSN? In fact, how impressionable they are and which are the best ways a company can get to them?