Contributions in Merlin

The application of metaphors as a means to advance our understanding of organizations has a long-standing tradition in management studies. Generally speaking, metaphors allow for a description of organizational characteristics and functions in the terminology of another domain of interest. Organizational learning and organizational memory are two prominent examples of anthropomorphic metaphors in management studies which draw on the human mind as the source domain. In the light of recent advancements in neuroscience, however, they lack the complementing metaphor of organizational sleep, though sleep plays a particularly important role for learning and memory of the human mind. Based on the view that communication constitutes organizations (CCO), this study recontextualizes the metaphors of organizational learning and memory in terms of organizational sleep-wake cycles. Finally, the ideal-typical distinction between a regularly resting organization and an insomniac organization leads to a reconsideration of existing theories of organizational learning and memory.

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a large set of voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards. However, our knowledge is limited on how and why certain CSR initiatives diffuse extensively whereas others do so only partially or not at all. One of the rare examples of a rapidly and widely spreading CSR standard are the "Equator Principles" (EP), a global standard in international project finance to base investment decisions for large infrastructure projects (e.g., a river dam) on social and environmental criteria. In our qualitative study, we explore the constitutive conditions which facilitated the EP standardization process. First, we track the initiative’s evolution in form of a historical analysis. Second, we conduct 20 semi-structured interviews with relevant actors, e.g., representatives of banks or NGOs. Our study shows that the EP’s diffusion is fostered by dynamic negotiation processes. Instead of viewing organizational fields as relatively stable, we conceptualize them as relational, fragmented and open issue spaces where subject matters are prone to negotiation, interpretation, and contestation.

We explore the pricing of variance risk by decomposing stocks' total variance into systematic and idiosyncratic return variances. While systematic variance risk exhibits a negative price of risk, common shocks to the variances of idiosyncratic returns carry a large positive risk premium. This implies investors pay for insurance against increases (declines) in systematic (idiosyncratic) variance, even though both variances comove countercyclically. Common idiosyncratic variance risk is an important determinant for the cross-section of expected option returns. These findings reconcile several phenomena, including the pricing differences between index and stock options, the cross-sectional variation in stock option expensiveness,the volatility mispricing puzzle, and the signifcant returns earned on various option portfolio strategies. Our results are consistent with theories of financial intermediation under capital constraints.

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In this report we present a Prolog tool for the development and testing of natural language grammars called GTU (German: Grammatik-Testumgebung; grammar test environment). GTU offers a window-oriented user interface that allows the development and testing of natural language grammars under three formalisms. In particular it contains a collection of German test sentences and two types of German lexicons. Both of the lexicons can be adapted to a given grammar via an integrated lexicon interface. GTU has been implemented in Prolog both under DOS and UNIX. It was originally developed as a tutoring tool to support university courses on syntax analysis but in its UNIX-version it allows for the development of large grammars.

In this paper we describe our experiences with a tool for the development and testing of natural language grammars called GTU (German: Grammatik-Testumgebumg; grammar test environment). GTU supports four grammar formalisms under a window-oriented user interface. Additionally, it contains a set of German test sentences covering various syntactic phenomena as well as three types of German lexicons that can be attached to a grammar via an integrated lexicon interface. What follows is a description of the experiences we gained when we used GTU as a tutoring tool for students and as an experimental tool for CL researchers. From these we will derive the features necessary for a future grammar workbench.

In computational linguistics, we are often interested in developing grammar formalisms declaratively. However, tractability often becomes a problem then. Therefore, we want to argue for the use of constraint logic programming (CLP), and it is yet interesting to note that most logic based natural language systems have not attempted to employ CLP. Our framework and the prototype system UBS combines logic programming with constraint domains (e.g. typed feature structures and nite sets) and constraint techniques (e.g. coroutining).

Kommerziell verfügbare Maschinelle Übersetzungssysteme können auf den ersten Blick eine erstaunliche Vielzahl syntaktischer Konstruktionen verarbeiten. Erst eine detaillierte Analyse zeigt die spezifischen Defizite auf. Wir haben deshalb eine spezielle Testsuite mit 384 Sätzen (226 EN -> DE, 158 DE -> EN) zusammengestellt, die jeweils unterschiedliche Nebensätze enthalten. Dazu gehören indirekte Aussagesätze und Fragesätze, Adverbialsätze, Relativsätze, sowie Infinitiv-, Partizipial- und Gerundium-Konstruktionen. Nebensätze eignen sich für eine solche Untersuchung besonders gut, weil bei ihrer Übersetzung zahlreiche syntaktische Faktoren eine Rolle spielen. Dazu gehören: * das Problem der Abgrenzung einer Konstituente * das Problem der Funktionsbestimmung des Nebensatzes * das Problem des syntaktischen Transfers in der Übersetzung Da die Struktur und Funktion von Nebensätzen im Deutschen anhand äusserlicher Merkmale (Satzzeichen, Konjunktionen) deutlicher erkennbar ist als im Englischen, treten Probleme vor allem bei der Übersetzung vom Englischen ins Deutsche auf. Unsere Untersuchung behandelt deshalb vor allem diese Übersetzungsrichtung. Untersucht wurden die PC-Systeme Langenscheidts T1 (GMS), Personal Translator Plus (IBM, von Rheinbaben & Busch), Power Translator (Globalink) und Systran (MySoft). Nur in wenigen Fällen scheinen bestimmte Konstruktionen allen Systemen gänzlich unbekannt zu sein (z.B. englische Partizipial-Nebensätze). Bei den anderen Fällen zeigt mindestens ein System, dass es prinzipiell möglich ist, dieses Phänomen korrekt zu behandeln. Die meisten Übersetzungsfehler beruhen auf fehlerhafter Abgrenzung des Nebensatzes vom Hauptsatz, Verwechslung der Nebensatztypen, fehlende semantische Analyse und im Bereich der Synthesefehler die fehlerhafte Wortstellung in der Zielsprache. Kurz zusammengefasst erbrachte die Untersuchung die folgenden Ergebnisse: 1. Die schwierigsten Nebensatzkonstruktionen für die Übersetzungssysteme sind Infinitivkonstruktionen, partizipiale Adverbialsätze und Gerundien. Relativsätze werden gut übersetzt, auch wenn das Relativpronomen fehlt. 2. Von den untersuchten Systemen beherrscht Personal Translator Plus die meisten Nebensatzkonstruktionen. Langenscheidts T1 arbeitet sehr uneinheitlich, manchmal erstaunlich gut und manchmal vollkommen falsch. 3. Die Resultate der Nebensatz-Übersetzungen vom Deutschen ins Englische sind tendenziell besser als in der umgekehrten Richtung.

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