In recent years dozens of nations have begun exporting software products and services. We label these nations the “new software exporting nations”. We introduce a four-tier taxonomy of software exporting nations. Thresholds for the tiers are defined by export revenues, by cluster size, and by maturity. Tier 1 nations are the major software exporting nations; Tier 2 nations are the transition so...

In today's competitive markets, firms try to reduce their supply cost by selecting efficient suppliers using different techniques. Several methods can be applied to evaluate the efficiency of supplier base. This paper develops generalized network data envelopment analysis models to examine the efficiency of two-tier supplier bases under cooperative and non-cooperative strategies where each tier...

As companies race to transform their businesses into e-businesses, they are discovering that the transformation process is not always straightforward. The IBM Application Framework for e-business (the Framework) is a means for achieving business transformation and a foundation framework for developing and extending e-business processes and applications. This paper describes the Framework, showi...

This randomized control trial examined the efficacy of a multitiered supplemental tutoring program within a first-grade responsiveness-to-intervention prevention model. Struggling first-grade readers (n = 649) were screened and progress monitored at the start of the school year. Those identified as unresponsive to general education Tier 1 (n = 212) were randomly assigned to receive Tier 2 small...

Can’t do/won’t do assessment is a pragmatic procedure grounded in the functional academic assessment literature. It describes two possibilities with regard to child performance. The basic premise of the can’t do/won’t do assessment is that children who are not meeting expectations for successful academic performance in the classroom either cannot (i.e., have a skill deficit) or will not (i.e., ...

Definition A Multi-tier Architecture is a software architecture in which different software components, organized in tiers (layers), provide dedicated functionality. The most common occurrence of a multi-tier architecture is a three-tier architecture consisting of a data management tier (mostly encompassing one or several database servers), an application tier (business logic) and a client tier...

In two studies, we examined what constitutes a supportive context for word learning. In Study 1, we examined children’s comprehension of iconic gestures by asking 2, 3, and 4 year-old children, as well as adult controls, to choose the referent of an iconic gesture. The gesture either highlighted a possible action with the object, or a salient physical attribute of the object. By age 2, children...

We develop a three-tier model of international outsourcing in which intermediate firms in a middle-tier country choose between outsourcing their production activities to a bottom-tier country and contracting out their R & D activities to a top-tier country. Managerial ability augments innovation activities, and there exists a threshold level of managerial ability beyond which intermediate firms...

In this paper, we consider interactions of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and how these interactions can affect the overall traffic and resource allocation between ISPs. In particular, we consider a simplified two-level hierarchical model wherein there are a single tier-1 ISP and tier-2 ISPs. Each tier-2 ISP needs to pay the tier-1 ISP for the connectivity service. At the same time, a tier-2...