Optimism And Contract Selection: Fill & Download for Free

Strategic Sourcing sets up supply bases and optimizes supplier selection. Strategic sourcing utilizes high level relationship management to leverage supplier core competencies to achieve competitive vantage. Long term supply agreements “Contracts” are just a way to codify the mutual understanding with the suppliers. Contracts ideally should be signed, filed, and never looked out again. Any supplier relationship depending on a contract to resolve problems is not going to last long.

The most important thing everyone should know about hatha yoga is that it meets us where we are at. We tend to think of it as doing pretzelly poses. It is that some of the time, and for some people. But for most people, it is not. There are many factors that contribute to one's ability to get pretzelly, and some of these factors are just genetics. And, and this is essential: the reading of yoga is vastly different from the doing of it. The former is intellectual, the latter experiential. Everyone should know this about yoga.Yoga's philosophical, spiritual, and historical aspects are well covered by fellow Quorans here, so I will furnish an answer that addresses the physical (hatha or asana) part of the practice, and describe the experience in more detail.Why is yoga necessary? There are different answers to this question. On the physical level, it optimizes the body's abilities and functions, and that's another workshop. On a deeper, more spiritual level, we learned that without a consistent asana practice, meditation and in-depth study are next to impossible. Thousands of years ago, people noticed that when they sat down to meditate, they could not concentrate--their bodies were jittery. Hatha yoga was created to "still the body," preparing it for meditation. "Matching breath to movement" is my short and sweet answer to describe asana. This is a moving meditation, and it is the beginning of the mastering of one's body. It is the external work, meaning it's observable, and repeatable. So it is scientific. Then the work turns internal when the yogi turns his attention inward to connect to his bodily sensations, thoughts and feelings. Succinctly, this is mindfulness. This internal work is also observable, especially to an expert, but the intricacies are more subtle, so the novice may not notice them. With time and practice, however, all things sensory occur to the practitioner. Meanwhile, alternating from external movement to inward noticing, a yogi is present with himself. In my own daily practice, I like to do both at the same time, and this experience is both profound and oh so much fun.This process is manifested in poses. When I practice/teach, I choreograph series of poses for a cross-section of abilities, and facilitate the process so clients can have a profound experience, each and every time. As the student practices, he deepens his understanding. Here's an example of a short series of poses: I start with Mountain Pose, dive into Forward Fold, lift a leg up behind and reach both arms back and lift the heart, leading the torso into In Flight. There are three poses in this simple choreography. And here it gets interesting. I started off in this post by saying that yoga meets us where we are at. So let's say I'm having an off-day, or, I'm 98 years old, and I'm in a wheel chair. Can I do any of this choreography? Well, let's find out! Let's modify Mountain Pose while sitting on that wheel chair. Inhale to swell up the abdomen, exhale to deflate it. Keep this abdominal breathing going throughout the sequence. Both gluts on the chair, thus evenly distributing the weight, both feet on the ground, bringing the awareness of the weight toward the balls of the feet. Knees above ankles...all ninety degree angels. Lengthen the torso from the navel, growing just an inch taller. Roll the shoulders forward and up, then point them back, squeeze shoulder blades together, drop the shoulders back into their sockets, effectively externally rotating the shoulders. Keep the gaze forward, softening the eyes, slackening the jaw. Chair Mountain Pose.Am I working the muscles in the legs, core, shoulders, trapezius, cervical spine, neck, arms? Yes. Is my breathing putting the parasympathetic side of our central nervous system into dominance? Yes. Does this work for me? Yes. Does yoga meet me where I am at? Most resoundingly, yes.And here it gets even more interesting. Because I can do this easily and with pleasure, my body is secreting happiness hormones. And because my body is relaxed and contracting select muscles, as opposed to indiscriminately all tensed up, more and more muscles are harnessing the energy that could be expressed as jitters, and into a therapeutic workout that oxygenates muscles and optimizes organ function. This process gradually bringing the body into...stillness...and mastery. Even with just one practice. Even if it's a 98 year old on a wheel chair. All of it on command, you realise.And boom, we have come full circle. Yoga works for us, meeting us where we are at.

Generally, the term second-best has been used in information economics (primarily contract theory: adverse selection, moral hazard) to signify cases in which there is an asymmetry of information, and therefore the optimal outcome (first-best) cannot be attained.For a quintessential example, consider a model with an agent and principal. The principal pays the agent according to some contract to be decided up front, but, as in real-life situations, cannot observe the agent's level of effort. Thus, the principal must compensate the agent based on the output, which is dependent on the agent's effort (i.e. higher effort generally leads higher output), but also on random noise - as a result, higher effort doesn't necessarily translate into higher output. This leads to the agent putting in a less-than-optimal amount of effort (than what would be the case if the principal could directly observe the effort of the agent and compensate accordingly). Because there could be "bad luck", the agent faces the risk of putting in high effort and not being compensated, which leads to the less-than-optimal effort level.You can see how this may be generalized to discussions of welfare. When distortions exist that create information asymmetries, these can similarly lead to losses in overall welfare due to foregone, mismatched, or wasteful transactions, all of which are generally characterized as second-best outcomes. The problem, then, becomes how to optimize and achieve the best possible outcomes for both the principal and the agent (depending on what setting you are studying), given that hidden information and/or actions render the Pareto optimum impossible.