Pension Fund Trustees:: Role and Contribution

Although Boards of Trustees have statutory authority over pension fund investment, how these boards exercise their responsibility is considered to vary unduly. Recently, pension fund trustees have been under pressure from government, sponsors and beneficiaries. The question being asked is, ‘What is the trustee’s role and contribution?’. In response, a UK-based study conducted at Cranfield School of Management explores, from the trustees’ perspective, the nature of their role and contribution.The results of the study highlight that in addition to pension fund trustees being mindful of their fiduciary duties, under trust law, by acting at all times in their beneficiaries’ best financial interests, they also make a valuable contribution to seven key areas of activity considered as critical to pension fund management. It is concluded that trustees are well capable of positionally responding to the challenges they face within the financial markets environment and utilize external resources, such as financial services consultants, effectively.     

Career Dis-integration and Re-integration in Mergers and Acquisitions:: Managing Competence and Motivational Intangibles

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are increasingly prevalent, powerful and risky corporate events. The resistance or support of people in the integration of two previously separate organizations plays a key role for their success or failure. In this paper we present a Career Concept approach to better understand and manage sources and incentives for individual contributions and reactions to M&A. As ‘merged’ corporations integrate previously separate organizations, they can often dis-integrate individual careers with lay-offs, reduced advancement opportunities, upset or changed career plans, and other resistance-generating changes. This is the poorest means of mobilizing motivation, experience, commitment and competence, all of which are usually seen as critical justifications for M&A in the first place. Organizations face opportunity to select new combinations and integrate work in ways that individual careers can be re-integrated into the goals of the M&A with the goals and motivations of participants affected by it, by recognizing and effectively supporting different motivational and competence profiles.     

OBM and Success:

No abstract available for this article.     

Editorial: Women and work

Abstract

When compared to day workers, night-shift workers report that they eat fewer meals, have poorer appetites, are less satisfied with their eating habits, and eat at different times of the day. When demographic variables are held constant, there do not appear to be any significant differences between experienced day and night-shift workers in caffeine or alcohol consumption. Exceptions to and variations in these findings are probably due to the background influences of social and cultural variables. Eating and drinking behaviours do effect human performance and mood, but little relevant data have been gathered from experienced night-shift workers. There are no shiftworker data evaluating the effectiveness of the special diets or dietary recommendations that have been proposed for use by night-shift workers. Thus, attempts to manipulate night-shift worker eating and drinking habits require experimental test.     

Intra-firm Adoption Decisions:: Role of Inter-firm and Intra-firm Variables

The subject of this paper is intra-firm adoption decisions, a relatively unexplored research area in the marketing literature. We develop a conceptual model in which two sets of independent variables are hypothesized to influence the intra-firm adoption decisions, i.e. (1) variables known from the inter-firm diffusion literature, (2) variables specifically relevant for intra-firm analyses of innovation acceptance. Hypotheses are developed and tested in an application in the domain of finance: the intra-firm adoption decisions regarding the common European currency by the treasury, purchasing and sales departments of European companies. Data were obtained from treasury, purchasing and sales managers (441 respondents in total) from companies located in five different European countries. The results of logistic regression show that the proposed intra-firm variables are indeed important explanatory variables that should be included in intra-firm analyses. Moreover, for the inter-firm variables we found differences in the effects between departments, which demonstrates the very need for an intra-firm analysis.     

可就业能力研究：价值与趋势

基于国内日趋严峻的就业形势和劳动力可就业能力不足、无法满足用人单位需求的现实,分析了可就业能力研究的理论价值和实用价值,并在综述国内外近年可就业能力研究重点基础上,展望了可就业能力的横向研究、纵向研究和综合性研究的相关领域及重点内容.     

Advertising: Trends and prospects

The advertising industry in the U.K. has for many years been regarded as a dynamic and growing industry. This paper examines the proposition and details the historical growth of the advertising industry during post war years and outlines structure through which that growth occurred. Furthermore, the author examines the structure of advertising expenditure both in terms of supply (that is the types of media utilized) and the demand (that is the types of commercial or industrial activity).

The author details surprising facts about the level of business at which the advertising industry is currently operating and examines the causes for the trends he discerns. As the Managing Director of an advertising agency formed in 1974 the author is both a qualified and deeply concerned writer.     

Floods and Climate Change: Interactions and Impacts

Whether the floods experienced during the last decade in Germany and in other European countries are triggered or worsened by human activities has been the subject of a great deal of debate. Possible anthropogenic activities leading to increased flood risk include river regulation measures, intensified land use and forestry, and emissions of greenhouse gases causing a change in the global climate. This article discusses the latter by reviewing the existing knowledge on the subject. First, the relevance, capabilities, and limitations of climate models for the simulation and analysis of flood risk under aspects of the anthropogenic climate change are described. Special consideration is given here to differences between the "typical" spatial scale of climate models and hydrological flood models. Second, observations of trends in climate variables relevant for river flooding issues are summarized. Special emphasis is put on the Rhine and other German catchment areas. Third, the possibilities of modeling the different parts of the "cascade of flood risk" are summarized, introducing the special features of meteorological, hydrological, and river hydraulic models.     

Equilibria and Indivisibilities: Gross Substitutes and Complements

This paper examines an exchange economy with heterogeneous indivisible objects that can be substitutable or complementary. We show that a competitive equilibrium exists in such economies, provided that all the objects can be partitioned into two groups, and from the viewpoint of each agent, objects in the same group are substitutes and objects across the two groups are complements. This condition generalizes the well‐known Kelso–Crawford gross substitutes condition and is called gross substitutes and complements. We also provide practical and typical examples from which substitutes and complements are both jointly observed.     

Container Scheduling: Complexity and Algorithms

We consider the transport of containers through a fleet of ships. Each ship has a capacity constraint limiting the total number of containers it can carry and each ship visits a given set of ports following a predetermined route. Each container has a release date at its origination port, and a due date at its destination port. A container has a size 1 or size 2; size 1 represents a 1 TEU (20‐foot equivalent unit) and size 2 represents 2 TEUs. The delivery time of a container is defined as the time when the ship that carries the container arrives at its destination port. We consider the problem of minimizing the maximum tardiness over all containers. We consider three scenarios with regard to the routes of the ships, namely, the ships having (i) identical, (ii) nested, and (iii) arbitrary routes. For each scenario, we consider different settings for origination ports, release dates, sizes of containers, and number of ports; we determine the computational complexity of various cases. We also provide a simple heuristic for some cases, with its worst case analysis. Finally, we discuss the relationship of our problems with other scheduling problems that are known to be open.     

Matching Technology and Organizational Structure:

A case study is presented of a life and health insurance company that undertook a reorganization of work flow, management practices and structure following the implementation of automation. With the adoption of an on-line computer system, there was the potential for a competent, rapidly responsive and adaptive organization. However, the functionally organized, highly specialized business was operating as a white-collar assembly line. It was unable to respond to market demands and financial market changes in a creative, timely manner. The organizational potential created by the total processing system could not be realized until the social system, the organization of the people, was adapted to take full advantages of new technical capabilities. An assessment involving all of top management was conducted in which managers were allowed to determine the problems, goals, and potential solutions. Management developed a long range, overall approach to the organizational change. The decision was made to phase in experimental self managed work teams and to restructure organizational contingencies to support achievement or organizational rather than unit goals. This paper presents the intial twenty-four month period in the process.     

包容性领导研究述评与展望

工作场所中的员工多样化使得包容性管理日益受到重视,作为包容性管理核心之一的包容性领导也因此得到广泛关注.鉴于此,首先对包容性和包容性管理进行了回顾;然后,对包容性领导理论、构念、影响因素和作用等进行了深入阐述,并结合中国情境,进一步提出包容性领导的二维结构及可能测量方式;最后,提出了中国情境下包容性领导的未来研究方向,以期对今后的相关研究有所借鉴.