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.     

Municipal publications: A bibliographic guide to library literature

The following bibliography, which draws together the reported writings relating to municipal publications in the United States, suggests that many of the historical writings have value for presently debated issues.     

Technological forecasting as a guide for managerial planning

The author discusses the limitations of statistical forecasting as a guide to managerial planning, with specific reference to technological and market changes in the glass industry. He advocates the use of a Forecast Adjustment Matrix as a framework for identifying marketing and technological factors which might produce significant deviations from established trends. Finally, he suggests that the analysis and adjustment of technological and market trends should be made periodically. The whole technological forecasting operation should be formalized and it should be made the specific responsibility of one organizational unit within the company.     

United States government documents and great plains agriculture: A select guide

This article presents a select listing of government-published indexes and agency records important to the study of Great Plains agricultural history during the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.     

A compleat guide to company growth and development

This article deals with how to design a complete management system. It does not attempt to cover aspects of developing new products, producing them or finding outlet for them on the market. The aim is to show how to manage a company successfully by increasing successively the efficiency of company—environment relations until a series of advances over a wide front has been achieved.     

A practical guide to robust optimization

Robust optimization is a young and active research field that has been mainly developed in the last 15 years. Robust optimization is very useful for practice, since it is tailored to the information at hand, and it leads to computationally tractable formulations. It is therefore remarkable that real-life applications of robust optimization are still lagging behind; there is much more potential for real-life applications than has been exploited hitherto. The aim of this paper is to help practitioners to understand robust optimization and to successfully apply it in practice. We provide a brief introduction to robust optimization, and also describe important do׳s and don׳ts for using it in practice. We use many small examples to illustrate our discussions.     

A guide to evaluating managed care companies

Managed care has gradually been replacing the traditional way in which doctors and patients interact. These changes are taking place at an increasing pace, which strongly suggests there will be a dramatic trend to managed care programs. It has become imperative to understand the business of medicine beyond the traditional "business manager" tasks of setting fees, analyzing tax consequences, and balancing the check book. Providers may be hard pressed to maintain the quality of care they feel comfortable giving as the regulations of managed care exert their pressures. A rational, systematic approach to evaluate managed care firms is presented in this article. Additional criteria will have to be added as new ideas for managed care evolve. Physicians and practices must make decisions concerning the level of their participation, depending on a variety of factors, some more sensible than others.     

EIS—A guide for executives

Although the use of executive information systems (EIS) is increasing, many senior executives have such mixed feelings about them that there is an ‘EIS paradox’. Information managers and software suppliers believe this is because senior executives are intimidated by information technology, but this does not hold up to scrunity. The EIS paradox occurs because of failure to explain coherently how EIS fit with other aspects of the organizational database and what EIS can and cannot do for a senior executive and his or her organization. This article is designed to close the ‘information gap’ about EIS specifically for senior executives. The change in terminology from ‘data processing’ to ‘information technology’ is symptomatic of a change in the way in which computers are used. Rather than being the mere province of the data professional, information technology as exemplified by EIS can be applied to tasks where judgement and selectivity are required. The crucial point about EIS is, however, that computing can complement and increase managerial qualities of imagination and intelligence but not replace them.     

A guide to the upcoming health reform debate

AT the 1992 ACPE National Institute, several hundred physician executives actively participated in a debate on three competing visions for the health care system in the United States. This new column in the journal attempts to further this process by providing information on policy positions of relevance to College members. While the College does not advocate a particular position, the College encourages individual members to contact the interest group of their choice and get involved in the health policy debate. In this first column, one of the proposals currently being discussed is summarized.     

A guide for supply chain integration in SMEs

Supply chain integration (SCI) is a competitive business approach for enterprises that has not been implemented as widely as expected in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). One of the factors explaining this low level of application is the lack of methodologies to develop SCI that fit the characteristics of this type of enterprise. In this article, we present a methodology that enables SMEs to achieve correct SCI in a manner that is simple, straightforward and oriented towards their particular characteristics. Thus, SMEs will be able to align and coordinate the aims, resources, decisions, methods, business processes and employees involved in the supply chain. The methodology addresses the problem of SMEs SCI and it was produced by applying the case study research method to 30 industrial SMEs. The methodology is organised in phases and the activities to be performed, the techniques and supporting tools to be used, as well as the expected outcomes are all described for each phase. With this methodology, it becomes possible to overcome the main barriers that prevent SMEs from achieving a correct integration of their supply chains. In addition to the methodology, this article also outlines the significant benefits observed in the 30 enterprises as a result of its application.     

Health care downsizing: a survival guide

One would be hard pressed today to find a profession that has not experienced the effects of downsizing. Health care management is no exception. Although physicians were once regarded as relatively safe from layoffs, it is now estimated that "at least" 10 percent of physician executives will fall victim to health care downsizing in 1995. Furthermore, with a 14.3 percent turnover rate of hospital CEO positions in 1994, reversing a two-year drop, health care downsizing appears to be on the upswing. This article analyzes downsizing in the health care industry and gives some advice on how physician executives can deal with it successfully.     

Implementing workforce development in health care: A conceptual framework to guide and evaluate health service reform

Abstract

The term ‘workforce development’ is increasingly popular in the health-care field. It appears to encompass a range of human and organizational development activity. However, there has been limited explication of the concept of workforce development in Australian health care at area health service levels. It is timely to develop a framework for workforce development and processes to guide any evaluation of the implementation of workforce development strategies. This paper presents a framework that has been developed through consultative processes in an area health service and an associated review of literature.     

A businessman's guide to the media

This paper was also addressed to the ‘Facing Realities’ theme of the EFMD Dublin Conference. The author, a newspaperman of long experience, covers the part information plays in the life of businessman: the vast area information media now cover, the necessity for discrimination, and the directions for future development.     

A frame of reference for strategy development

Strategy development in today's volatile business environment demands increased management concern with fundamental issues which go beyond the balance sheet and the income statement to deal with the proper positioning of the corporation and its units to achieve long-term profitable survival. This is well understood. On the other hand, it is equally clear that management capacity—in terms of man hours of talent available—is the most important resource of any corporation and is also limited. In this article the authors set out to develop a frame of reference for analysing the corporation, its individual business and its competitors. Their objective is to provide management with the tools they need to deploy their creative entrepreneurial talent more efficiently by focusing on strategically relevant issues, using guidelines based on the ever-increasing body of research available today.     

A reference activity model for smart factory design and improvement

Smart manufacturing systems (SMSs) are envisioned to contain highly automated and IT-driven production systems. To address the complexity that arises in such systems, a standard and holistic model for describing its activities and their interrelationships is needed. This paper introduces a factory design and improvement (FDI) activity model and illustrates a case study of FDI in an electromechanical component factory. In essence, FDI is a reference activity model that encompasses a range of manufacturing system activities for designing and improving a factory during its initial development and also its operational phases. The FDI model shows not only the dependency between activities and manufacturing control levels but also the pieces of information and software functions each activity relies on. We envision that the availability of these pieces of information in digital form to integrate across the software functions will increase the agility of factory design and improvement projects. Therefore, our future work lies in contributing to standards for exchanging such information.     

Designing a performance measurement system for the research activities: A reference framework and an empirical study

Designing a performance measurement system (PMS) for R&D activities is a very critical but challenging task for supporting decision making and people motivation. Therefore, the subject is widely discussed in literature, but the use of a PMS for R&D is still uncommon among companies.The paper aims at making a step further in the field, elaborating a reference framework that describes the logical steps for the definition of a PMS for R&D. Moreover, the problem of designing an effective PMS is in-depth studied in a real context, a biotech company that operates in the field of pharmaceutical research.     

A historic, geographic, cultural, and economic guide to Australian health care

This is the first in a series of articles that will explore the health care systems of countries around the world. To begin the series, the President of the Royal Australian College of Medical Administrators describes the current status of the health of his country's people, its health care delivery system, and how it has responded to historic, geographic, cultural, and economic factors that characterize the growth and development of Australia.