垄断! 垄断!

在世界上有人担心失去“中国制造“不能生活时,中国人也应该想想失去跨国公司如何更好的生活购物你会习惯去沃尔玛,买手机你只选诺基亚,让你说一个冲印店你会脱口而出柯达,开一辆宝马是你的梦想……那些无所不在的广告,可口可乐、NIKE、潘婷……正将你紧紧的锁在了跨国公司所精心编制的网里,而你毫无觉察。这还仅仅是生活。而中国企业面对跨国公司的狂轰滥炸,也许就没有消费者这样舒适的心情了。据国家工商局的资料,中国多个行业总产值的比重中,在华跨国公司的份额不断上升。轻工、化工、医药、机     

Tenure denied! not ready for promotion! no merit pay increase! poor Leonardo da Vinci!

Most academic institutions convey to faculty that they must have a clearly identified single or dual stream of research. Such a standard inhibits expertise. It stifles creativity and innovation and results in faculty unable to deal effectively with a broad range of doctoral students. People like Leonardo da Vinci, and other outstanding experts, fall outside of such a standard and, in today's academic world, would be denied promotion and tenure. Such artificial standards forcing all faculties to behave in the same way must be set aside.     

Caveat Emptor!

It is a case of an Indian non-banking finance company started in 1991. The company had a meteoric rise in a short span of six-seven years and a great fall leading to closing its shutters down on 15 May 1997. The promoter CRB used money, connections with powers-that-be and political clout to circumvent banking and commercial guidelines of the country and took his company to a dizzy height only to head for a doom. In the process, thousands of small investors and depositors were cheated and their savings vanished in thin air. Even financial institutions lost several millions. This case gives a detailed account of the whole drama wherein the roles played by different actors are depicted. The entire case is based on press reports that appeared in Indian newspapers and magazines and offered to have value judgments.     

Thank you!

The study focuses on the question of how HRD personnel employed in a large multinational company perceive learning at work. We are interested in how HR development staff describe learning at the individual, collective and organizational levels. The participants were Finnish and Chinese human resource professionals (n?=?17) who used an asynchronous web-based tool to study adult education. The empirical data consist of all the texts sent to a web-based discussion forum. The findings showed that the HRD practitioners' views of learning covered quite evenly all three levels of organizational learning. The practitioners paid special attention to practical learning taking place in connection with everyday work activities, to communication and collaborative learning and to the development of a learning organization. This reflects the multifaceted nature of learning at work and the necessity of using HRD to integrate individual- and organizational-level needs in order to enhance organizational learning. The participants frequently reported that they found this a demanding task that required a clear 'understanding of humans, people in the organizations and their learning'. If organizational learning is to meet its current challenges it should take note of messages like these from HRD practitioners, which emphasise the diversity of learning experiences. Promoting a shared understanding and especially awareness and recognition of the fundamental issues associated with learning at work is a possible first step.     

办公室GO OUT!

遭办公室囚禁的林老板 2007年2月26日,星期一,早上8点45分,林强驱车前往公司,每周一早上9点林强都要参加公司的例会. "还有5分钟,就是开会时间."秘书小李小声地提醒他,又是堵车高峰,今天可不能迟到.刚到公司,林强的电话和手机习惯地合奏出起伏不断的交响乐.左手是座机里成都分厂的厂长抽不开身开会,右手手机里的长沙分公司还在不停顿地汇报近期营销策划.     

Matching colored points with rectangles

Let S be a point set in the plane such that each of its elements is colored either red or blue. A matching of S with rectangles is any set of pairwise-disjoint axis-aligned closed rectangles such that each rectangle contains exactly two points of S. Such a matching is monochromatic if every rectangle contains points of the same color, and is bichromatic if every rectangle contains points of different colors. We study the following two problems: (1) Find a maximum monochromatic matching of S with rectangles. (2) Find a maximum bichromatic matching of S with rectangles. For each problem we provide a polynomial-time approximation algorithm that constructs a matching with at least 1 / 4 of the number of rectangles of an optimal matching. We show that the first problem is \(\mathsf {NP}\)-hard even if either the matching rectangles are restricted to axis-aligned segments or S is in general position, that is, no two points of S share the same x or y coordinate. We further show that the second problem is also \(\mathsf {NP}\)-hard, even if S is in general position. These \(\mathsf {NP}\)-hardness results follow by showing that deciding the existence of a matching that covers all points is \(\mathsf {NP}\)-complete in each case. Additionally, we prove that it is \(\mathsf {NP}\)-complete to decide the existence of a matching with rectangles that cover all points in the case where all the points have the same color, solving an open problem of Bereg et al. (Comput Geom 42(2):93–108, 2009).     

Turning Duty into Joy!

In the present article motto-goals are introduced as a technique for effortless self-regulation, in which negative emotions are regulated through a changed mindset of individuals. Afterwards, the ZRM online tool will be presented, which makes it possible to formulate motto-goals in a short time without the assistance of a trainer or coach. Current findings on the efficacy are reported. The article closes with a summary and an outlook on possible applications.     

Congratulations ... you're fired!

Being fired as a physician executive is the dark side of burgeoning opportunities for health care leadership. The risk of termination is 20 to 40 times higher than for clinicians. Several approaches to calculating and predicting the probability of being fired are presented, based on a recent survey of American College of Physician Executives members and the author's professional observations. The survey identified several factors that are associated with a higher risk of being fired. These include structural conditions like organizational type and position, as well as factors ranging from being the first person in a new or unclear job to working for an entity with two or more years of significant financial losses. Persistent conflict with a boss or board member--concerning personal style or organizational strategy--is another commonly present danger signal. Additional predictive variables include recent termination or departure of a boss, recent merger, and widespread organizational downsizing or re-engineering. This article suggests strategies to better predict high-risk situations, to prevent termination, and to increase the likelihood of your professional and personal well-being when termination becomes inevitable.     

电子商务:泡沫破碎逼近!

热钱多,圈钱快,门槛低,价格战,乱象丛生,电子商务泡沫破碎悄然逼近,但格局未定,机会尚在。     

Important points in managed care contracts

Health care is increasingly managed through some contractual relationship. Such contracts vary and the contracting entities may be clinics, universities, health maintenance organizations, individual practitioner organizations, preferred provider organizations, corporate health plans, or other structures. It is estimated that within 10 years more than 70 percent of all health care will be provided through some type of managed care plan.     

Integrated logistics-call in the revolutionaries!

This paper argues that the ability of logistics to achieve its aim of efficient and effective interfunctional co-ordination is hindered by the particular paradigm to which it unwittingly adheres. We begin by defining and setting out the objectives of both ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ forms of logistics, and demonstrate that there is doubt about whether even the newer form can achieve proper interfunctional co-ordination or gain widespread acceptance in the practitioner community. In order to understand why, it is suggested that an analysis is required of the theoretical assumptions upon which contemporary logistics is based. Despite recent developments in logistics it may be that it is some unquestioned paradigm, upon which all logisticians hitherto have relied, which is preventing genuine progress being made. A paradigm analysis is conducted which reveals that both traditional and non-traditional logistics are ‘functionalist’ in nature. It is argued that the main problems faced by logistics derive from this. Logistics suffers from the failings of functionalist thinking and its ambitions will continue to be frustrated unless it is able to achieve an ‘epistemological break’ from functionalism. Logisticians must look towards other paradigms in order to progress. Logistics is in need of its own revolutionaries.     

远离理财陷阱!

“你可以在对金融缺乏了解的情况下有所成就,但是,如果你彻头彻尾一无所知,那么你的命运就掌握在他人手里了。记住这句古训：‘愚人同其金钱会迅速分道扬镳。’”这是诺贝尔经济学奖得主罗伯特．莫顿在其著作《金融学》一书中的开场白,所描述的场景已经投射进中国富豪们的现实。KODA投资者不但蚀掉了本金,还要被银行追讨。     

“腾工”不傻！

6月3日四川民企腾中重工与通用悍马达成谅解备忘录,腾中重工将收购悍马品牌并获得其关键高级管理层及营运队伍。但主流媒体或其他权威财经网站都不看好这宗交易：花大把钞票只买悍马这个品牌是否划算？这宗交易能否跨过重重障碍最终得以成交？更有甚者直指腾中重工此举“很傻很天真”。     

Oops! and Another Seemingly Four-Letter Word

Performance engineering, SPC, and the Total Performance System are related to one another. Their similarities and differences are noted. Examples of their joint applications are presented in case analyses. It is suggested that we can combine behavior analysis techniques with SPC techniques to construct total performance systems.