Accounting for inflation: The need for action

The article was prepared at a time when the business community still seemed very uncertain about the significance of changing price levels in relation to accounting statements. Those, including the author, who believed that the unadjusted figures being produced in company revenue accounts and balance sheets gave potentially misleading information sought in various ways, mainly in books and articles, to give greater awareness of the problem. The author's contribution was designed to demonstrate, simply and unequivocally, how business capital, in real terms, is liable to be eroded in periods of rising prices.     

Ethical Room for Maneuver: Playground for the Food Business

In a world of glossy corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, the shallowness of the actual CSR results may well be its counterpart. We claim that the possible gaps between aspirations and implementations are due to the company's overrating abilities to deal with the irrational and complex moral world of business. Many academic approaches aim to lift business ethics up to a higher level by enhancing competences but will fail because they are too rationalistic and generalistic to match the pluralistic and situational practice constituted by the mosaic of values and set of constraints. This is demonstrated by describing and analyzing the CSR development of the multinational caterer Sodexo and in particular its Dutch branch. We explain what they do and why they are not successful. We present a new tool named Ethical Room for Maneuver that centers experiences and concrete situations in a playground of inquiry and experiment to enhance abilities to operate in themoral world and to meliorate business and society with more effectiveness.     

TQM: Some issues for deliberation

In this note, the author puts forth some fundamental but generic issues arising from evolving theories and practices of TQM and suggests an agenda for furtherance of research.     

Medical malpractice: preparing for trial

In the last column (The Physician Executive, 34(3), May/June 2008) I discussed the intricacies of your deposition. Assuming that both parties still feel their cases have merit, your next task is to prepare for the trial.     

TQM: a paradigm for physicians

Change, even when for the better, is always accompanied by apprehension and even outright fear. It is therefore not surprising to hear health care workers, especially physicians, expressing their concerns about this "new" management philosophy through a spectrum of reactions that vary from skeptical or grudging acceptance to outright dismissal of all of the new "alphabet soup" associated with TQM.     

Piggybacking for business and nonprofits: a strategy for hard times

This article explains the conceptual foundations for the piggybacking strategy from the general strategic management, adoption of innovation, product life cycle, specialization and diversified portfolio strategy literatures. The strategic piggybacking strategy is compared and contrasted with the diversified portfolio and specialization strategies. Intention, dynamic investment flow, short vs long term, and mission similarities and differences are addressed. A case is made for considering strategic piggybacking as a synthesis of the specialization and diversified portfolio strategies. The conditions appropriate for adoption of a piggybacking strategy are also discussed.     

Mentoring relationships: implications for practitioners and suggestions for future research

This review of the literature is intended to help HRD practitioners facilitate healthy mentoring relationships and better address potentially negative functions or outcomes of the mentoring process within their own organizations. This work provides a review of the social learning processes that play a role in mentoring relationships. In addition, it reviews the functions and outcomes of mentoring for individuals and organizations, as well as the characteristics of good mentors and the influence mentors have upon career choice. Finally, the implications for mentoring relationships among individuals with disabilities, minorities and women are briefly reviewed in order to provide practitioners with a sense of the breadth of individuals who may benefit from well-planned or well-implemented mentoring. This article concludes with critical comments on the current state of mentoring research. Suggestions are made for future research in order to stimulate greater study into certain aspects of mentoring.     

Industrial policy: The case for national strategies for world markets

This article considers the objectives of an industrial policy that would develop national strategies for world markets. It describes the tools used to implement such strategies and how the strategies would be organized. The author also considers some of the advantages and disadvantages of developing national strategies for world markets.     

An Improved Framework for Uncertainty Analysis: Accounting for Unsuspected Errors

I use an analogy with the history of physical measurements, population and energy projections, and analyze the trends in several data sets to quantify the overconfidence of the experts in the reliability of their uncertainty estimates. Data sets include (i) time trends in the sequential measurements of the same physical quantity; (ii) national population projections; and (iii) projections for the U.S., energy sector. Probabilities of large deviations for the true values are parametrized by an exponential distribution with the slope determined by the data. Statistics of past errors can be used in probabilistic risk assessment to hedge against unsuspected uncertainties and to include the possibility of human error into the framework of uncertainty analysis. By means of a sample Monte Carlo simulation of cancer risk caused by ingestion of benzene in soil, I demonstrate how the upper 95th percentiles of risk are changed when unsuspected uncertainties are included. I recommend to inflate the estimated uncertainties by default safety factors determined from the relevant historical data sets.     

Supplier Strategies and Routines for Capability Development: Implications for Upgrading

This paper examines the strategies and routines adopted by small and medium-sized suppliers to develop capabilities that enable them to engage in upgrading, despite a precarious relational and institutional context. To this end, we investigate the strategic behaviour of two Bangladeshi garment manufacturers. Both started out as small suppliers for multinational enterprises (MNEs) and have eventually grown into micro-multinationals. The firms are involved in ‘tacit promissory contracting’ with their buyers, a specific form of international outsourcing relationship. The study adopts a multiple case study design that involves interviews with managers/owners of the firms. The analysis yields two key findings. Both firms have devised strategies and taken coherent routines involving actions to develop skills and motivation needed to perform appropriate functional activities (i.e. pre-production, production and post-production) as they embarked on different stages of upgrading. Furthermore, firms have designed routines to internalise the challenges originating from their relationships with their buyers and the institutional environment at the time that had the potential to affect their upgrading goals. The paper contributes to IB studies by highlighting how suppliers, even in a precarious context, can control their own strategies and routines, so as to develop capabilities that allow them to gradually redress the power imbalance between themselves and their buyers.     

Nurses: Training for new job demands

Abstract

This paper argues that both the present and future job demands faced by nurses are likely to exceed the resources of the training which is currently provided for them. This argument will be supported by reference to the authors' studies of stress in nursing, as well as a variety of other sources. The common themes underlying reactions to both present and future demands include first, awareness of high stress levels to be found amongst nurses, and second, an emphasis on communication as both the problem and as the proposed solution. Common responses to these two themes are outlined, including training in stress management, and communication training. Some of the problems and unexamined assumptions (for example that hospital management actually wants to lower stress levels and improve communication in nursing) are examined. Some suggestions are made for developing training in health care contexts, to deal more adequately with likely future demands.     

汪潮涌:征服美洲杯

朱新礼和王中军是帆船大赛的"第十八人""他是个独自在湾流中一条平底小帆船上钓鱼的老人,这一回已去了八十四天,没逮上一条鱼。"这是美国著名作家海明威于《老人与海》开头的一段话。     

Testing for Regime Switching: A Comment

An autoregressive model with Markov regime‐switching is analyzed that reflects on the properties of the quasi‐likelihood ratio test developed by Cho and White (2007). For such a model, we show that consistency of the quasi‐maximum likelihood estimator for the population parameter values, on which consistency of the test is based, does not hold. We describe a condition that ensures consistency of the estimator and discuss the consistency of the test in the absence of consistency of the estimator.