Writing from practice

This study investigates the effects of integration change on the integration success of German acquisitions in Poland. It is argued that the degree of integration change has a positive impact on two success measures, namely, economic growth and efficient co-operation, in the acquisition target. It is further argued that process transparency, participation and positive reinforcement are moderators in this relationship between degree of integration change and integration success. Hypotheses are tested on 521 Polish employees from twenty-nine German acquisitions made in Poland between 1991 and 1999. The results show that there was a positive relationship between degree of integration change and integration success as expected and that only process transparency emerged as a significant moderator of this relationship. Consequences for post-acquisition management after German acquisitions in Poland and limitations of the study are discussed.     

Separating research from development: Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry

From an organisational point of view, corporate research and development (R&D) has always been viewed as one function. That view, however, has undergone some changes in the last few years, and many major corporations have changed their R&D organisation or re-thought their overall structure on the basis of their technical competencies.With the example of the pharmaceutical industry, in which R&D has a particularly strong role to play, Vittorio Chiesa reports on a survey of nine major pharmaceutical firms which have recently instigated such changes. Among the changes are a separation of the ‘research’ and ‘development’ activities organisationally and sometimes physically. The author puts forward explanations for this trend and weighs the advantages and disadvantages.     

Stories from the circle: Leadership lessons learned from aboriginal leaders

While much has been written about leadership, very little research has examined North American Aboriginal leadership. Drawing upon a qualitative methodology, our findings suggest several differences in how Aboriginal leaders view leadership; compared to non-Aboriginals or mainstream approaches to leadership. We found that Aboriginals view leadership as a spiritual endeavor that is holistic and egalitarian in nature. Aboriginal leaders use a more indirect style of communication that frequently invokes traditional imagery, story-telling and animal-based metaphors. Aboriginal leaders also draw from the Medicine Wheel as a guide. In conclusion, we discuss several challenges shared by Aboriginal leaders including the tall poppy syndrome and walking in two worlds and accordingly, offer managerial implications of our findings.     

The Transition from Temporary to Permanent Employment: Evidence from Tuscany

Abstract. In this paper, by distinguishing between the decisions made by the workers and those made by the firms, we provide a probabilistic evaluation of the transition from temporary to permanent employment in a regional context. Specifically, by exploiting a multinomial nested logit strategy of estimation, we find that the transition to a permanent job is far from certain, especially for women and older workers.     

Women entrepreneurs in and from developing countries: Evidences from the literature

Entrepreneurship has a leading role in economic development worldwide and, although it has usually been considered as a male dominated activity, recent studies emphasize how significant the contribution of women today is: in 2010, almost 42% of entrepreneurs in the world were, indeed, women (GEM, 2010).     

Fleeing from the Elephant

Abstract

The present set of papers show that leaders in the field of organizational behavior management are grappling with issues of human language and cognition. That is a good and necessary step for the field, but the solutions proposed are worrisome: adopting principles from non-behavioral psychology, adopting principles from introspection that have not been empirically validated, returning to methodological behaviorism, or appealing to non-empirical interpretations using traditional behavioral principles. In this paper I argue that these are the wrong solutions, being taken for the right reasons. There is a need for an analysis of language and cognition, but it will be found neither in other forms of psychology nor in traditional Skinnerian thinking on the topic. I suggest instead that OBM look at the data that exists in contemporary basic behavior analysis on the topic, particularly in the area of Relational Frame Theory. That work is a vigorous area of research, and its applied implications are significant, growing, and known to be relevant to organizations. The solution to the malaise these papers reflect is most likely to be found in post-Skinnerian behavior analysis itself.     

Gender Differences in Transitions from Unemployment: Micro Evidence from Finland

Abstract. This paper examines gender differences in labour market transitions in Finland. The empirical analysis carried out using multinomial logit model is based on a 1996 sample of unemployed people. The results indicate that female labour market position is inferior to male and that female labour market outcomes are more responsive to family‐related background characteristics. Previous unemployment is observed to be particularly scarring on male labour market position. According to the results education improves female labour market position significantly. Higher education diminishes gender differences in the labour market and is therefore a particularly equalizing factor.     

Estimation from Zero-Failure Data

When performing quantitative (or probabilistic) risk assessments, it is often the case that data for many of the potential events in question are sparse or nonexistent. Some of these events may be well-represented by the binomial probability distribution. In this paper, a model for predicting the binomial failure probability, P , from data that include no failures is examined. A review of the literature indicates that the use of this model is currently limited to risk analysis of energetic initiation in the explosives testing field. The basis for the model is discussed, and the behavior of the model relative to other models developed for the same purpose is investigated. It is found that the qualitative behavior of the model is very similar to that of the other models, and for larger values of n (the number of trials), the predicted P values varied by a factor of about eight among the five models examined. Analysis revealed that the estimator is nearly identical to the median of a Bayesian posterior distribution, derived using a uniform prior. An explanation of the application of the estimator in explosives testing is provided, and comments are offered regarding the use of the estimator versus other possible techniques.     

Lessons from industry.

Rapidly emerging in public debate as the key to the future of the health care industry is quality. One can hardly pick up a health care magazine or journal or listen to a discussion among health care professionals without quality becoming a concern. Despite virtually universal agreement on the importance of the generic term and secondary agreement on the importance of being able to measure it, discussion bogs down in either of two ways. It may become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the task of describing all the elements of health care quality, or the different viewpoints of individuals will yield quite variable understandings of what the term "quality of health care" means. To make substantial progress in improving health care quality, we will need to come to an agreement on terms.     

The physician exodus from hospitals

Physicians are spending increasingly less of their work week in the hospital. This is true of surgeons because they are performing more ambulatory surgery, often off the hospital premises, and for primary care physicians because they are delegating hospital care of their patients to others. What are the effects of this physician exodus on hospitals, patients, physicians, and medical education? Some of these consequences are explored, from disruptions in the continuity of care, to increase in practice productivity, to preparing undergraduates for the realities of medical practice.     

Protecting hospital records from discovery

One of the more burdensome tasks confronting hospital administrators and defense counsel in hospital liability cases is attempting to protect sensitive or confidential information contained in hospital records. Plaintiffs' counsel continue to refine and broaden document requests as they become more sophisticated and experienced, learning about additional categories of documents that may be helpful to their cause. There are conditions that protect documents from discovery, but the rules of privilege are complicated and are frequently misunderstood.     

Quantifying Cancer Risk from Radiation

Complex statistical models fitted to data from studies of atomic bomb survivors are used to estimate the human health effects of ionizing radiation exposures. We describe and illustrate an approach to estimate population risks from ionizing radiation exposure that relaxes many assumptions about radiation‐related mortality. The approach draws on developments in methods for causal inference. The results offer a different way to quantify radiation's effects and show that conventional estimates of the population burden of excess cancer at high radiation doses are driven strongly by projecting outside the range of current data. Summary results obtained using the proposed approach are similar in magnitude to those obtained using conventional methods, although estimates of radiation‐related excess cancers differ for many age, sex, and dose groups. At low doses relevant to typical exposures, the strength of evidence in data is surprisingly weak. Statements regarding human health effects at low doses rely strongly on the use of modeling assumptions.     

Learning from Nuclear Accident Experience

Statistical procedures are developed to estimate accident occurrence rates from historical event records, to predict future rates and trends, and to estimate the accuracy of the rate estimates and predictions. Maximum likelihood estimation is applied to several learning models and results are compared to earlier graphical and analytical estimates. The models are based on (1) the cumulative number of operating years, (2) the cumulative number of plants built, and (3) accidents (explicitly), with the accident rate distinctly different before and after an accident. The statistical accuracies of the parameters estimated are obtained in analytical form using the Fisher information matrix. Using data on core damage accidents in electricity producing plants , it is estimated that the probability for a plant to have a serious flaw has decreased from 0.1 to 0.01 during the developmental phase of the nuclear industry. At the same time the equivalent frequency of accidents has decreased from 0.04 per reactor year to 0.0004 per reactor year, partly due to the increasing population of plants.     

Eliminating smoking from the workplace

Employers are more readily realizing that a nonsmoking policy in the workplace is a more effective way to run their businesses. They are recognizing costs such as productivity losses, increased health and life insurance costs, employer liability for diseases jointly linked to smoking and occupational exposures, absenteeism, passive smoking-induced health care costs among nonsmokers, workers' compensation, and fire losses. Concomitantly, employees are supporting policies that limit smoking to achieve a clean air environment. Former Surgeon General Koop's goal of "a smokefree society by the year 2000" is being recognized by more and more segments of society.     

Lessons from the flipside: How do acquirers learn from divestitures to complete acquisitions?

We examine whether experience from prior divestitures is associated with higher completion likelihood in subsequent acquisitions. We argue that through divestitures, firms could extract meaningful knowledge that is helpful for completing their acquisitions, such as a general understanding of acquisition deal-making stages, and the stories and aims of the target in an M&A transaction. In addition, viewing divestitures as the flipside of acquisitions, we conjecture that the selling firm can observe how the divested component of their business is acquired, and vicariously learn from these observations. We also investigate the relative importance of learning from divestiture vis-à-vis acquisition experience in determining acquisition deal completion. Finally, we contend that the effect of learning from divestitures on acquisition deal completion depends on acquisition experience and deal value. We find evidence supporting our conjectures in a sample of 2164 M&A transactions from the worldwide computer and printing industries between 1991 and 2010.     

Potential Exposure and Cancer Risk from Formaldehyde Emissions from Installed Chinese Manufactured Laminate Flooring

Lumber Liquidators (LL) Chinese‐manufactured laminate flooring (CLF) has been installed in >400,000 U.S. homes over the last decade. To characterize potential associated formaldehyde exposures and cancer risks, chamber emissions data were collected from 399 new LL CLF, and from LL CLF installed in 899 homes in which measured aggregate indoor formaldehyde concentrations exceeded 100 μg/m³ from a total of 17,867 homes screened. Data from both sources were combined to characterize LL CLF flooring‐associated formaldehyde emissions from new boards and installed boards. New flooring had an average (±SD ) emission rate of 61.3 ± 52.1 μg/m²‐hour; >one‐year installed boards had ∼threefold lower emission rates. Estimated emission rates for the 899 homes and corresponding data from questionnaires were used as inputs to a single‐compartment, steady‐state mass‐balance model to estimate corresponding residence‐specific TWA formaldehyde concentrations and potential resident exposures. Only ∼0.7% of those homes had estimated acute formaldehyde concentrations >100 μg/m³ immediately after LL CLF installation. The TWA daily formaldehyde inhalation exposure within the 899 homes was estimated to be 17 μg/day using California Proposition 65 default methods to extrapolate cancer risk (below the regulation “no significant risk level” of 40 μg/day). Using a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency linear cancer risk model, 50th and 95th percentile values of expected lifetime cancer risk for residents of these homes were estimated to be 0.33 and 1.2 per 100,000 exposed, respectively. Based on more recent data and verified nonlinear cancer risk assessment models, LL CLF formaldehyde emissions pose virtually no cancer risk to affected consumers.     

Notes from an Introspective Behaviorist

Abstract

Based on the three-contingency model of performance management, I make the following argument: (1) Often, we fail to behave as we should because the natural contingencies supporting appropriate behavior are ineffective; the natural contingencies involve outcomes for each individual response that are either too small, though of cumulative significance, or outcomes that are too improbable. The delay of the outcome is essentially irrelevant. The psychodynamic model of the cognitive motivational theorists provides a poor explanation for why we fail to behave as we should. (2) The performance-management contingencies in organizational behavior management (OBM) must usually involve deadline-induced aversive control, even when they are based on powerful reinforcers. Furthermore, such performance management succeeds only to the extent that the person's behavioral history, “Jewish mother,” has inculcated an appropriate value system. Wiegand and Geller's critique of the necessity of the use of aversive control fails to take into account the necessity of deadlines and the difference between instrumental and hedonic reinforcers; furthermore, it greatly over values the power of intrinsic reinforcement contingencies in OBM.     

捕鱼者说

渔民与渔商,构成太湖里另一种世外商业桃源我是地道的北方人,童年是在大连著名的老虎滩边上度过的,那时天天泡在大海里,无忧无虑,恋海的情结也许就是那时候养成的吧。上世纪70年代初到了北京,对大海那种割舍不下的情结还时时萦绕在心,虽然北京也有密云、怀柔和官厅等水库,但和大海相比,相去甚远,要想看海,最近的也要跑到160多公里外的天津,或200多公里以外的北戴河。     

读来读往

大部分公司都拥有一批从创业初期就在公司的中层领导，但随着公司发展，这些“落后于时代大潮流”的中层领导依然沿袭着公司创业初期的那套做法，会成为企业发展的绊脚石，并致使整个组织如一潭死水一样停滞不前。