No lollygagging for Dr. Lally

Jim Lally considers himself something of a late-bloomer because he spent years in the Army before earning his bachelor's degree and going on to medical school. But he's making up for lost time quickly. He already owns his own hospital.     

Coaching beim Generationswechsel in einem Familienunternehmen

Coaching on a generational change in a family firm The author presents the coaching with a young owner of a firm, who had taken over a traditional business by his parents. Since these did not retire totally from business, the new owner is blocked in his decision making. With the help of the coaching and especially by the panorama technique, he becomes aware of these connections, so that new perspectives concerning the development of the business and his personal development become possible.     

RANK GENERATION,PRESERVATION, AND REVERSAL IN THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY DECISION PROCESS

Decision making has the objective of finding the best alternative or set of alternatives by considering a number of goals, objectives, criteria, competitors, and other important factors. The analytic hierarchy process is a decision aid used to assist a decision maker in sorting out the complexity of a decision problem and making use of his or her judgments. A decision maker must be assured that the arithmetic operations of any such decision process are the right ones—that they surface the correct ranking and values of the alternatives and preserve or alter ranks appropriately when new alternatives are added or deleted. In this paper it will be shown that with absolute measurement, rank always is preserved, with relative measurement, rank changes with nspect to scveral criteria only because of the structural dependence (involving both numbers and measurements) of criteria on alternatives. A discussion of the effect on rank of replicas and near replicas of the alternatives also is given.     

What is it like to work for a big five consulting firm? Interview by Barbara J. Linney

Is consulting for a big five a career direction you've thought about pursuing? In this column, Barbara Linney interviews physician executive Don Gessler, MD, MBA, CPE, FACPE, to talk about his experience in working for a big five consulting firm. He discusses how he got his position at ABC Consulting Firm, the nature of the work, the rigorous travel schedule, the pluses, and the type of physician executive that is satisfied in this environment. He describes some of the projects and tasks he has been involved in as a consultant. He emphasizes that if physicians don't like to do selling, consulting is not a place for them to be and that it is a very team-based structure.     

黄光裕的地头力偏了! 他缺乏对正当事物最起码的敬畏

地头力是一种敢想、敢做、敢坚持的开拓能力,常常表现为一种顿悟,"灵机一动,计上心来"地头力是我对中国企业实践长期观察的初步结论,能够在华为等中国一线企业身上得到印证。以地头力来透视企业的经营管理,是中国     

钱平:越野生存 真正的野外驾车,是对智慧、应变能力的考验

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A DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING MODEL FOR OPTIMAL ALLOCATION OF DECISION TIME

Recurrent decision making by a lower-level manager can be viewed as a sequential decision process in which time and uncertainty are limiting factors. Under these conditions, the manager must determine how to best utilize his decision making time consistent with his own particular set of decision values. A dynamic programming model was devised to determine the optimal (consistent) allocation of decision time among five different types of problems for a sequence of simulated recurrent decision situations. Fifty-one lower-level managers were interviewed about their use of decision time and decision procedures. The model was validated by comparing model assumptions and results with the findings from the interviews. The model was used to determine the effects of variations in the levels of time available and uncertainty upon the optimal allocation of decision time.     

Where Does the Ownership of a Decision Lie?

SUMMARY This paper examines Leavitt's three-part model of path-finding, problem solving and decision making, and implementation in order to explore how far this model encapsulates the senior manager role. The discussion suggests that all three dimensions are important. The author argues that the top manager of the future in an increasingly complex economic world must primarily have good all round vision of the world in which he or she operates and the ability to communicate and implement his plans via subordinates. Increasingly he can delegate much of the problem solving function. This managerial profile implies that the education of the top manager of the future needs re-examination to ensure that potential senior executives are adequately equipped to guide commercial institutions into the 21st century.     

固定价格与英式拍卖同时使用时顾客行为分析

很多网站采用在英式拍卖中加入固定价格选项的方式销售多件同类商品.我们证明了,在此规则下存在一个弱占优投标策略.若顾客对商品的估价低于固定价格,那么,当拍卖价格低于他的估价时,该顾客参与拍卖,且以自己的估价作为报价是他的弱占优投标策略;否则,当拍卖价格超过他的估价时,他退出拍卖.若顾客对商品的估价高于或等于固定价格,他会在参与拍卖和接受固定价格之间进行选择;若他参与拍卖,将固定价格作为报价是他的弱占优投标策略.我们发现,该顾客是选择参与拍卖、还是选择以固定价格购买主要依赖于顾客到达拍卖时距离拍卖结束的剩余时间.最后,通过算例,我们对影响顾客参与策略的因素进行了数值分析并得到了一些结论.     

信息共享对供应链合作广告影响的博弈分析

本文研究需求不确定环境下合作广告供应链中的信息共享对供应链上下游企业决策及绩效的影响。在此供应链中,上游制造商决定产品批发价格及地方性广告费用分担比例,下游零售商决定地方性广告费用的投入及产品售价。运用斯坦伯格博弈模型研究了不确定性对上下游定价和广告投入决策的影响,分析比较了有信息共享和无信息共享两种情况下供应链各成员及供应链利润。结果表明,对零售商而言,其广告水平,产品售价,及期望利润都随着广告效应的增大而增加;对制造商而言,当广告费用分担率较大时,较强的广告效应会导致零售商对广告的过度投入,从而损害制造商的利润。给定制造商广告分担率,信息共享可以提高制造商期望利润,却减少了零售商期望利润,并可能减少供应链的总体利润。给定批发价格的情况下,信息共享会提高制造商及供应链期望利润,而对零售商来讲无差别。     

Unconventional style reaps rewards for Ruckdeschel. Physician executive's career carries cancer center to the forefront. Interview by Patty Ryan

He didn't like math. Loved biology. So he ditched his plans to become an engineer and ended up pursuing a career in medicine and hospital administration. He led a sleepy cancer center to new heights of cutting-edge research and progressive types of treatment. And he did it all on his own terms--a mix of practicality and instinct that serves up some interesting perspectives for fellow physician executives to consider. Meet John Ruckdeschel, MD.     

Einführung von Coaching Ein Schulleiter kann es nicht immer allen recht machen

Coaching with a headmasterThe author describes a coaching process with a headmaster in difficulties, who always wants to please everybody. He lacks the necessary professional delimitation. Though refusing it initially, he recognizes the necessity and the advantage of a professional delimitation. By utilizing it in small steps, his contacts to the parents improve, he has more time for his administrative work, and he feels less oppressed by his tasks.     

Applications and Implementation DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT FOR DECISION MAKING

A laboratory experiment examined the effects of applying decision support system (DSS) technology to decision making in ill-structured problem environments under varying information conditions. Marketing executives participated in the experiment which investigated the effects of DSS availability, DSS training, and data availability on dependent variables that included: (1) the number of alternatives considered by a subject during decision making, (2) the period of time spent by a subject to complete the decision-making process, (3) the subject's perceived confidence in the decisions he or she had made, (4) the amount of data considered by a subject's during decision making, (5) the individual subject's decision processing, and (6) the subject's performance overall. Our results indicate that all three factors significantly affect the number of alternatives considered by subjects during the decision-making process. We therefore suggest that DSS training be coordinated with decision training in order to realize the potential of DSSs as described in the DSS literature.     

What is it like to work for a pharmaceutical company? Interview by Barbara J. Linney

Is working for a pharmaceutical company a career option you've thought about pursuing? In this column, Barbara Linney interviews physician executive Edward A. Kaufman, MD, about his 20-year experience working in the pharmaceutical industry. He talks about how he held a series of jobs for SmithKline Beecham's clinical labs business and lived in a number of places. He describes his background and how it made him an attractive candidate for the position, why he sought out the pharmaceutical industry, the nature of the work, and some of the projects that he has been involved in. He gives examples of physicians who have joined the executive ranks at GlaxoSmithKline and what made them such high-caliber candidates for top leadership positions.     

St. Wolfgang College's Health

St. Wolfgang College recently decided to change its health care plan. The administration took this action after just minimum consultation with the faculty. Consequently, the faculty is disheartened, seeing the action as a reflection of the college's top down decision making process and command culture. Faculty are in a quadary as to what they can do. Further, the administration of the college has largely rebuffed the faculty's efforts to increase its involvement in governance, rejecting a faculty reform effort. The college's president has a background primarily in administration at the secondary school level. Since assuming leadership he has focused on improving physical plant. He avows a mission of enhancing the college's academic reputation and has taken actions that he and the administration believe will achieve this goal, such as dismantling two year degree programs that primarily serve disadvantaged and minority students and providing extra funding to flagship programs. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Is the Precautionary Principle Really Incoherent?

The Precautionary Principle has been an increasingly important principle in international treaties since the 1980s. Through varying formulations, it states that when an activity can lead to a catastrophe for human health or the environment, measures should be taken to prevent it even if the cause‐and‐effect relationship is not fully established scientifically. The Precautionary Principle has been critically discussed from many sides. This article concentrates on a theoretical argument by Peterson (2006) according to which the Precautionary Principle is incoherent with other desiderata of rational decision making, and thus cannot be used as a decision rule that selects an action among several ones. I claim here that Peterson's argument fails to establish the incoherence of the Precautionary Principle, by attacking three of its premises. I argue (i) that Peterson's treatment of uncertainties lacks generality, (ii) that his Archimedian condition is problematic for incommensurability reasons, and (iii) that his explication of the Precautionary Principle is not adequate. This leads me to conjecture that the Precautionary Principle can be envisaged as a coherent decision rule, again.     

St. Wolfgang College's Health

St. Wolfgang College recently decided to change its health care plan. The administration took this action after just minimum consultation with the faculty. Consequently, the faculty is disheartened, seeing the action as a reflection of the college's top down decision making process and command culture. Faculty are in a quadary as to what they can do. Further, the administration of the college has largely rebuffed the faculty's efforts to increase its involvement in governance, rejecting a faculty reform effort. The college's president has a background primarily in administration at the secondary school level. Since assuming leadership he has focused on improving physical plant. He avows a mission of enhancing the college's academic reputation and has taken actions that he and the administration believe will achieve this goal, such as dismantling two year degree programs that primarily serve disadvantaged and minority students and providing extra funding to flagship programs.     

Geschichten erzählen als Beratungsintervention

If the coach tells a story during a coaching then it is far more than just entertainment. But what is it then? The author reveals the basics of this rarely discussed form of intervention. He points to important aspects of the narratology, theory of cognition and theory of coaching. He makes clear what can be achieved through stories in this context and gives pragmatic tips for a successful input of this form of intervention. He also tells the story of how he has been disappointed by his son.     

Reinventing my medical career

The author found himself in a surprising situation in the Fall of 1998. For the first time in his life, he was looking for a job. Kent Bottles, MD, shares his experience of reinventing himself from academic chairman in an integrated delivery system to health care consultant. He stresses that physician executives need to package their experiences in terms of transferable skills that are easily understood by potential employers. He also emphasizes that acquaintances are more important than friends in obtaining employment; one needs to network with acquaintances and rely on the sympathy of relative strangers. A lot of hard work, networking, and "selling" his reinvented self resulted in a CEO hiring him. With all the changes brought on by the global economy and the uncertainties of the health care marketplace, other physician executives may be faced with the need to reinvent themselves.     

An Empirical Investigation of Web Site Use Using a Commitment‐Based Model

Companies throughout industry are interested in retaining existing customers, because customers' continuous consumption of products and services is critical to the long‐term value propositions of most organizations. Thus, decision‐making strategies that promote continuous use and customer retention are of research interest, both theoretically and practically. In the present research, we investigate one important area of continuous usage, that of Web site use. In particular, we use several theories of commitment to understand how an individual's decision to continue to use a Web site is influenced by his or her commitment toward that Web site and the vendor that supports it. Results derived from data collected from 335 users of a variety of Web sites indicated that affective commitment, calculative commitment, quality of alternatives, and trust were significantly associated with an individual's behavioral intention to continue to use a Web site. Implications for customer retention and decision‐making strategies are discussed.