Management in the 1980s—Key issues and priorities

The author sets out the tasks confronting managers in British industry and commerce throughout the 1980s. His analysis is based upon lengthy practical experience as a top executive in engineering management and manufacture. He presents his views against the background of a fast-changing world— politically, economically, socially—and also provides a commentary on Britain's major overseas competitor nations and markets. In his analysis of U.K. management problems, he makes clear that much depends upon changed policies and attitudes to ensure the successful restoration and revived growth of British manufacturing industry.     

Deciding manufacturing priorities: Flexibility, cost, quality and service

Traditional manufacturing planning focuses first on understanding the realities of the product marketplace and then aligning the production processes to match those realities. By conforming to that independent-market dependent-production model and simply implementing the determined tactics, manufacturing misses the opportunity to create competitive advantage by adopting a strategy that enhances the firm's position. To illustrate how manufacturing can incorporate strategic objectives into its planning, we add a third dimension to the traditional two-dimensional form of the product—process matrix. Along the new axis we show how four key competitive thrusts relate to the stages of the product—process life cycles. The thrusts of flexibility, cost, quality, and service are made explicit by plotting them, in turn, against the stages in the evolution of the product and the process. Each plot reveals new ways for manufacturing to plan for and realize competitive advantage through the application of computer-integrated manufacturing principles.     

Pharmaceuticals in Australia: priorities in a teaching hospital

In spite of rigorous government programs for control of the pricing and dissemination of pharmaceutical products in Australia, the list of new drugs continues to grow and prices to increase. To regain control over drug usage at Royal Adelaide Hospital, the Hospital Drug Committee developed a rating method that judged drugs on the basis of their cost-benefit to patients. The ratio of a total quality score to a total cost score becomes the determinant of additions to the hospital formulary. The background for the Australian approach to pharmaceuticals and the new evaluation technique at the teaching hospital are described in this report.     

混合判断矩阵排序的线性目标规划法

基于互反和互补两类判断矩阵, 给出了混合判断矩阵及完全一致性混合判断矩阵的定义, 介绍了互反判断矩阵与互补判断矩阵之间的转换关系, 提出了混合判断矩阵排序的线性目标规划法. 该法通过建立一个线性目标规划模型可求得混合判断矩阵的排序向量, 具有简洁、实用、易于计算机上实现等特点. 最后进行了算例分析.     

Applying futuristic technology to the priorities of the past

The hot topic in health care executive suites across the nation is outcomes management: measuring the effects of interventions on the quality of life of patients. The halls of our institutions are buzzing about the shifting focus from the board room to the bedside, and from the balance sheet to the patient's chart. Is outcomes management just another fad that will result in an additional layer of space-age overhead with little relevance to our patients' goals? Aren't we already concerned enough about our patients? What happened to the old saw, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?"     

Entry modes and national systems of innovation

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) have contributed to the productive and technological upgrading of many host economies, whereas discussion about entry modes and developmental effects is far from being concluded. We explore the relative importance of national systems of innovation in various forms of firm internationalization. We hypothesize that, adopting a dynamic perspective, institutional stability and the consolidation of R&;D capacities reinforce entrepreneurship and become key driver mechanisms to improve the attraction of foreign entries. The empirical analysis is built upon a sample of countries with dissimilar levels of development using longitudinal data for the period 1998–2004. The findings confirm that the relative technological advance of host countries differ for cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&;A) compared to other entry modes, taking into account the diversity of the developing world, the potential of emerging economies and the need to investigate new drivers for the attraction of FDI.     

Manpower planning at national and company level

Discussions of manpower planning take place in the context either of national plans or of company plans. From time to time the view has been expressed that the coverage and the time scale of these two types of planning are so different that there is nothing in common between them. This paper considers whether, in practice, ‘manpower’ is really so different from ‘personnel’. After all, the individuals regarding whom both plans are made are the same people; in both cases the planners are concerned with the posts they are to fill, with their salaries and with their mobility.     

A Note on Return on Foreign Assets and Foreign Presence for UK Multinationals*

Within the context of the international business literature on multinationality and performance we develop new data on the foreign presence and performance of large UK multinational enterprises (MNEs). There are 32 UK MNEs for which we can obtain data on both their degree of multinationality (measured by the ratio of foreign to total (F/T) sales) and their performance. Here, in addition to the traditional overall performance of the firm, shown as return on total assets, we use new data on the return on foreign assets (ROFA). We conduct analytical work to show the positioning of the UK MNEs in the ROFA and F/T sales space and provide regression results showing a linear relationship between multinationality and performance, using the new ROFA metric.     

Work systems in heavy engineering: the role of national culture and national institutions in multinational corporations

This paper is based on an Anglo-German research project of two research groups in both countries. It is based on data collected by qualitative research in the three largest multinational corporations (MNCs) in the lift and escalator industry. The headquarters (HQs) of the three corporations are based in the United States, Finland and Germany, respectively, and all three MNCs each have subsidiaries in Germany and Britain. Our main objects of analysis were change processes in the work systems of these three MNCs.We chose the lift and escalator industry as an example because it has been characterized by strong concentration processes during the last 10 years. Most of these corporations have grown by acquisition and there are strong tendencies in the market towards standardized, globally uniform products.National cultures and institutions, first of all play a role on the HQ level. Important areas were the standardization of products and production technology, the design of management systems and location and relocation decisions for R&D and manufacturing. Second, MNCs take differences in national cultures into account and deliberately “use” them in allocating resources and investment within the multinational group. National cultures and institutions massively shape the very formulation of manufacturing strategies within the multinational groups, as well as the R&D strategies—a particular important field in an industry still relying heavily on small-batch and unit production. National cultures also play a significant role in implementing the global strategies of MNCs in different host countries. Our data reveal striking differences on this level.     

Energy and the economy -a global and national analysis

When energy-GDP relationship is analyzed on a global scale for any one-time period the correlations derived are always very high. Yet these results are deceiving-and of lattle practical value-because of regional and income differences and the dynamic and highly individual behavior of the various countries. Consequently, the only meaningful approach is to analyze energy-GDP patterns over a long time on an individual country basis and to do so by defining GDP in terms of national currency.Correlations obtained by the latter method are uniformly and extremely high enabling a planner who can forecast the GDP levels of a country with some confidence to derive energy consumption from an appropriate regression equation with almost a pinpoint precision.Needless to say that these results, reflecting the developmentsduring a highly stable period of economic growth and low-and fairly stable-energy prices, should be applied with caution, especially as far as long-range projections are concerned. Each country's energy-GDP pattern is determined predominantly by climate, orientation of the economy, efficiency of industrial and household conversions and the share of non-productive energy uses.     

Foreign Languages and their Impact on Unemployment

Using a large European data set, I investigate the impact of knowing foreign languages on unemployment for the first time. The focus is on natives (not on immigrants). I find that (1) knowing a foreign language reduces the probability of being unemployed by at least 3.4 percentage points; (2) females benefit more than males from learning foreign languages; (3) English and German tend to have a larger and more robust impact on unemployment than French, Spanish, and Italian; (4) but the impact of all these five languages varies considerably across countries.     

Foreign Participation and Hiring Patterns after Privatization

Critics of globalization claim that foreign ownership of privatized firms is linked to negative post‐privatization labor outcomes, such as more firing and less hiring. This paper uses new firm‐level data for a cross‐section of countries to test this idea and provides evidence that foreign purchasers of state‐owned enterprises tend to acquire firms that were already better restructured before privatization. Additionally, this paper does not find evidence that foreign participation in privatized firms is linked to negative labor outcomes.     

A national strategic planning model

Can nations choose among several possible futures, or is the future pre-determined on the basis of geographic, demographic, cultural, economic and political features? The author maintains that newly developing patterns may well change the traditional deterministic characteristics of society, and that it is possible for nations to be masters of their own future. This will depend on the development of sophisticated and democratic national planning processes.     

Subnational FDI Legitimacy and Foreign Subsidiary Survival

We examine how organizational ecology and the strategic choice perspective can be combined to provide more contextualized insights into how multinational corporations (MNCs) can better counter environmental pressures with evolving subnational FDI legitimacy and improve the survival likelihood of their subsidiaries. We consider three organizational identity-based strategic choices, i.e., country-of-origin (COO) agglomeration, expatriate staffing level and subsidiary ownership level. We hypothesize a U-shaped relationship between FDI legitimacy and subsidiary mortality, and that this relationship will be moderated by the level of COO agglomeration at a subnational level. We also hypothesize that with improving FDI legitimacy, the use of higher levels of expatriates and ownership will jeopardize the survival of larger subsidiaries. A longitudinal dataset (2001–2016) for 3025 subsidiaries formed by 1147 Japanese MNCs in China was used in hypothesis testing. Results largely supported our hypotheses. We discuss how an identity-centered approach can contribute to theory and practice.     

Foreign Location Choice: Review and Extensions

International Business (IB) research on foreign‐location choice has experienced a revival in recent years, yet a comprehensive review has been sorely lacking. The purpose of this review is to synthesize the findings of recently published articles on the topic of foreign‐location choice and offer fruitful directions for future research. This review consists of three sections: first, the authors provide a historical overview of this research stream by tracing its origins and analyzing the general trend that has shaped research on foreign‐location choice. Next, the authors conduct a review of 137 recent articles published in leading IB and business/management journals. These articles are categorized according to common topics, and the main findings of each category are synthesized in order to bring some cohesion to this fragmented field. Lastly, the authors identify issues that remain under‐researched or require re‐thinking some taken‐for‐granted assumptions. Through this effort, they are able to connect the past, present and future of research on foreign‐location choice and to shed some new light on the IB literature.