Applying stage-gate processes to technology development—Experience from six hardware-oriented companies

The stage gate model has been proposed for application to uncertain technology development. Reports on industrial experience from such implementations are quite limited, however. This led us to explore in six companies what adaptations have been made to facilitate the model's usefulness for technology development and the companies’ experiences from their practical application of the model. Our results indicate that aspects proven important for the operational success, or failure, of the model include the level of adaptation to the characteristics of technology development and a more flexible use than that normally found in product development.     

An analysis of indirect mortality estimation

In this paper the robustness of Brass's child-survivorship indirect mortality estimation technique is investigated. An analytical method is developed for studying the error or bias caused in indirect mortality estimates by poor data, badly chosen model functions, and specific demographic assumptions that are often violated in practice. The resulting analytical expressions give insight into the rationale of indirect methods, the conditions under which they are robust, and the magnitude of errors that occur when specific assumptions are violated.     

Ethics in Confucian and Christian management behavior: Taiwan and the United States contrasted

The ethical foundations for management behavior are examined for the people in Taiwan and from those within the United States. The influences for ethical actions can be traced to Confucian teachings and Christian doctrines. The authors present the philosophical differences between humanism for Chinese people and spiritualism for Christian people in the United States. Comparisons are made on how these principles affect the management behavior within organizations.     

Network Evening News Coverage of Environmental Risk

ABC, CBS, and NBC's carefully crafted and expensively produced evening news broadcasts devoted 1.7% of their air time to 564 stories about man-made environmental risks during the period from January 1984 to February 1986. Little relationship was found between amount of coverage and public health risk. Instead, the networks appeared to be using traditional journalistic determinants of news (timeliness, proximity, prominence, consequence, and human interest) plus the broadcast criterion of visual impact to determine the degree of coverage of risk issues. Government, industry, and citizens accounted for two-thirds of the sources cited by the networks. Experts and spokespersons for environmental advocacy groups were sparsely used as sources. Given the media's need for news pegs, acute and chronic risk stories were covered differently. Acute risk stories were reported in a clearly defined cycle, peaking on the second day with on-the-scene reports and film-clips of devastation. In keeping with a decrease in visual drama, later reports were shorter and emphasized legal and political considerations. Chronic risk coverage followed the release of new scientific, legal, or political information.     

Programmed Strategic Decision Making: The View From Mintzberg's Window1

A class of decisions, asset mix decisions made by pension fund managers, which exhibit characteristics of both programmed and strategic choices is examined in this paper. The decisions are classified using the scheme developed by Mintzberg et al., (1976) to highlight the circumstances under which strategic decisions may be programmed. The types of strategic decisions which lend themselves to programming are considered. The advantages and disadvantages of programming strategic decisions are also discussed.     

The relationship of chronobiology to sleep schedules and performance demands

This review is concerned with how chronobiological results concerning the human circadian timekeeping system ('biological clock'), its response to changes in schedule, and its influence on performance ability can be used to improve shift worker wellbeing, safety and productivity.     

Environmental Tobacco Smoke: Exposure-Response Relationships in Epidemiologic Studies

Demonstration of a dose-response relationship for environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is an important indication of causality. Central to the analysis and interpretation of dose-response relations as described in epidemiological studies is the relationship between dose and exposure. It must be recognized that in studies of ETS we have only surrogate measures of dose, and these surrogate measures (based on exposure) are imperfect. The question-based measures of ETS exposure generally have not been standardized, may have limited validity and reliability, and cannot comprehensively describe total ETS exposure, exposure to individual ETS components, nor doses of biologically relevant agents at target sites. Nevertheless, useful data have been yielded in epidemiologic studies linking ETS exposure to increased respiratory infection and symptoms, reduced lung growth in children, and increased lung cancer in nonsmoking adults. The more consistent exposure-response data for studies on acute health in children may reflect the greater difficulty in measuring exposure in studies of chronic health in adults.     

The role of inferential accuracy in performance rating

The presence of shared implicit theories of performance is used in explaining the failure of behavioral anchors to improve performance ratings. It is proposed that efforts to improve rating accuracy also will be hampered by a preoccupation with observation. Instead, attention needs to be focused on the inferential accuracy of the rater and the cognitive processes and implicit theories upon which raters rely.     

Palliative and curative care nurses' attitudes toward dying and death in the hospital setting

This paper explores the errors involved in the approximation of both the maximum and sum of two independent Beta random variables, each by another Beta random variable. The principal area of application is the time analysis of PERT networks, and the results are interpreted and discussed in terms of this application. The error was found to be acceptable for the greater part of the range of the parameters involved. The results will help practitioners estimate the mean and standard deviation of the completion time of PERT networks.