Managing the new global workforce:: Fostering diversity, forging consistency

As a result of rapid foreign investment, many multinational firms now have workforces that are spread across continents and countries, and that include an increasingly complex blend of cultures and nationalities. Their challenge is to capture the benefits of a diverse workforce while also forging necessary consistency around the world. This article explores the concepts of diversity and consistency as they apply to multinational firms, and draws on examples from several leading multinationals to suggest how firms can better manage their global workforces.     

浅谈日本民族“我なし”的心理意识

以日语中"我なし"(わなし)-词概括日本民族"无我"的心理意识,并例举了它在语言生活、社会生活、文化生活方面的反映,继而从历史、政治等角度阐述了这种"无我"心理形成的根源.     

Learning About the Market’s Periphery: IBM’s WebFountain

The web can provide valuable information to an organisation on upcoming trends, competitors’ movements and customers’ gripes. More important, the information is within reach of every organisation. The problem is that there is so much of it. This paper describes how IBM set up and utilised WebFountain—a tool to help it extract trends and detect patterns from the vast amounts of raw data available. Still, the authors argue, any organisation needs to do more to use to its full potential such a system for extracting analytic solutions from the web: the most important being to ask the right questions in the first place.     

The Role of Trust and Contractual Safeguards on Cooperation in Non-equity Alliances

Because partners may behave opportunistically in alliances, contractual safeguards or trust between partners are necessary for successful outcomes. However, it remains controversial whether safeguards and trust substitute or complement each other. Drawing on transaction cost theory, this study conceptualizes both contractual safeguards and trust as important control mechanisms in non-equity alliances, and develops a model that relates contractual safeguards and trust to cooperative outcomes. We test our hypotheses with data collected from 233 architect-contractor partnerships in Hong Kong. The results show that the relationship between contractual safeguards and cooperative outcomes depends on both the level and type of trust.     

刘桢诗“气过其文,雕润恨少”之歧见

钟嵘在《诗品》中说刘桢诗“气过其文,雕润恨少”,是评未为允当。刘桢现存诗二十首,主要有味事、咏怀、咏物三种表现类型。其中咏怀表现带有浓重诗趣;咏事表现“简而确”,所以容易缺乏雕饰。但三种表现类型在一首诗里适当的安排,则显得彩色斑斓,颇有诗趣。由此可见,钟嵘的评论,失之偏颇。刘桢诗既有气格豪峻之阳刚美,也有“以敷其华,惊听回视”之高逸诗趣。     

英国人在威海卫:帝国非理性之例研究

自1842年第一次鸦片战争中国失败开始,英国以及其他帝国强权开始了对中国版图的掠夺,其中具有代表性的是搞租借地;1898年英国决策者无明确理由占领威海卫,其后40年拒绝归还的事例,表明帝国非理性现象在20世纪早期的英国政府内部非常流行;明知是无重大价值的地区又非要占领,这种非理性动机成为大多数帝国确立其政治、经济政策的刺激力量。     

Eight Motivational Forces and Voluntary Turnover: A Theoretical Synthesis with Implications for Research

In this study, we synthesize, from the attitude and turnover literatures, a framework of eight (8) distinctive motives, or “Forces”. We then illustrate how the “8 Forces” framework can be utilized by turnover researchers as clarification of reported reasons for turnover, as causal mediators of turnover predictors, and as factors related to the type of turnover decision process. Finally, we discuss further implications of this framework.