Revisiting management innovation and change programmes: strategic vision or tunnel vision?

The information systems (IS) and management literature, broadly conceived, is replete with management innovation and change programmes. All are designed to enhance business performance and competitive advantage. This paper examines five approaches which have been developed in the post-war period to improve business performance. They are Total Quality Management (TQM), Just-In-Time production management (JIT), Activity Based Costing (ABC), Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), and Process Innovation. By comparing and contrasting these approaches, it is found that considerable overlap exists in their scope, style, content, aims and objectives. In view of this, the paper argues that instead of re-inventing the wheel every few years with a new management innovation and change panacea or fad, a broader, inter-disciplinary perspective should be adopted which seeks to understand the wider ideological, historical and empirical perspective which underpins these ideas. This is instead of the tunnel vision approach which seeks only to place these ideas in a narrow organisational or managerial context.     

Job stress, job strain, and psychological withdrawal among Dutch university staff: towards a dualprocess model for the effects of occupational stress

This study examined the antecedents of job strain (emotional exhaustion, health complaints) and withdrawal behaviour (e.g. lowered organizational commitment) among a cross-sectional sample of 131 academic staff members of the law department of a large Dutch university. Conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) provided the theoretical background for this study. Strains and withdrawal behaviours were expected to be most prominent among those who reported having few resources and/or who reported high job demands. Structural equation modelling revealed that this was indeed the case. As predicted, differential patterns of effects emerged for job demands and job resources. Analysis of the effects of four job-specific stressors revealed that especially the structural aspects of a staff member's teaching task (e.g. the number of students in their classes) contributed strongly to perceived job demands. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.     

On a paper by kageyama and mohan

Kageyama Mohan (1984) have presented three methods of constructing new incomplete block designs from balanced incomplete block designs, They raise questions about the designs which come from each of their methods, These questions are answered, Another series of group divisible designs is derived as a special case of their second method.     

Bad Probability,Good Statistics,and Group Testing for Binomial Estimation

This article examines some improperly stated but often used textbook probability problems. Moving from a probabilistic to a statistical setting provides insight into group testing (i.e., observing only whether one or more of a group responds and not the response of each individual). Exact methods are used to construct tables showing (i) that group testing n times to estimate p can be more efficient than n individual tests even for small n and large p, (ii) optimal grouping strategies for various (n, p) combinations, and (iii) the efficiencies and biases achieved.     

Drugs, delinquency and "nerds": are loners deviant?

Many studies have focused on the influence of peers on delinquency and drug use. But what about adolescents who are not part of the peer culture--the loners, or nerds? This study focuses on drug use, delinquency and lifestyle correlates of LONERS and SOCIALS. Data for a nine-year period (1976 through 1984) from the Monitoring the Future data set of high school seniors across the United States are analyzed. The lack of peer influence on the LONERS seems to contribute to less delinquency and drug use and more conventional lifestyle activities than is found among SOCIALS.     

Funding large-scale qualitative sociology

Myrna Silverman, Edward Mulvey, and Barry Glassner helped us with thoughtful critiques of earlier drafts.     

Mood in Daily Contexts: Relationship With Risk in Early Adolescence

Disturbances in affect have been linked to problem behavior in adolescence and future psychopathology, but little is known about how such disturbances manifest themselves in everyday contexts. This study investigated daily mood in Dutch 7th graders, aged 11–14. Cluster analysis of problem measures distinguished high-risk (n=25) and low-risk (n=106) subgroups. Participants completed experience-sampling reports of mood, social context, and location nine times daily for 5 days. Multilevel regression analyses of four mood measures confirmed higher anxiety and depressed mood in the high-risk group. Moods varied by location and social context, with significant differences between groups in two specific social contexts. First, when with family, low-risk adolescents felt less depressed than when alone, whereas high-risk adolescents felt more depressed. Second, high-risk adolescents showed more pronounced anxiety in social situations outside the network of family and friends. These findings point to everyday social contexts in which young adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems appear to be particularly vulnerable.     

Analysis of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Maternal Cohort Study: Evidence for Direct Maternal Transmission

In an initial exploratory analysis of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) maternal cohort study data we demonstrate several confounding effects in the study design. Given these effects, we assess a variety of statistical models to determine the relative contributions of direct maternal transmission of the aetiological agent of BSE and of genetic susceptibility to the observed maternally enhanced risk of BSE in the offspring of affected dams. To control for the substantial between-herd variation in the risk of exposure to the BSE agent, it is essential that analyses take into account the matched pair structure of the data. Maternal exposure is estimated to be most important in animals born within 150 days of disease onset in their dams. The analysis of a full survival likelihood model indicates that the hypothesis of maternal transmission with no genetic variation in susceptibility fits the data significantly better than the hypothesis of genetically variable susceptibility with no maternal transmission. However, models incorporating both maternal transmission and genetically variable susceptibility fit the data significantly better than pure maternal transmission models. Although genetic susceptibility cannot be excluded as the cause of the cohort study results in the absence of detailed genotyping, the analysis of these study data suggest that low level maternal transmission of BSE is, at least in part, responsible for the significantly enhanced risk of BSE in the offspring of affected dams. Similar results indicating significant maternal transmission in the later stages of the dam incubation period are obtained from the independent analysis of data on the dam–offspring relationships among confirmed BSE cases.     

New directions in formalization and historical analysis

Theory and Society -