The Career Advancement Prospects of Managers and Professionals: Are MIS Employees Unique?

The present study examined the career advancement prospects of MIS and non-MIS employees, as well as the relationships of career advancement prospects with job performance evaluations, job satisfaction, career satisfaction, and organizational commitment for MIS and non-MIS professionals and managers. Participants included 134 MIS professionals and managers and 397 non-MIS professionals and managers of a large communications company. The results provided no evidence that MIS employees experience more restricted career advancement prospects than non-MIS employees. In addition, job performance evaluations generally had positive effects on career advancement prospects; career advancement prospects had a number of positive effects on job satisfaction, career satisfaction, and organizational commitment; and job satisfaction and career satisfaction had positive effects on organizational commitment. These findings are related to prior research, suggestions for future research are offered, and implications for the management of MIS employees are identified.     

Home gardening practice in Pune (India), the role of communities,urban environment and the contribution to urban sustainability

Urban Ecosystems - Urban agriculture (UA) is regarded as an emerging tool and strategy for sustainable urban development as it addresses a wide array of environmental, economic and social...     

Bringing Japanese Continuous Improvement Approaches to U.S. Manufacturing: The Roles of Process Orientation and Communications*

Continuous improvement (CI) has played a key role in Japan's quality management. U.S. companies have begun to adopt CI in recent years. This paper studies the implementation of CI in seven U.S. manufacturing companies. We view values as the core concept of culture that impacts CI effectiveness. Using both qualitative and quantitative data with a sample of seven companies, we observe empirically a relationship between process-oriented values and CI effectiveness. We also find that communications involving workers is strongly associated with CI effectiveness. Finally, we find an association between process orientation and communication frequency, and argue that communications act as an intervening variable between process orientation and effectiveness.     

Graphical Presentations of Data Envelopment Analyses: Management Implications from Parallel Axes Representations*

The conversion of multivariate data analysis into information that managers can readily use in their decision making has always been a challenging task. In this paper we provide a parallel axis representation of multivariate data and demonstrate how this representation may be used as a tool for implementing the results of data envelopment analysis. We use an analysis of the efficiency of electricity generating plants to illustrate the technique.     

Faculty Performance Evaluation: Modeling to Improve Personnel Decisions*

Based on likely future changes in faculty evaluation practices, this paper examines how institutions of higher education might operationalize performance evaluation as related to research, teaching, and service. A model is developed that allows coupling performance evaluation and relevant market considerations with merit pay, tenure, and promotion decisions. The approach is specifically applicable to tenure-track faculty members in colleges and universities.     

Sensitivity Analysis in Linear Programming Models with Common Inputs

The importance of sensitivity analysis information in linear programming has been stressed in the management science literature for some time. Indeed, Gal [3] has devoted an entire text to just this issue. Linear programs with common inputs (cost coefficients or right-hand-side values) present a problem in that classical sensitivity analysis does not allow for the simultaneous changes required to determine the sensitivity of these models to common inputs. We first survey the approaches previously developed for simultaneous-change sensitivity analysis and cast them in the framework of the special common input case. These general techniques are compared to a simple aggregate variable technique that has not received attention in the literature.     

Parenting Disputes After Separation and Divorce: Who Needs a Family Lawyer?

Australia's family law system continues to be plagued by serious delays. This article acknowledges the need for legal interventions in post‐separation parenting disputes in which individuals may be at risk, or in cases of genuine emergency. The article next contrasts cases involving significant risk or urgency with the many ‘ordinary’ (even if sometimes complex) post‐separation disputes over parenting in which these circumstances are not present. I argue that in such cases, legal advice, legally informed dispute processes, and court hearings are remnants from earlier attitudes to separation and divorce. These interventions are expensive, frequently destructive of ongoing parental relationships, and at their heart, inappropriate for considering the needs of children. They also divert time and resources from the critical investigative and legal decision‐making processes needed in urgent or risk‐related cases. I propose that legal narratives in ‘ordinary’ post‐separation parenting disputes be replaced by narratives focused on the main drivers of these disputes, which are invariably expressed in terms of relationship difficulties. Such narratives are amenable to facilitative, therapeutic, and systemic interventions aimed at achieving self‐determined resolutions. They contrast markedly with narratives reflecting common law notion of normative resolutions derived from the application of legal precedent. Key issues in the first section of the article are then teased out via the reflections of an imaginary separated parent in an ‘ordinary,’ albeit difficult and emotionally intense, dispute about how to care for the children. In the final section, I offer brief clinical and systemic reflections on past practice and on future narratives focused on individual self‐determination.     

Developing a Rubric for Supervision of Students Counseling LGBTQ Clients

More than 100 pieces of anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) legislation are active in 2018. In this current political climate of “conscience clause” legislation, counselor educators and supervisors are poised to adopt more holistic practices in assessing and evaluating student and supervisee readiness to work with LGBT queer (Q) clients. The purpose of this article is to present a dispositional framework for assessment and evaluation and introduce the flexibility, integrity, awareness, stability, compassion, and openness (FIASCO) rubric of professional counseling dispositions. Two court cases, Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley and Ward v. Wilbanks, are used as case examples for applying the FIASCO rubric to situations involving LGBTQ clients.     

MARKET PENETRATION AND LOCATIONAL CONFLICT IN FRANCHISE SYSTEMS*

This paper addresses the questions of market penetration and locational conflict in a franchise system of distribution. The models developed provide a means to evaluate alternative scenarios and the effects of various franchise policies. It is shown that the market penetration and location goals of the members of a franchise system coincide only under a very limited set of circumstances.