Leadership and emotion management for complex tasks: Different emotions,different strategies

Emotions in the workplace influence a number of critical cognitive tasks including information processing and decision-making. Moreover, the effect of emotion on these operations is often emotion-specific. Given these unique effects, leaders may need to learn how to manage subordinates' discrete emotions, and not just general affect. This laboratory experiment examined the effects of leaders suggesting different regulation strategies after subordinates experienced anger or pessimism. Effects of these emotions under different leader-facilitated regulation strategies were evaluated with respect to planning, a critical organizational task, and perceptions of leader effectiveness. Results demonstrated that the type of leader-facilitated regulation strategy moderates the relationships of anger and pessimism to planning. The findings imply that leaders should understand the differential effects of discrete emotions, and be prepared to help subordinates manage emotions accordingly.     

We Are the Corporation: Dispersive CSR

We contend that the current trend of emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR) serves to divert the public's attention from the real ethical issues facing business and society. We extend the scope of social responsibility beyond business corporations to include a range of institutions. We also propose that CSRs be reconceptualized in terms of the ways that managers enable stakeholders to hold themselves and each other responsible for the ways their actions affect each other as they conduct business through the firm. In this article, we propose a new view of corporations and responsibility that reconstrues behavior currently referred to as CSR. Starting with an overview of theories of the firm, we show that the way in which a firm is conceived yields different views on CSR. A shortcoming of the theory of the firm approach to CSR is that it leads us to focus excessively on business corporations at the expense of a broader analysis of other institutional players. These theories also tend to emphasize the obligations of corporations to people rather than of people to each other. We propose that social responsibility be viewed through a systems theory paradigm instead. We then argue that corporations should be construed in terms of the people who impact them. We advance a different conception of business responsibility that is more comprehensive, inclusive, and systemic.     

Multiple In‐Cycle Transshipments with Positive Delivery Times

We study a centralized inventory sharing system of two retailers that are replenished periodically. Between two replenishments, a unit can be transshipped to a stocked‐out retailer from the other. It arrives a transshipment time later, during which the stocked‐out retailer incurs backorder cost. Without transshipment, backorder cost is incurred until the next replenishment. Since the transshipment time is shorter than the time between two replenishments, transshipments can reduce the backorder cost at the stocked‐out retailer and the holding costs at the other retailer. The system is directed by a centralized inventory manager, who minimizes the long‐run average cost consisting of replenishment, holding, backorder, and transshipment costs. The transshipment policy is characterized by hold‐back inventory levels, which are nonincreasing in the remaining time until the next replenishment. The transshipment policy differs from those in the literature because we allow for multiple transshipments between replenishments, positive transshipment times, and backorder costs. We also discuss the challenges associated with positive replenishment time and develop upper and lower bounds of average cost in this case. Bounds are numerically shown to have an average gap of 1.1%. A heuristic solution is based on the upper bound and differs from the optimal cost by at most this gap.     

Lead Time and Price Quotation Mode Selection: Uniform or Differentiated?

Firms in service and make‐to‐order manufacturing industries often quote lead times and prices to customers. We define uniform quotation mode (UQM) as the strategy where a firm offers a single lead time and price quotation, and differentiated quotation mode (DQM) is where a firm offers a menu of lead times and prices for customers to choose from. Both modes are followed in practice. Firms should determine which is more profitable. We classify customers into two groups: lead time sensitive (LS) and price sensitive (PS). LS customers value lead time reduction more than PS customers. We develop mathematical models of both quotation modes and analyze them to determine the most profitable mode under specified situations as well as the best lead time and price quotations within each mode. We find that DQM is dominated by UQM whenever PS customers have positive utilities from UQM or LS customers have positive utilities from DQM. Otherwise, which quotation mode is better depends on multiple factors, such as customer characteristics (including lead time reduction valuation and product valuation of a customer, and the proportion of LS customers) and production characteristics (including the desired service level and service or production cost).     

A hospital protocol to resolve complaints against staff physicians

Complaints of discrimination or harassment in the workplace have become almost commonplace in recent years, increasing in both frequency and variety. In the hospital setting, this trend is manifested in allegations against members of the medical staff by hospital employees as well as by patients or their families. Whether real or fancied, such allegations are reflective of a potentially disruptive undercurrent of organizational tensions. Left unresolved, they can erode the essential partnership between staff physicians and other members of the health care delivery team. Unsatisfactory patient experiences may also damage the reputation of the institution and thereby undermine its viability. With either group of complainants, allegations of malfeasance that are not resolved at the source in a timely manner are far more likely to result in expensive, time-consuming, and potentially damaging litigation.     

Corporate compliance programs: risk management for the future

The Department of Justice has estimated that the government loses $100 billion annually in health care fraud. Consequently, the government's health care fraud enforcement activities with respect to all health care providers and suppliers continue to grow. Last year alone, the government collected more than $8 billion in settlements, fines, and penalties involving health care fraud. Recent settlements with the government have begun to include corporate compliance programs that require continued government oversight of the health care organization as an essential part of the settlement. The first section of this article describes the legal significance of health care companies' having corporate compliance programs. The second section provides a sample list of topics that should be included in any corporate compliance program. Finally, we describe various issues related to the creation and implementation of corporate compliance programs.     

The mandate for investigational cancer therapies

The heated national health care reform debate of the summer of 1993 has now simmered down, but pieces of the debate are still percolating along at the state level. Within the past year, numerous states have introduced bills that would mandate insurance coverage for investigational cancer therapies--in particular high-dose chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant for breast cancer. The problem with these initiatives, well-intended though they may be, is that they threaten to spread unproven technologies at a rapid rate and at the same time miss the opportunity to collect data that would prove the safety and effectiveness of the methods. The author explores these issues and suggests how managed care companies can play a more aggressive role in parrying the threat.     

The ascendancy of primary care: permanent or temporary?

The conventional wisdom strongly suggests a health care provider food chain for the future: Primary care physicians (PCPs), principally family practitioners, on the top playing the lead role, distantly followed by specialists, with hospitals and other ancillary services even further down the line. Is this a reasonable expectation? Will PCPs dominate the new systems? Or will they be but one of many equally necessary components of these developing integrated health care delivery organizations? Looking at the various models now developing, it would seem that future integrated delivery systems will utilize both PCPs and specialists, but with strong augmentation from a diverse assortment of other health care professionals, including nonphysician providers, educators, and administrators. To separate the illusion of primary care dominance of the coming health care system from the likely reality, we should first determine what is driving the apparent present demand for primary care physicians. Next, we will examine the possible and probable reactions to that demand from an economic standpoint and from the points of view of both health care professionals and the public. Finally, we must try to picture how health care provider organizations of the future are likely to look and how they will integrate their health care professionals.     

A comparison of quality and utilization problems in large and small group practices

Physicians practicing in large, multispecialty medical groups share an organizational culture that differs from that of physicians in small or independent practices. Since 1980, there has been a sharp increase in the size of multispecialty group practice organizations, in part because of increased efficiencies of large group practices. The greater number of physicians and support personnel in a large group practice also requires a relatively more sophisticated management structure. The efficiencies, conveniences, and management structure of a large group practice provide an optimal environment to practice medicine. However, a search of the literature found no data linking a large group practice environment to practice outcomes. The purpose of the study reported in this article was to determine if physicians in large practices have fewer quality and utilization problems than physicians in small or independent practices.