Human Behavior and the Social Environment: Models,Metaphors and Maps for Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Practice

From Diagnosis to Treatment in Child Psychiatry. Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. (New York: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1974.)

Psychotherapeutic Approaches to the Resistant Child. Dr. Richard Gardner. (New York: Jason Aronson, 1975.)     

EC anti-dumping laws as a barrier to trade

Anti-dumping (AD) laws in the EC are intended to establish ‘fairness’ between trading partners. But there are negative effects, in particular, firms with weak firm specific advantages can shelter behind AD laws; they can even follow shelter-based strategies and lobby for protection.Alan Rugman and Michael Gestrin explain how shelter can be used as a management strategy, and how AD laws have grown up in the EC since 1979 to affect sectors of industry and geographic regions. They conclude by pointing out that a shelter-based strategy by a strong firm can undermine the very competitive pressures in its home market that made it internationally competitive in the first place.     

New contracts: The key to change

Successfully managing change in an organization is very difficult. Paul Strebel sets out a new way of doing this, based on contract theory which states that stakeholders have both an explicit and implicit individual contract with their companies. These contracts must be modified if corporate change is to proceed.The author develops five propositions about the role of contracts in change management. Change can only succeed if these five propositions are satisfied and the operational implications fully understood and implemented.     

Lessons from the ‘made in Switzerland’ study: What makes a world-class manufacturer?

Many executives are currently striving to develop world-class manufacturing operations to ensure that they remain competitive in increasingly global markets. To do this, they are adopting a range of practices, from organisational changes such as empowerment and teamwork to the use of techniques such as pull production. Their goal is to substantially improve performance: faster cycle times, reduced manufacturing costs and greater customer satisfaction.The question of how far companies have moved towards world-class manufacturing is at the heart of the ‘Made in Switzerland’ project, a major benchmarking study of Swiss manufacturing practice and performance. The study was carried out in 1995 by IMD faculty and researchers working with consultants from IBM Switzerland. It is part of the internationally-based ‘Made in Europe’ project comprising similar studies in the UK, Germany, The Netherlands and Finland.The central hypothesis of the studies is that the adoption of best practice leads to high performance. The objective is to establish a benchmarking database for participating manufacturers around the world. The studies, which are highly structured, examine six areas of manufacturing practice and performance in detail and assess the relationship between them at individual plants. The areas covered in the study are quality, organisation and culture, concurrent engineering, logistics, lean production and manufacturing systems.Plants in each country are grouped according to their position on the practice and performance indices and then studied in order to pinpoint the issues and challenges facing the manufacturers within that group. Less than three per cent of the 800 plants currently on the ‘Made in Europe’ database are considered ‘world-class’. Yet for manufacturers striving to reach this level of performance, this small minority can provide some valuable insights for the way ahead.This article discusses many of the issues raised by the analysis described above, with particular reference to the ‘Made in Switzerland’ study. In the first section, it looks at the key lessons arising from the Swiss study and what insights these can provide for manufacturers, not only in the Swiss market, but across Europe. In the second section, it looks at how the study can be used for benchmarking and provides manufacturers with some general recommendations to help them focus their improvements and move closer to becoming world-class.     

A Passion for Gambling: A Generation-Specific Conceptual Analysis and Review of Gambling Among Older Adults in Canada

The proliferation of gambling opportunities in Canada, coupled with an aging population, has led to an increased prevalence of gambling among older adults. Encouraged by this trend, gambling industries have modified their activities to attract and market to this group. Yet, older adults are not a homogeneous group. The life experiences, values, and attitudes shared by generations make a cohort-specific analysis of gambling among older adults a worthwhile pursuit. Drawing from the Dualistic Model of Passion (Vallerand et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 85(4):756–767, 2003), we discuss the role of passion in shaping gambling behaviours, and the implications of a harmonious or obsessive passion on the benefits and risks to two distinct generations of older adults. Based on their generational attributes, we posit that members of the Silent Generation (those born between 1925 and 1942) stand to gain more from the benefits of recreational gambling, but also stand lose more from problem gambling, than their children’s generation, the Baby Boomers (those born between 1942 and 1964). Preventative strategies to assist problem gambling seniors, along with recommendations for further research, are discussed.