The industrial athlete?

Many similarities can be drawn between the athletic and industrial population. It is time for a shift in the approach toward injured workers utilizing a sports medicine perspective. We must think of workers as industrial athletes and recognize that the sports medicine model can be appropriately adapted to the injured worker. This model includes prevention, early intervention/identification, training and conditioning, and progressive treatment. Sports medicine rehabilitation concepts include treating the entire kinetic chain that is associated with a specific injury and the SAID principle (Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands).     

Siting Noxious Facilities: A Test of the Facility Siting Credo

Over the past decade it has become increasingly difficult to site noxious facilities, despite the fact that there is a growing need to do so. To address this problem, a set of guidelines for a fairer, wiser, and more workable siting process—the Facility Siting Credo—was developed during a National Facility Siting Workshop in 1990. This paper presents an empirical test of these guidelines. A questionnaire based on the Credo was completed by stakeholders in 29 waste facility siting cases, both successful and unsuccessful, across the United States and Canada. Using an independent determination of outcome (success), a preliminary ranking of the importance of various Credo principles was obtained. The data reveal that establishing trust between the developer and host community is an important factor in facilitating the siting process. The siting process is most likely to be successful when the community perceives the facility design to be appropriate and to satisfy its needs. Public participation also is seen to be an important process variable, particularly if it encourages a view that the facility best meets community needs. Moreover, a siting process where communities volunteer to host facilities is an approach that holds promise for meeting many of these key success criteria.     

Ethical dilemmas in a professional service context

This paper reports on the results of action research exploring the kinds of ethical problems that confront employees in the professional services industry. Data were collected from a single firm via participant observation methods at eight locations across the country. Issues raised included service delivery, responses to life threatening situations, marketing, client relationships, client entertaining, bribery, billings, as well as intra-firm issues such as support for professional judgments in the field, employee health and safety, and compensation. The paper concludes with an assessment of the utility of the approach taken by the firm, the generalizability of the issues beyond the single case setting, as well as an assessment of the managerial issues related to fostering and sustaining an ethical environment within a business organization.     

Matching Managers to Strategy: Further Tests of the Miles and Snow Typology

This paper integrates prior research on strategic leadership by building on the concept of alignment to explain the performance impact of top managers. Using the Miles and Snow (1978) typology as a theoretical framework, several hypotheses are tested on a sample drawn from three distinct industries. The results show that organizations that are able to achieve an alignment between managerial characteristics and strategic direction perform better than firms where such an alignment is absent. Further, it was found that the strategy-manager match explains a greater proportion of variance in performance than industry membership, organizational age and firm size. Taken together, these findings provide persuasive evidence about the impact that an organization's leaders exert in driving performance outcomes and demonstrates the validity of the administrative dimension of the Miles and Snow typology.     

Dynamic programming for spatial allocation of advertising expenditure

The paper deals with optimal allocation of a given amount of advertising expenditure among various sales districts. It applies dynamic programming to arrive at the optimal policy regarding such allocation. The basic model is that of Zentler and Ryde which heretofore has been solved using a graphical method. The optimal solution is illustrated with an example.     

Rehabilitation outlooks for rural Louisiana: educational developments,economic trends,and global perspectives

The objective of this article is to examine current medical, economic, and social trends affecting the provision of rehabilitation services for rural citizens with disabilities. While the population of interest is citizens of Louisiana, the concepts are applicable across all geographic boundaries. The article is a review of clinical practice, job placement alternatives, economic trends, and assessment of process applications. It is concluded numerous steps may be taken to enhance the availability and quality of services provided for rural citizens with disabilities: greater statistical inquiry into rural disability trends, increased incorporation of the Internet into all aspects of rural economic and educational developments, further development of distance learning, promotion of sensitivities towards rural cultures, and continued recruitment of rural allied and vocational rehabilitation professionals.     

Identity in political context: lesbian/gay representation in the public sphere

Discourses constructed to represent lesbians and gay men in the public sphere generate an essentialist identity which is both necessary and damaging. Legislative debate illustrates the production of a constrictive and homogeneous identity rejected by many gay/lesbian scholars and activists. Discussion of the rhetorical power of identity claims has produced alternative stances toward variant sexuality. This discussion can be advanced by challenging dominant constructions of civil rights and the public sphere.     

Improving performance in a contracted physician network

Health care organizations face significant performance challenges. Achieving desired results requires the highest level of partnership with independent physicians. Tufts Health Plan invited medical directors of its affiliated groups to participate in a leadership development process to improve clinical, service, and business performance. The design included performance review, gap analysis, priority setting, improvement work plans, and defining the optimum practice culture. Medical directors practiced core leadership capabilities, including building a shared context, getting physician buy-in, and managing outliers. The peer learning environment has been sustained in redesigned medical directors' meetings. There has been significant performance improvement in several practices and enhanced relations between the health plan and medical directors.     

Assessing Effects on Long-term Survival after Early Termination of Randomized Trials

In this paper we present an approach to using historical control data to augment information from a randomized controlled clinical trial, when it is not possible to continue the control regimen to obtain the most reliable and valid assessment of long term treatment effects. Using an adjustment procedure to the historical control data, we investigate a method of estimating the long term survival function for the clinical trial control group and for evaluating the long term treatment effect. The suggested method is simple to interpret, and particularly motivated in clinical trial settings when ethical considerations preclude the long term follow-up of placebo controls. A simulation study reveals that the bias in parameter estimates that arises in the setting of group sequential monitoring will be attenuated when long term historical control information is used in the proposed manner. Data from the first and second National Wilms' Tumor studies are used to illustrate the method.     

Tax-funded unionism: The unemployment connection

Labor unions are widely regarded as private organizations which finance their activities exclusively through revenues collected from members and others who are covered by collective bargaining agreements. In reality, however, U.S. unions receive millions of dollars each year through grants and contracts from federal, state, and local governments for a variety of purposes, including aid to the unemployed; these funds are used (sometimes illegally) to finance union operations, including political activities. This article briefly explores the phenomenon of tax-funded unionism.