THE PERILS OF EXCELLENCE: BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT IN PRODUCT-DRIVEN FIRMS

Several authors have suggested that a focus on manufacturing capability and on continued process improvement may be a powerful source of competitive advantage, yet many firms appear to have encountered great difficulties in taking advantage of this insight. This paper reports on the results of five these conducted under the auspices of the MIT Leaders for Manufacturing program at the Microwave Technology Division of the Hewlett-Packard Company. We found considerable evidence that the marginal returns to process development within the division were probably considerably higher than the division's cost of capital, suggesting that process improvement probably was underfunded despite the fact that improving manufacturing capability had been identified as a key strategic priority. We found no evidence that this “underfunding” reflected either a failure to recognize the problem or an overly hierarchical or rigid organization. Rather it appeared to flow from the historical strengths of the division. A devotion to leading-edge technical solutions and to immediate customer service at almost any price had created barriers to the effective funding of process improvement that were deeply rooted in the organizational structures, information systems, and formal and informal incentive structures that had evolved to support the division's historical emphasis on excellence on product design. Our results highlight the problems that very successful product-driven companies may encounter in attempting to make continual process improvement central to their strategic mission.     

UNEMPLOYMENT AND OTHER MEASURES OF LABOR MARKET INEFFICIENCY: A COMPARISON OF U.K. AND U.S. LABOR MARKETS 1931–96

Although unemployment is often used as a measure of labor market inefficiency, economic theory indicates that market inefficiency is determined by both the gap between and the elasticities of supply and demand. Using time series data for the United States and United Kingdom, this article investigates how good the unemployment rate is as a measure of labor market inefficiency by calculating the deadweight loss associated with unemployment rates over time. Results show that the loss arising from unemployment is low across time and countries and that the unemployment rate is often a weak proxy for comparing labor market inefficiency. (JEL J6 )     

Polite, Well-dressed and on Time: Secondary School Conduct Codes and the Production of Docile Citizens*

Cet article analyse la Loi sur la sécurité dans les écoles de l'Ontario (2000) ainsi que les codes de conduite des commissions scolaires et des écoles secondaires des régions de Niagara et de Toronto. L'auteure examine comment ces codes sont organisés, justifiés et présentés aux élèves. En même temps, elle essaie de savoir à quel genre d'eleves (et d'adolescents) ils s'adressent, de même que quel type d'élèves ils créent, particulièrement sous l'angle de citoyens et de futurs travailleurs. Les codes de conduite sont des lieux de production du savoir qui façonnent le genre, les normes et le statut de classe moyenne des citoyens. Ils marginalisent également ceux qui ne s'y conforment pas facilement. De plus, ces codes suggèrent la gouvernance des jeunes au moyen de leur capacité d'agir et de l'autorégulation qui en résulte, accompagnées de techniques d'approche descendante.
This paper examines Ontario's Safe Schools Act (2000), and the codes of conduct of school boards and high schools in the Niagara and Toronto regions. I investigate how these codes are organized, justified and presented to students and, in the process, what kind of students (and adolescents) are assumed and created, particularly in terms of citizens and future workers. Codes of conduct are sites of knowledge production, fashioning middle-class, normative, gendered citizens, and marginalizing those who do not easily conform. These codes also suggest a government of young people through their capacity to act and consequent self-regulation, alongside more "top-down" techniques.     

Poverty and Polygyny as Political Protest: The Waldensians and Mormons.

Abstract This paper examines Waldensianism and Mormonism, two very different religious movements, separated by time, space, cultural, and economic conditions. The sources are a mixture of secondary and published primary sources, including church documents both in translation and the original language, and personal writings, such as diaries and letters. The treatment of these sources is not unusual, rather the contribution of this paper is a synthetic theoretical analysis of these movements in terms of the practical consequences of action.
Both movements were coherent attempts to address contemporary social issues; neither was principally illogical nor irrational, nor comprised primarily of socially disconnected individuals. These movements were neither apolitical nor solely comprised of pure political action. Instead, both became political protest movements, in addition to being religious movements, because the symbolic content of the movement was interwoven with contemporary politics: the movements' ideological critiques implicated the larger political structure which attempted to prevent ideological change. These religious struggles were processes, becoming political movements because ideological change implied political action.     

Emotional streaming and transconnectivity: Skype and emotion practices in transnational families in Ireland

In this article I explore how transnational families, living in Ireland, use Skype to stay in touch with their loved ones. From 2010 to 2012, data were collected from a purposive, but broad sample of 36 qualitative ethnographic interviews with mixed couples (one partner identifies as Irish and one does not), throughout various parts of the Republic of Ireland. I outline how the use of Skype allows transnational families to create spaces of transconnectivity as they practise simultaneous and ongoing belonging across significant temporal and geographic distances. This affects how people ‘do’ emotions. These emotion practices often consist not only of ‘affect storage’ but also of what I call emotional streaming, promoting ongoing interaction over distance, which includes keeping Skype turned on for long periods of time. Through these attempts to try to recreate everyday practices via continuous use of Skype, transnational emotions of love and longing are deintensified.