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The author presents discussion and reflection in response to the article "Investor Protection and Corporate Governance: Evidence from Worldwide CEO Turnover," by Mark L. Defond and Mingyi Hung from the May 2004 issue. The author discusses tracking the correlation between Chief Executive Officer turnovers and job performance measures. The different types of performance measurement look at elements that are either considered noisy or considered to behave in a way known as rent extraction. The author looks at these two possible performance types and offers an explanation as to which one is more likely to be the correct explanation for the behavior of performance measurement results.

Conventional explanations for lagging U.S. service sector productivity focus on the difficulties of measuring service output, a lack of sufficient competition in service industries, and poor management skills. Drawing on data collected in 95 service establishments in the banking and hotel industries in the U.S., UK, and Germany, this article suggests an alternative explanation. U.S. service companies may effectively be achieving low levels of labor productivity by design. The U.S. service establishments in this study are productivity leaders in low value-added market segments but productivity laggards in higher value-added market segments. They have consciously chosen to adjust the labor intensity of service delivery to the business potential of different customer segments. Varying the design of service processes by customer segment has lowered measured productivity levels but may be supporting higher levels of business performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines the determinants of control loss in the marketing channels of 40 U.S. manufacturers, each of which has vertically integrated into wholesale distribution by the establishment of manufacturers' sales branches. The central hypothesis tested is that the efficiency of a vertically integrated system depends on the adoption of organizational forms which enable the firm to limit the degree of control loss and subgoal pursuit predictably resulting from vertical expansion. Control loss is operationalized in terms of the extent to which the travel and entertainment expenses of branch sales personnel exceed necessary levels. The results demonstrate the important influence of organizational structure and control systems on the efficiency of marketing operations. The findings are interpreted in terms of Williamson's organizational failures framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, major organizational innovations have been associated with the emergency of new industries. The unique environment of California's Silicon Valley has spawned a novel organizational regime, one which is designed to provide a sense of focus, increase the firm's speed of response to emerging developments, and facilitate the continuous adjustment of organizational arrangements in accordance with situational imperatives. "Stratocracy" is here defined as "rule by the doers." This article examines the distinguishing features of the high-technology arena, describes the structural characteristics of high-technology firms, and contrasts stratocracy with other organizational regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the decline in productivity in the United States from the mid-1960's to the early 1980's. It is noted that government regulations and intrasigent labor unions are normally blamed for low productivity, but aspects of management practice may also be implicated. Issues such as an excessive focus on corporate growth and diversification, lack of investment in production process improvements and a focus on short-term results at the expense of long-term investment are all cited as examples of management decisions which can have a negative impact on corporate productivity.

In order to compete in today's marketplace American industry must make some vital decisions concerning: (1) more efficient and dynamic management; (2) a reemphasis on long range production goals; and (3) a commitment to a more efficient technology. Presently, new technology cannot be incorporated into the industrial sector because of an organizational ideology that is unprepared for the new manager and the modern productive worker and a financial strategy oriented towards "buying" productivity rather than "creating" productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested the effects of innovation and market complexity on firm performance. Generational technological change--a major advance within a technology regime- fosters the emergence of niches and local rivalry. Findings from the U.S. microcomputer industry between 1982 and 1991 suggest accelerated markets reward innovativeness that differentiates firms within a niche but not across niches. Changing niches confers a shod-term penalty. Strong performers adopt new technology quickly, without changing niches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies investigating the relationship between executive compensation and firm performance, firm size, or both have had consistently low explanatory power. The present study uses Forbes data for 1983-89 and shows that nonparametric models, comparing the ranks of firms within industries, more accurately reflect changes in CEO compensation. There was no support for a linear relationship between performance and such changes but strong support for an increasing, convex relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates how public policy should treat industries that are dominated by a few very large companies. The questions addressed in this paper include what are the advantages large firms have over smaller ones? Would consumers benefit if oligopolies were weakened and the marketplace had higher numbers of small and medium size firms? Do large firms exhibit an economy of scale which may be preferable in certain industries or services? Topics such as unit cost, minimum market share for optimum output and the practicality of deconcentrating certain industries are covered.

This article discusses the value of an executive's time and the importance of proper time management. The authors note that an executive's time is an important resource and plays a significant role in the planning of an organization's activities. The authors examine time management literature and attempt to develop an easy to understand process for learning how to effectively and efficiently manage time. They present ten principals that outline the entire process of time management including planning, analysis, budgeting, flexibility, implementation and segmentation.

The article reports on industrial democracy. The author focuses on changes that have been made in industrial organization and management since the conception of labor unions. Industrial democracy is evaluated using the examples of the system of codetermination in Western Germany and the worker-owned mills in the Pacific coast softwood plywood industry. Economic reform programs that attempt to offer more freedom for workers while maintaining industrial efficiency in production systems are also discussed. The practice of involving workers in policy making decisions is evaluated. It is suggested that the goals of employees are not always the same as the goals of the organization for which they work.

This article deals with the stabilization of the internal wage rate structure in the U.S. in 1954. The author argues that a general wage increase policy is influential on the trends in the internal wage rate structure. In this regard, this research assessed the categories of the internal wage regulation in the country which include special job rate changes. In addition, the author also discussed the problems associated with the stabilization of the internal wage structure in the nation such as the liberalization of merit.

This article is based on a two-year study which consisted of a detailed review of the literature, interviews, and correspondence with several hundred representatives of unions and managements with long experience in co-operation. A questionnaire was sent through the American Management Association to 1,000 manufacturing companies believed to engage in some kind of co-operation. Of these 263 replied, 226 stating that they have been practicing some kind of co-operation between 1941 and 1947. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent survey of clients and buyers of construction, the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA) found that over 50% of design efforts finish behind or significantly behind schedule. Furthermore, it found that 70% of clients have seen the quality of design documents decrease over the past 10 years with 97% of clients agreeing that designers should be held more accountable for the quality of the designs that are delivered. This paper presents the research results of applying a new approach to contracting design professionals that enforces accountability and minimizes risk. The new approach theorizes that the inefficiencies in the design industry are because of the selection and contract management system used by most clients. The first 39 design project test results are presented, along with the evolution of the design delivery model. Key findings include the threat of political risk to change, the inability of most design professionals to address specific project risk, and the lack of preplanning evident in most design projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EPAStat is the first PerformanceStat system to be used at the agency level in the federal government. A short history of agency-level performance management systems compares EPAStat to its precursors at the Environmental Protection Agency. This study examines the development of EPAStat, particularly the measures used in its quarterly reporting system. The process behind measures selection is described and analyzed from the perspective of the principals, as are lessons learned. While there are common challenges and lessons learned among participants, there are clear differences between the headquarters offices and the regional offices in terms of how measures were selected, the types of metrics chosen, and the perceived worth of EPAStat as an agency-wide performance management system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides estimates of bank efficiency and productivity in the United States, over the period from 1998 to 2005, using (for the first time) the globally flexible Fourier cost functional form, as originally proposed by Gallant (1982), and estimated subject to global theoretical regularity conditions, using procedures suggested by Gallant and Golub (1984). We find that failure to incorporate monotonicity and curvature into the estimation results in mismeasured magnitudes of cost efficiency and misleading rankings of individual banks in terms of cost efficiency. We also find that the largest two subgroups (with assets greater than 1 billion in 1998 dollars) are less efficient than the other subgroups and that the largest four bank subgroups (with assets greater than $ 400 million) experienced significant productivity gains and the smallest eight subgroups experienced insignificant productivity gains or even productivity losses. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the significance of wireless communication to chemical process industries (CPI) in the U.S. Due to emerging technological innovation, most CPIs are planning to change its communication protocols from cableready to wireless. Before the industry will transcend into the wireless world, they have to consider priority strategies which includes determining where wired solutions are impractical or cost prohibitive, identifying applications that involve high-energy and natural-resource usage and optimizing field-worker productivity. Due to the complexity of wireless technology, a thorough analysis and study are needed before implementation. Benefits derived in the scheme includes better tracking of inventories, accurate monitoring of tank levels and optimizing operations.

Abstract--This paper establishes that new inputs increase technical efficiency levels for U.S. manufacturing. Over the period 1950-1998, intermediate inputs exhibited higher rates of efficiency growth than labor and capital. Efficiency-adjusted productivity growth annually averaged 0.4 percentage points above measured growth. The gap between efficiency-adjusted and measured productivity growth arises from aggregating inputs using observed, and not efficiency-adjusted, cost share weights in the calculation of measured growth. Specifically, the decline in efficiency-adjusted material cost shares, compared to the measured shares, coupled with the comparatively high material input growth rate, was the main source of the productivity gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews the Federal Sentencing Guidelines of the U.S. Federal Sentencing Commission in an attempt to define the elements of an effective compliance program for any organization in the nation. Event responsible for the need to implement effective compliance programs at corporations; Significance of encouraging corporations to create systems that reduce the incidence of violative conduct; Statutory obligations considered in the building of an effective compliance system.

The facts and myths of changes in technology and authority structure in public organizations are investigated using data from a case study of structural reorganization and the mechanization and automation of mail processing in the United States Postal Service. External political pressure and internal labor-management conflict combined to cause changes that were legitimated by an institutional logic of scientific management and technical progress. Improvements in productivity and overall mail service have been limited by political and institutional considerations that continue to govern the operation of the Postal Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical industrial organization literature cites varying factors which might influence the degree of technical efficiency achieved under different ownership structures in the US hospital industry. Unfortunately, this literature offers no consensus regarding the net direction and magnitude of these various effects. This study analyzes the four types of ownership structure in the US hospital industry--private nonprofit, private for-profit, federal, and state and local government. Distance functions are used to measure technical efficiency of hospitals producing multiple outputs relative to other hospitals in the sample, allowing comparisons among the different ownership types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to compare the abilities of two competing analytical techniques —mathematical programming and statistical regression—to shed light on the union/nonunion productivity differential in U.S. surface coal mining. The programming approach has the virtues of being nonparametric (and thus extremely flexible) and of being able to provide a decomposition of productivity differentials into three components—differences in technical efficiency, differences in scale efficiency, and differences in congestion. Identification of these three components provides an aid to management in its search for the sources of, and remedies for, productivity gaps. The econometric approach, on the other hand, is neither flexible nor does it provide such a decomposition; its chief virtue lies in the fact that, being stochastic, it allows for the presence of noise and measurement error that plagues most if not all empirical data. Thus, the two approaches have complementary virtues. The two techniques are used to investigate productivity in two samples of U.S. surface coal mines. The programming approach finds a large and significant positive union/nonunion productivity differential. This differential is due primarily to greater congestion occurring in the smaller nonunion mines in one sample, and to scale inefficiency in the smaller nonunion mines in the other sample. The econometric analysis finds nearly the same union/nonunion productivity differential, but sheds no light on the composition of, and thus the cure for, the differential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis starts with models of the diffusion of due process protections in organizations that emphasize the role of the state, especially those from the institutional perspective. The case of equal pay for work of comparable value is used to develop propositions concerning important additions to current models of the expansion of due process protections in the workplace. First, we suggest that models of the nation-state should include an explicit recognition that the progressiveness of public policy varies over time. Second, we suggest that models of the nation-state should include explicit recognition of the fact that state authority is fragmented by the separation of powers and the partition of federal and local authority. Implications for future theory and empirical study that follow from these additions to current models are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the article of Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman concerning the efficiency of slave agriculture in the U.S. Effects of the crop mix on the efficiency of slavery; Participation of slave women in fieldworks; Relationship between slaveholding sizes and efficiency.

Comments on the article of Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman concerning the relative efficiency of slave agriculture in the U.S. Comparison between the relative efficiency of slave and free farming; Locations of the production-possibility frontiers for different types of farms; Measure of land inputs.

The article deliberates on the conceptual development of the manufacturing strategy paradigm. The concept of manufacturing strategy is still, in human terms, barely past adolescence. In years, it is younger than most of the MBAs (Master of Business Administration) who study it today. So it is nor surprising that-like them--it has been undergoing almost continual growth and elaboration throughout its short life, as it tested itself against the real world and as that world evolved. Today it is facing perhaps the greatest challenge in its short history, as it finds itself in the crossfire of debates about core aspects of its two parent disciplines: manufacturing management and competitive strategy. Until the early 1980s, most American managers thought about manufacturing in terms of a paradigm whose roots went back well over a hundred years. The "American system of manufacturing." with its emphasis on mass markets, standard designs, and mass production using interchangeable parts, revolutionized manufacturing in the middle of the last century.

Affirmative Action Programs (AAPs) are becoming increasingly common in the workplace. Typically their effectiveness has been assessed by the number of women and minorities hired and promoted. A neglected, but important measure of effectiveness is how AAPs are perceived by employees. When employees perceive that AAPs violate notions of fairness, negative attitudes and behaviors may occur and lead to decreased organizational performance. A model of perceived AAP fairness is presented using an organizational justice perspective. An initial (partial) test of the model is conducted and avenues for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the Taguchi Methods, a strategy for producing quality products and efficient production processes. Taguchi Methods test experimental product and process designs systematically and have the advantage of producing data quickly and less expensively than traditional statistical quality control approaches. American companies that use Taguchi Methods include Ford Motor Company, Bell Laboratories, Xerox, and General Motors. The quality loss function, quality function development which reduces lead time, external and internal "noise" variables, and the ten basic steps in Taguchi Methods are mentioned.

The article discusses just-in-time (JIT) management, a Japanese management style that is being used in the United States. The JIT system reduces inventory storage costs by synchronizing production and other business logistics to meet current demands. The weaknesses of JIT include lack of buffer stocks or slack variable and its specific application to batch- or craft-oriented industries. Porter's model of competition--which includes the forces of rival firms' competitive moves and countermoves, power of suppliers and customers along with the uncertainty of demand and raw material supplies, and the potential of substitute products and new entrants to the market--is mentioned. Suggestions are given for implementing JIT.

The article focuses on the Japanese style of industrial management. Where the Japanese have excelled is that they have taken the basics of management, including the fact that human beings are the key, to heart and have put them into practice. It seems to be a philosophy of life that fits neatly into the Japanese culture and business environment and this has made its acceptance much easier. There seems to be no doubt that the importance given to the individual has helped the Japanese to achieve the miracle they have, in rising from the ashes of World War II to be near the head of the league of developed countries today. In addition they have shown that what they do at home can be transferred to their operations anywhere in the world. The same story is being repeated at most of the Japanese factories in the U.S. and elsewhere--and there are now a host of them, mostly in the automotive, metal and high technology industries. Japanese labour practices and management are very distinctive, but they have been successfully transplanted outside Japan, including the U.S. As an example, the article cites three Japanese car assembly plants: Toyota at Freemont, California; Honda at Marysville, Ohio; and Nissan at Smyrna, Tennessee.