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Q. I am looking to upgrade from a manual application process to an automated one. How do I figure out the best equipment, process and if it will even work? [...]

We propose that specialty store managers, as well as outside sales personnel attached to the store, have selling responsibilities. In addition, we propose that sales personnel, as well as store managers, should have a propensity for leadership, which reflects an individual's enduring disposition to exhibit leadership within the context of his or her organizational roles. In two studies, we develop a new individual difference measure of propensity to lead and investigate its nomological validity within a specialty retail store environment. As predicted, leadership propensity was predictive of self-rated sales performance and a proclivity to identify prospects through cold calls to close sales, to reveal customer orientation, and to exhibit organizational citizenship behavior. We found that propensity to lead did not differ between salespeople and retail store managers, but we found that the respondent's role moderated the relationship between propensity to lead and supervisor performance ratings. Study limitations and managerial implications of this heretofore unidentified trait of salespeople are discussed.

Sales coaching and sales training are two sides of the same coin. They both focus on the same end, improved sales performance, but they use very different means to achieve [...]

Implementation of the marketing concept in service firms is accomplished through individual service employees and their interactions with customers. A study is conducted to test the model that explains how service-worker customer orientation affects several important job responses including perceived job fit, job satisfaction, commitment to the firm and organizational citizenship behaviors.

Traditionally, the goal of a carefully planned, proactive preventive maintenance program for centrifugal chillers has been to improve chiller reliability and increase equipment life. Experience showed that a well-organized schedule [...]

Information on the use of structural equations analyses to study the relationship between psychological traits and level of customer orientation of services industry workers is offered. Additional information on hierarchical models studying the effects of employees' personality on performance evaluations is included.

Tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) have become a pervasive influence on local government fiscal affairs. Explanations for the spread of TELs suggest that voters thought local government was growing more than needed. Thus, TELs were intended to constrain growth and reduce the size of local governments. This article's purpose was to determine the impact of two separate kinds of TELs, one a property tax measure, and the other a comprehensive revenue and expenditure limit, upon the growth of municipal governments in Colorado. Using a panel data set on municipal budgets (1975-1996), the article demonstrates three major points: 1) the effectiveness of a TEL in achieving reductions in local government revenue and spending growth depends upon the nature of the TEL, 2) the comprehensive TEL did effectively constrain growth and reduce local government reliance on the property tax, despite the local options for exemption; and 3) TELs do not have uniform impacts among governments of different population.

The rash of megamergers in the late 1990s has reopened the debate about the feasibility of running massive organizations. While a good number of theorists feel that megamergers are counterproductive, a few feel that it is possible to manage large-scale organizations by bringing their hugeness down to size. Ken Murrell thinks that this can be accomplished by dispersing leadership widely so that large-size clout can be matched with small-size agility. Mitchell Marks, likewise, suggests that communication channels be opened across all levels so that strategic goals can be clearly defined.

Martha Finney and Bob Rosner are two authors who write about employee attitudes. However, the big difference between them is that Finney focuses on people who love their jobs while Rosner focuses on the grievances of employees. Rosner believes that discomfort is a part of work and that people must learn to enjoy their jobs. On the other hand, Finney says that satisfied workers are those that are committed to their values and have career goals.

Reading groups are becoming more popular among US businesses. They are usually more effective when they originate from a single person, who is very intent on establishing the program, and when the company is involved in the activity. The members should also form a consensus regarding rules, choice of books and meeting times, after which a facilitator for the discussions should be assigned. The group should then sustain its momentum by making the activity more enticing and by dividing the group into smaller ones, in case the group grows to an unmanageable size.

Service quality measures gain deeper significance when used in conjunction with an associated norm, which helps compare service with other similar service entities or compare the performance of the service over time. The use of norms places the service quality score in a certain context, a background by which performance is appraised as improving or declining. This system has deep managerial implications in that it helps formulate improvements in specific sectors of the service.

Although brand theorists suggest that what a person knows about a company (i.e., corporate associations) can influence perceptions of the company's products, little systematic research on these effects exists. The authors examine the effects of two general types of corporate associations on product responses: One focuses on the company's capabilities for producing products, that is, corporate ability (CA) associations, and the other focuses on the company's perceived social responsibility, that is, corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations. The results of three studies, including one that measures respondents' CA and CSR associations for well-known companies and one that uses consumers recruited in a shopping mall, demonstrate that (1) what consumers know about a company can influence their beliefs about and attitudes toward new products manufactured by that company, (2) CA and CSR associations may have different effects on consumer responses to products, and (3) products of companies with negative associations are not always destined to receive negative responses. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for marketing managers and further research.

An interview with author Cliff Hakim is presented. Hakim wrote 'We Are Self-Employed: A New Social Contract Affecting Every Worker and Organization.' He discusses the circumstances behind his writing of the book and the problems of worldwide unemployment. He encourages the absorption by employees of a new work ethic, with the full support of management, that is similar to the concept of participatory management., The feeling is pervasive: Whatever you do, wherever you work, there no longer is job security. Or, at least, there's no security like our parents believed in and subscribed to. [...]

When Gaylord Container in Bogalusa, La., decided to build the first new linerboard machine in the U.S. since 1985, one of the company's stated goals was to have single-window architecture [...]

LARRY MILLER: THE COVER ON A JIGSAW-PUZZLE BOX INDUSTRY WEEK'S 'On the Edge' series is committed to finding those management thinkers who are going a step beyond the current conventional [...]

Gulf States Expands Coating Operation with Automated Kitchen Control System New distributed control system, reinstrumentation, and piping and valve overhaul improve coated board quality at Demopolis, Ala., mill Gulf States [...]

STRAIGHT FROM THE HART During his four years as Maui County planning director, Chris Hart has had the unenviable task of facing a public grown increasingly weary of the day-to-day [...]

With consumer trends becoming increasingly mobile, the pre-paid card market is set to grow even bigger over the next few years. Tom Brown Pre-paid cards and other stored-value cards are [...]

From 30,000 feet, the payment card business looks like a model of orderly perfection. Electronic transactions are steadily displacing legacy payments. Financial institutions with a significant presence in the payment [...]

Mostly Favorable Travelers to Thailand carry a mostly favorable image of the country, but they are also aware of certain negative aspects. The World Tourism Organization ranked Thailand as Asia's [...]

Tom Brown is president of Tom Brown & Co., a consultancy in Wilton, CT. It is clear that there are two sides to the question 'What should the rules be [...]

The publishing industry as well as other industries that revolve around leadership and management books have experienced a boom trend in the 1990s. The healthy trend is attributable to three factors. First is the fact that most corporate managers have adopted an ultra-selective approach to books they read. Second is the increased pervasiveness of small-scale publishing. Third is the competition with the Internet.

Performing a thorough inspection and tuneup of centrifugal chillers now, during the precooling season, can mean fewer service calls, improved comfort, and reduced energy use throughout the cooling season. The [...]

A SME leads the world in standards, from the dimensions of the smallest screw to the design of a nuclear reactor vessel. That fact was recently discussed on a National [...]