The economic impact of implementing an ergonomic plan

It is of paramount importance for executives to be well aware of registered nurse (RN) hidden replacement costs related to musculoskeletal injuries. Developing and implementing an ergonomic plan that includes procurement of appropriate lifting equipment at the point of care makes sense. Armed with an ergonomic plan, proactive case management, and a return to work program, the organization is positioned for fiscal success. The ANA's Handle With Care campaign addressed the fact that 12% of RN turnover and 38% of RN workers' compensation pay are related to back strains. Using the benchmarks reported in the Handle With Care campaign, the average cost of replacing an RN who leaves nursing due to a back injury ranged from $25,450 to $38,280 per nurse. Health care worker injury prevention should be valued as a retention strategy, as well as a fiscal responsibility where all stakeholders benefit.     

Food scares, market power and price transmission: the UK BSE crisis

This paper is concerned with the impact of food scares, principallythe BSE crisis in the UK, and focuses on price transmissionin vertically related markets. We show that if market powerhas an effect on the farm–retail margin, this determinesthe specification of the cointegrating relationship and thusprovides a test of market power. The results for the UK beefchain suggest that we cannot reject the importance of marketpower. The impact of the BSE crisis on farm prices is foundto be more than double that on retail prices, thus corroboratingpublic concerns regarding a differential impact of food scareson retailers and producers.     

Celebrity altruism: the good,the bad and the ugly in relationships with fundraising charities

• Enlisting or retaining the support of celebrity volunteers is a crucial element in the fundraising and communications strategies for many third sector organisations. But whilst there is a plethora of literature on volunteer motivations, there has been little exploration of the relationships between celebrity volunteers and the charities that they support. Furthermore, the limited theory that exists appears to be based on the experiences of fundraisers and other media specialists with little primary research on attitudes of celebrities themselves. This paper therefore considers celebrity/charity relationships on the basis of existing volunteer motivation theory and attitudinal data from a sample of 208 celebrity volunteers associated with a major fundraising charity in the UK. The findings indicate that the motivation of celebrity volunteers may be much closer to those of other charity volunteers than might be expected from other literature on celebrities. In addition, the study found that amongst other factors, celebrity volunteers typically prefer their engagements to be simplistic and expedient in nature, but that where possible, the engagement activity should be fun and rewarding. It also reveals that individual motives for supporting charities are varied in nature and range from purely altruistic tendencies at one end of the continuum to egoistic motives at the other. In addition, the study indicates that factors such as security and trust in the endorsed organisation are a key motivating factor for many.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Customizing Concurrent Engineering Processes: Five Case Studies

Once hailed as the salvation of U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, concurrent engineering (CE) offers the potential for faster development of higher quality, more producible products. Unlike traditional, serial approaches to new product development (NPD), CE emphasizes cross-functional integration and concurrent development of a product and its associated processes. As Morgan L. Swink, J. Christopher Sandvig, and Vincent A. Mabert explain, however, CE is not a plug-and-play process. Successful CE implementation approaches differ depending on such factors as product characteristics, customer needs, and technology requirements. We can better understand those differences by examining CE implementation in the five NPD programs discussed here: the Boeing 777 aircraft, the heavy duty diesel engine at Cummins Engine Co., the thermoplastic olefin automotive coating at Red Spot Paint and Varnish Co., the airborne vehicle forward-looking infrared night vision system at Texas Instruments, and the digital satellite system at Thomson Consumer Electronics. Teams provide the primary integration mechanism in CE programs, and three types of teams appeared frequently in these projects: a program management team, a technical team, and numerous design-build teams. Depending on the project's complexity, an integration team may be needed to consolidate the efforts of various design-build teams. Task forces also may be formed to address specific problems, such as investigating an emerging technology. Some projects emphasized collocation and face-to-face communication. Others relied on phone conversations, documents, and electronic mail. Projects focusing on design quality relied on formal presentations and periodic review meetings. Projects emphasizing development speed required frequent, informal communications. Programs addressing design quality required extended product definition and performance testing, with input from design engineering, marketing, and customers. Efforts to reduce development time involved small, informal teams led by design engineers and managers. Aggressive product cost goals necessitated intensive interaction between product designers and manufacturing personnel. Highly innovative products required early supplier involvement and joint engineering problem solving. Formal design reviews and shared design data systems aided information sharing between internal and external design groups.     

With the best of intentions: a large sample test of the intention‐behaviour gap in pro‐environmental consumer behaviour

Many consumers intend to make pro‐environmental purchases; however, this is not always what occurs. A gap exists between consumer intentions to purchase environmentally friendly products and their actual purchase behaviour. The current study uses a large sample of Australian consumers (N = 772) to test Carrington, Neville and Whitwell's (2010) conceptual model of the intention‐behaviour gap. Responses showed that implementation intentions mediated the relationship between intention and pro‐environmental consumer behaviour. Behavioural control and environmental involvement were found to moderate the relationship between implementation intentions and behaviour. Shopping context was found to moderate the relationship between intention and implementation intentions. The findings have theoretical implications for furthering understanding of pro‐environmental consumer behaviour, and practical implications regarding how to generate socially beneficial behaviours.     

Indigenous sport and heritage: Cherbourg's Ration Shed Museum

So much has been lost about the culture of Australia's Indigenous people. Their languages, traditions and heritage were dissipated under the process of white colonization from 1788. This paper investigates the actions of the people from Cherbourg, an Aboriginal settlement in southeast Queensland, Australia, to reclaim their culture, identity and heritage. The focus is specifically on the Ration Shed Museum (RSM), which officially opened in Cherbourg in 2004. The RSM is a particular type of Indigenous museum, a community museum, in which those who curate the museum are simultaneously its subjects. Through a combination of ideas drawn from new museology, critical heritage and cultural geography, the relationships between the three buildings of the museum – the Ration Shed, the Superintendent's Office and the Boys’ Dormitory – and the displays of sport are examined via the voices of Cherbourg people. The buildings evoke stories of surveillance, discipline, punishment and control and, in many ways, sport mirrors these features of life at Cherbourg. Importantly, however, sport functioned in a parallel capacity by creating identity: sporting achievements were symbols of pride, resilience and hope for Indigenous people.