Report: Performance Management—The Key to Higher Standards in Schools?

The object of this article is to make a critical review of a series of official documents which have emanated from the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE), since the Labour Government came to office in 1997, on performance management in schools. This technique is seen by the Government as crucial in improving standards in schools. The key documents are shown in the list of references at the end of the article, and our review is divided into two parts: the first considers the defining features of performance management in schools and the role which the Government sees it playing in improving standards; the second part explores some key tensions in the performance management framework.     

A Causal Model of the Impact of Skills, Synergy, and Design Sensitivity on New Product Performance

Notwithstanding the best efforts of outstanding managers, project team members, researchers, and consultants, no product development plan can guarantee success. Every new products organization will experience its fair share of failures, but a firm can take steps to ensure that its failures do not outweigh its successes. By benchmarking the competition, a firm can gain insight into best practices–the factors that lead most directly to new product success. To help identify these best practices, X. Michael Song, William E. Souder, and Barbara Dyer develop and test a causal model of the relationships among the key variables leading to new product performance. The proposed model identifies five factors that lead to marketing and technical proficiency: process skills, project management skills, alignment of skills with needs, team skills, and design sensitivity. According to the model, marketing and technical proficiency directly determine product quality, and ultimately lead to new product success or failure. The causal model was tested using information on 65 completed projects–34 successes and 31 failures–from 17 large, multi-divisional Japanese firms. The study participants develop, manufacture, and market high-technology consumer and industrial products. These firms judged the success or failure of the projects in this study by using seven criteria: return on investment, profit, market share, sales, opportunities for technical leadership, market dominance, and customer satisfaction. These firms generally assigned the greatest importance to customer satisfaction, opportunity creation, and long-term growth. For the most part, the responses from these firms support the relationships presented in the causal model. According to the respondents, marketing proficiency and product quality have a strong, positive influence on their new product performance, as do process skills, project management skills, and alignment of skills and needs. The responses highlight the importance to these firms of responsiveness to customer wants and needs, as well as ensuring a close fit between project needs and the firm's skills in marketing, R&D, engineering, and manufacturing. Somewhat surprisingly, the responses do not support the model's suggested relationships between skills/needs alignment and technical proficiency or between technical proficiency and product quality.     

Sexual harassment: Rights and responsibilities

This article briefly reviews the development of a philosophy about sexual harassment at work and legal protection for victims of harassment. It then focuses on the rights and responsibilities of three groups affected by sexual harassment: the target of harassment, the alleged harasser, and the employing organization. A discussion follows regarding the current status of the rights and responsibilities of the relevant parties as well as opportunities for abuse of rights and abnegation of responsibilities.     

An Empirical Analysis of and Policy Recommendations to Improve the Nutritional Quality of School Meals

The National School Lunch Program is not meeting its nutritional goals. Data for 330 Minnesota school districts are analyzed to derive recommendations for improving the nutritional quality of school lunches. This study finds, contrary to widely held views, that lunch sales do not decline when healthier meals with less fat, for example, are served and that more nutritious lunches do not necessarily cost more. Healthier meals have higher labor costs, but lower costs for processed foods. Indirect costs, paid by the food service to the school district, negatively affect meal quality by decreasing funds to upgrade kitchens and train staff to prepare more nutritious meals.     

Texas Prototypes找准定位

居于印刷电路板(PCB)的设计与生产之间的工作实在是既耗时又耗精力的黑洞,正是这些环节需要重配置、重写、测试以及再测试等工作。Texas Prototypes抓住这些黑洞并且将之转化成了美妙的sweet spot(最佳位置)。     

EMS扩充"势力范围"——合同制造商关注医疗外包市场

企业在选择制造商时会考虑很多因素,而且为了达成目标,通常需要实现某种信念上的跨越.但最终,Waters公司还是选择了将其一种主要产品的制造业务外包出去.该公司主要生产用于医疗、化工以及其他类分析的精密设备.     

Wither Qualitative/Quantitative?: Grounds for Methodological Convergence

The qualitative quantitative issue has been given attention in sociological scholarship for decades. Upon theoretical examination of the basis of separations, the commonly used criteria of subjectivity versus objectivity, systematization, quantification and generalization, do not separate. This suggests that the impetus for the qualitative/quantitative issue is more political than intellectual owing to several factors in the practice of sociology: diverse intellectual heritages, the domination of quantitative sociologists in teaching methods and writing methods text books, the proliferation of computer technology in the past 20 years, and separation of theory and method. Advancing sociological methods means transcending the quantitative/qualitative issue and moving on to consider issues like science, validity, causality and multiverse.