Efficient materiel handling and distribution: a design perspective

This article offers a condensed examination of facility design and the interface between owners, hospital managers, and architects in planning for hospital materiel handling and storage needs. A brief history is given of the evolution of materiel management and progress today in efficient ordering, storing, distributing, and inventory and billing. The article closes with a discussion of work redesign and personnel vs. equipment concerns. Two case studies exemplify similar goals from different approaches.     

An investment perspective for hospital materiel managers

Materiel managers are making investments every time they authorize capital, supply, or personnel requisitions on behalf of their departments or organizations. While not as formal as external investments in securities or the like, internal investments are even more critical to the organization's success and carry the same fiduciary obligations. Generating an acceptable return is a necessity rather than an option as concerns internal investments; the same formal analysis that is applied to external investments should be extended to internal ones as well. Adopting an investment perspective is a critical first step in seeing internal initiatives as investments and obtaining an appropriate return.     

Business ethics and the free market

Contrary to popular opinion, business ethics properly understood does not justify any kind of government interference with the free market. By highlighting the distinctive nature of business, and precluding coercion, business ethics actually provides essential support for free markets.     

Inventory auditing: a manufacturing perspective

Despite the mystery that usually surrounds the annual audit program, its plan is easy to understand if you learn the basic concerns of the auditor. A five-step inventory audit plan usually consists of proving that the inventory exists, is completely represented, belongs to the firm, is properly valued, and is properly classified. To develop the inventory audit plan, an auditor must verify a firm's system of internal controls, in addition to verifying management's financial assertions by obtaining evidence about them. The time, cost, and frequency of the inventory audit with even the best plans may vary because of changing factors.     

Child Health Corporation of America: a different perspective on materiel management

Today, based on current programs and services, CHCA is recognized as one of the leading specialty hospital alliances in the country. This is made possible by the excellent support and commitment of its shareholder hospitals. As CHCA looks toward the future, it is anticipated that it will expand its horizons with additional programs and member hospitals.     

The role of human resources in ethics/compliance management: a fairness perspective

Many large corporations now have formal programs for managing ethical behavior and legal compliance. But the often minor role of human resources (HR) in companies' ethics management efforts is problematic. This is because ethics management efforts are likely to raise questions of fairness, and trigger a fairness heuristic among employees that can generate important outcomes for the ethics program specifically and the organization generally. Relying on research on fairness in organizations and corporate ethics practices, we explain why the extensive involvement of HR in corporate ethics programs is important to the perceived fairness, and thus the likely outcomes (e.g., employee commitment), of those programs.     

Absenteeism in Israeli schoolteachers: An organizational ethics perspective

Two studies are presented with the purpose of investigating teacher absences in Israel from the perspectives of organizational normative behavior (Study 1) and organizational ethical climate (Study 2). Study 1 posits that absence may represent shirking behavior, and tested this hypothesis by investigating temporal absence trends of the entire public teacher population in Israel around weekends, holidays, and days of heavy workload. Results provide evidence which supports our theoretical expectations. Study 2 proposes that teachers' work absences are associated with the school's ethical climate. Using a sample of high-school teachers, our results supported this hypothesis, particularly for low-seniority and non-tenured teachers. We suggest that the normative behavior and ethical climate perspectives offer new vistas for advancing our understanding of absence behavior in organizations.     

Business ethics and corporate social responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a mainstream business practice, attracting broad attention from business, consumers, academics, and policymakers, leading firms to account for the social and environmental footprints of their activities. The aim of this paper is to present recent advances on CSR, regarding its incentives and its market and societal effects. The analytical approaches surveyed highlight various ways through which CSR creates value for firms and stakeholders. The paper looks on the CSR of multinational enterprises as well and concludes with issues related to international initiatives for the inclusion of CSR in policy agendas towards sustainable development.     

How "the best" companies use MRP (materiel requirements planning) and just-in-time for successful manufacturing

A study of production planning and control methods used in six leading companies found that a blending strategy is more effective than reliance on a single system. The blending of just-in-time and materiel requirements planning and other approaches allowed companies to select methods that best fit the unique characteristics of their production environments.     

Business ethics: A model to position a relative business ethics decision and a model to strengthen its application

The maxims of normative ethics are often in conflict. Thus business practitioners facing ethical questions often find themselves operating in the area of relative ethics. There are arguably two dimensions to this area. One lies on a spectrum from weak companies in highly competitive industries to strong companies in protected industries. The second dimension places the would-be ethical manager in awkward situations imposed from either the hierarchy or from corrupt markets. This article develops an analysis model to portray this relative ethics dilemma. Then, an argument is made that the more the individual manager practices good ethics, the higher the level of ethics the individual is able to maintain. This article proposes an adaptation of the 1950s feedback model of group dynamics known as the “Johari Window” to show this improvement in ethical behavior.     

Interbank credit and the money manufacturing process: a systemic perspective on financial stability

Interbank lending and borrowing occur when financial institutions seek to settle and refinance their mutual positions over time and circumstances. This interactive process involves money creation at the aggregate level. Coordination mismatch on interbank credit may trigger systemic crises. This happened when, since summer 2007, interbank credit coordination did not longer work smoothly across financial institutions, eventually requiring exceptional monetary policies by central banks, and guarantee and bailout interventions by governments. Our article develops an interacting heterogeneous agent-based model of interbank credit coordination under minimal institutions. First, we explore the link between interbank credit coordination and the money generation process. Contrary to received wisdom, interbank credit has the capacity to remove the inner limits of monetary system capacitance. Second, we develop simulation analysis on imperfect interbank credit coordination, studying impact of interbank dynamics on financial stability and resilience at individual and aggregate levels. Systemically destabilizing forces prove to be related to the working of the banking system over time, especially interbank coordination conditions and circumstances.