Bob's meltdown

Annette Innella is just coming into the lunchroom at Concord Machines when Bob Dunn starts screaming at her. After throwing his lunch tray against the wall, he stomps out, leaving Annette stunned. Naturally, Annette, the new senior VP for knowledge management, is beside herself. She knows her proposal to establish a cross-functional knowledge management committee is progressive thinking for this oldline manufacturer, but Bob's reaction is totally over the line. If Bob stays, she goes--that's all there is to it. Bob is contrite, but he's under a lot of pressure. The general manager of the Services Group, he's just returned from a two-week trip around the globe to gear up his troops to beat revenue targets again, despite shrinking budgets and hiring freezes. And what does he see when he gets back? An e-mail from Annette requesting that two of his best people devote half their time to what he calls her "idiotic" Knowledge Protocols Group. He's carrying the company on his back, and she's throwing this nonsense at him. Graphics specialist Paula Chancellor is surprised. Sure, Bob's gruff, but his staff loves him, and he's the only one of the big shots who ever talks to her. But HR director Nathan Singer is incensed; Bob's never been a team player, Singer complains, and it's time he learned a lesson. CEO Jay Nguyen is in a bind. Bob is his top manager; he brings in all the money. And even though future revenues are going to have to come from somewhere else, Jay is not totally behind Annette's initiative in the current business climate. He can't afford to lose Bob. But if he reins in Annette, it will look like he's condoning Bob's outburst. What should he do? Four commentators offer advice in this fictional case study.     

Workers' comp derailment: expectations not met

Two years ago RIMS formed the Risk Management Roundtable to identify trends and issues affecting the field and to develop mechanisms to broadly disseminate views and concerns. In March 1990 Risk Management published the Roundtable's first article, "The 1990s: The Decade of Risk Management," developed by its "new risk team." Focusing on how the risk management function is performed and how it is perceived, particularly by senior management, the article generated ample discussion. In this issue the Roundtable's workers' compensation team explains how the system's original intent has been eroded. The team also offers advice on how various players, including workers, employers, doctors, lawyers, insurers, regulators and legislators, can help cure the system.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

回顾1978-2008年重大理赔

1987年 3月15日哈尔滨亚麻厂发生爆炸事故,中国人民保险公司支付赔款1014万元. 5月6日黑龙江大兴安岭林区发生特大森林火灾,中国人民保险公司支付赔款1.18亿元. 1988年 9月8日 7号台风袭击浙江省象山、奉化、杭州等7个市41个县.中国人民保险公司支付赔款8000万元.     

Avoiding integrity land mines

How does a large multinational keep thousands of employees, operating in hundreds of countries, honest in a high-pressure business environment? As the chief legal officer at General Electric for nearly 20 years, Ben Heineman was part of the senior management group that sought to do just that--to make sure its executives and employees are moved to do the right thing as strongly as they are motivated to make their numbers. Heineman describes a set of systems that combine the communication of clear expectations with oversight, deterrence, and incentives. Nowhere are the expectations higher--and the sanctions more powerful--than for top executives. Heineman recounts example after example of senior leaders terminated for ethical lapses even when the business consequences of doing so were painful--and even when they had no direct knowledge of the violations occurring on their watch. To make expectations clear throughout the company, GE has systematically sought to set uniform standards that stay well ahead of current legal developments and stakeholders' changing attitudes about corporate accountability. Responsibility for implementing those standards, which are embedded in GE's operating practices, rests with the business leaders in the field. Oversight is both methodical and multifaceted. A host of auditing and assessment systems enables GE to compare the performance of its various business units against one another and against industry benchmarks. Perhaps the most powerful is the company's ombudsman system, which doesn't just allow but requires employees to lodge concerns. Failures to report into the system or up the line, or retaliation in any form, are firing offenses. The current intense focus on board-level governance has missed the point, Heineman argues. It is time to shift the debate from board oversight of the CEO to how top company leaders can most effectively infuse integrity at all levels of the corporation.     

Health care costs in workers' compensation

Although the costs of both the medical and indemnity components of workers' compensation have increased substantially in the past several years, the costs of medical benefits grew far more dramatically.     

A data set for modeling claims processes—TSA claims data

This data insight highlights the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) claims data as an underused data set that would be particularly useful to researchers developing statistical models to analyze claim frequency and severity. Individuals who have been injured or had items damaged, lost or stolen may make a claim for losses to the TSA. The federal government reports information on every claim from 2002 to 2017 at https://www.dhs.gov/tsa-claims-data . Information collected includes claim date and type and site as well as closed claim amount and disposition (whether it was approved in full, denied, or settled. We provide summary statistics on the frequency and the severity of the data for the years 2003 to 2015. The data set has several unique features including severity is not truncated (there is no deductible), there are significant mass points in the severity data, and the frequency data shows a high degree of auto correlation if compiled on a weekly basis, and substantial frequency mass points at zero for daily data.     

不碰壁的秘密

严谨、合理的跨国并购税务管理有助于企业节约税务成本,助推兼并重组战略落地。税务问题在跨国并购活动中至关重要,却常常令企业无比头疼,交易过程中的任何一个细小因素,都可能影响税务管理的结果,如交易双方所存地区的政治制度、交易方式、交易价款、支付方式、纳税申报、后期整合等等。     

治理通货膨胀必须把握力度

近期围绕通货膨胀、经济过热、是否升息等问题,引发了一系列针锋相对的辩论。作为决策的最前沿,中国人民银行的一举一动都受万众瞩目,而作为央行官员,笔者对此自然有所感触。     

Avoiding the performance improvement trap

Hospitals today can all too easily fall into a performance improvement trap if they do not adequately consider how best to approach efforts to improve performance. To ensure that such efforts will be effective, hospital leaders should first understand the reasons why an organization can stumble into this trap. Reasons that improvement initiatives can fall short include the absence of coherent strategy, an inability to distinguish between action and results, and a disjointed use of performance improvement tools in isolation rather than as part of a coordinated effort.