Health incentives: the science and art of motivating healthy behaviors

Employers seeking to motivate and encourage healthy behaviors among their employees are increasingly turning to incentive rewards. In fact, a recent Buck Consultants survey of 555 employers, titled Working Well: A Global Survey of Health Promotion and Workplace Wellness Strategies, predicts the use of such rewards to more than double over the next two to three years. This article provides an overview of the key considerations for employers seeking to maximize the value of incentive rewards. Discussion includes incentive strategies, types of rewards, reward amounts and regulatory considerations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).     

Bringing the market inside

During the dot-com boom, many people saw the potential for new communication technologies to enable radically new business models, but they were far too optimistic about the speed with which the revolution would occur. Now, as the bitter disillusionment of the dot-com bust begins to fade, we have a chance to think again--this time more rationally--about how best to take advantage of the remarkable changes these new technologies are gradually making possible. One such change is the ability to create markets inside companies, allowing decision making to be decentralized and introducing some of the efficiency, flexibility, and motivating influence of free markets. In this article, the author examines this nascent form of business organization, exploring the benefits as well as the potential risks. BP, for example, met its goal of reducing the company's greenhouse gas emissions nine years ahead of schedule, not by setting and enforcing targets for each division but by allowing business unit heads to buy and sell emissions permits among themselves using an electronic trading system. And Hewlett-Packard recently experimented with a system that allowed employees to buy and sell predictions about likely printer sales, using a kind of futures contract. The markets ended up predicting the actual printer sales with much more accuracy than official HP forecasts. At a fundamental level, these changes are enabled by the fact that electronic technologies allow information to be widely shared at little cost. This simple fact has a profound implication for organizing businesses. When more people have more information, they can use it to make their own well-informed decisions, appropriate to local circumstances, instead of following orders from above. As a result, even very large companies can benefit from the collective wisdom of their employees.     

Bringing customers into the boardroom

Misguided marketing strategies have destroyed more shareholder value than shoddy accounting or shady fiscal practices. Yet marketing functions typically reside deep in the organization, far from the executive suite and boardroom, and they are often poorly aligned with corporate strategy. Boards of directors, it would seem, have compelling reasons to monitor their companies' marketing activities. The authors argue that boards lack a clear understanding of how their companies are meeting customers' needs and how their marketing strategies drive (or often fail to drive) top-line growth. To help remedy that problem, they've devised a "marketing dashboard," a series of management reports that could give the board this critical knowledge. The dashboard has three parts, each of which the board should review regularly. The first part tracks the company's main business drivers--those business conditions that, when manipulated or otherwise changed, will directly and predictably affect the company's performance. The second part describes the specific innovations in a pipeline of growth ideas that will allow the company to reach its short- and long-term revenue goals. And the third part provides an overview of the company's marketing skill set so the board can determine not only if the company has enough marketing talent but also if it has the right marketing talent. Unlike isolated measures of marketing performance that are often insufficient, irrelevant, or misleading, the dashboard allows the board to quickly and routinely assess the effectiveness of its company's marketing strategies. Armed with a clear understanding of marketing's role and performance, the board can expose inadequate marketing campaigns, direct management to address the problem, and monitor progress.     

兴业银行：以科技兴行为发展战略，加快创新发展

兴业银行成立于1988年8月,是经国务院和中国人民银行批准成立的首批股份制商业银行之一,总行设在福建省福州市,2007年2月5日正式在上海证券交易所挂牌上市（股票代码：601166）。兴业银行始终坚持“真诚服务相伴成长”的经营理念,致力于为客户提供全面、优质、高效的金融服务。     

Regulation in Housing Finance: Bringing Theory to Policy*

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics -     

安然案祸及英美银行界

据《纽约时报》6月26日报道,美国联邦刑事调查人员已经将调查范围扩展到银行系统,包括摩根大通、花旗集团、巴克莱银行、爱尔兰皇家银行等在内的美英主要银行成为了此轮调查的焦点.     

广东发展银行：坚持科技兴行战略 推动业务蓬勃发展

广东发展银行股份有限公司（以下简称“广发银行”）是经国务院和中国人民银行批准组建并于1988年9月成立的股份制商业银行。广发银行总部设在广州,在北京、上海、杭州等经济发达城市设立了27家分行、511家营业网点,在香港设有代表处,并与全球90多个国家和地区的1000多家银行建立了代理行关系。根据英国《银行家》杂志对全球1000家大银行排定的位次,广发银行连续六年入选全球银行业500强。     

浅谈高校图书馆的功能创新

知识经济时代高校图书馆具有科学传播功能、经济功能、社会智囊功能等。这些功能的实现是通过服务于校内教学科研，向社会提供教学、信息服务等来实现。本从它的实现形式上来讨论高校图书馆功能的创新。     

Resurrecting the art of risk control

The author defines risk control as the process of minimizing accidental and other extraordinary losses by anticipating and preventing unplanned events. Loss control, on the other hand, is defined as the process of minimizing accidental and other extraordinary losses by containing unplanned events after they occur. By these definitions, many people who think they practice risk control are actually practicing loss control. A few people who practice loss control are actually practicing risk control.     

多边投资担保机构(MIGA)担保中国海水淡化工厂

多边投资担保机构(MIGA)是世界银行集团从事政治风险担保和信用增级的分支部门,近期宣布支持中国新渤海开发区(河北省)的海水淡化工厂的建设.该地区淡水资源匮乏,本项目第一阶段可每天供应淡水50,000立方米,为河北省经济的持续发展做出贡献. 多边投资担保机构为阿科凌全球有限公司提供990万美元担保,支持其投资建造并运营这家工厂.在中国将海水用于工业目的尚处起步阶段,政府部门大力推行该技术以解决严重的水资源供给问题.     

Fusion of science and culture key to the 21st century

This essay takes as its premise that long-term human survival requires development of a new alliance between science and culture to the point of fusion. Geopolitical rupture with the past and cultural diversity will shape the norms and values underlying future development of science and technology, with a shift occuring from previous science and technology development models. Science will thus require new models of cultural communication, based on reciprocal relations among all humanity without the hegemony of western values, in order that humanity can live peacefully with itself and the environment.     

Bootstrap finance: the art of start-ups

Entrepreneurship is more popular than ever: courses are full, policymakers emphasize new ventures, managers yearn to go off on their own. Would-be founders often misplace their energies, however. Believing in a "big money" model of entrepreneurship, they spend a lot of time trying to attract investors instead of using wits and hustle to get their ideas off the ground. A study of 100 of the 1989 Inc. "500" list of fastest growing U.S. start-ups attests to the value of bootstrapping. In fact, what it takes to start a business often conflicts with what venture capitalists require. Investors prefer solid plans, well-defined markets, and track records. Entrepreneurs are heavy on energy and enthusiasm but may be short on credentials. They thrive in rapidly changing environments where uncertain prospects may scare off established companies. Rolling with the punches is often more important than formal plans. Striving to adhere to investors' criteria can diminish the flexibility--the try-it, fix-it approach--an entrepreneur needs to make a new venture work. Seven principles are basic for successful start-ups: get operational fast; look for quick break-even, cash-generating projects; offer high-value products or services that can sustain direct personal selling; don't try to hire the crack team; keep growth in check; focus on cash; and cultivate banks early. Growth and change are the start-up's natural environment. But change is also the reward for success: just as ventures grow, their founders usually have to take a fresh look at everything again: roles, organization, even the very policies that got the business up and running.     

产品定价的艺术

产品定价水平的优劣,直接体现着企业管理水平的高低,在一定程度上决定着企业的竞争力与持续发展的潜能。     

Performance management and organizational strategy: How to design systems that meet the needs of confrontation strategy firms

The link between organizational strategy and performance management system design has been examined in numerous studies. Invariably, strategy is conceptualized using archetypes developed in the 1970s and 1980s. Scholars have increasingly questioned the wisdom of relying on strategic archetypes that are plainly dated and conspicuously disconnected from the possibility of firms competing head-to-head, not out of choice but out of necessity. Cooper (1995) calls such a situation the undertaking of a confrontation strategy. Using an exploratory research design, this paper draws on nine qualitative case studies to examine how performance management systems are designed to meet and support the implementation of a confrontation strategy. Initially six firms, spanning a variety of what were expected to be mature, highly competitive industries likely to feature confrontation strategies, were recruited for participation. This initial study was then followed by a more concentrated examination of one particular industry: the banking industry. Findings from the total case study sample of nine firms lead to the presentation of an original table contrasting the unique performance management system designs associated with the three distinct strategies of cost leadership, differentiation, and confrontation. In particular, and in contrast to firms pursuing cost leadership or differentiation strategies, firms with confrontation strategies are likely to feature collaborative organizational cultures, lean organizational structures, and training and development programs that focus on developing empowered, multi-skilled teams of self-governing and coordinating employees. The exploratory intent of the paper, and thus its reliance on a small sample size of nine organizations, may limit the generalizability of the paper’s findings. In spite of this limitation, the findings offer opportunities for researchers to move beyond the exploratory approach presently adopted and empirically test the confrontation strategy and performance management system linkages proposed. Additionally, practitioners are likely to benefit from a clearer understanding of the type of performance management system design needed to support confrontation strategies.     

The secrets to successful strategy execution

When a company finds itself unable to execute strategy, all too often the first reaction is to redraw the organization chart or tinker with incentives. Far more effective would be to clarify decision rights and improve the flow of information both up the line of command and across the organization. Then, the right structures and motivators tend to fall into place. That conclusion is borne out by the authors' decades of experience as Booz & Company consultants and by the survey data that they have been collecting for almost five years from more than 125,000 employees of some 1,000 organizations in more than 50 countries. From this data they have distilled--and ranked in order of importance--the top 17 traits exhibited by the organizations that are most effective at executing strategy. The single most common attribute of such companies is that their employees are clear about which decisions and actions they are responsible for. As a result, decisions are rarely second-guessed, and accurate competitive information quickly finds its way up the hierarchy and across organizational boundaries. Managers communicate the key drivers of success, so frontline employees have the information they need to understand the impact of their day-to-day actions. Motivators--like performance appraisals that distinguish high, adequate, and low performers and rewards for fulfilling particular commitments--are also important but are most effective when applied after decision rights and information flows have been addressed. That holds true for structural moves as well. Surprisingly, the most effective structural moves turn out to be promoting people laterally--and more slowly. How can you make the most educated and cost-efficient decisions about which change initiatives to implement? The authors have developed a powerful online diagnostic and simulation tool that can help you test the effectiveness of various approaches virtually, without risking significant amounts of time and money.     

Performance measurement: The state of the art

Measuring performance is a complex subject, but one which practitioners in the public sector need to get to grips with. What follows is a reader's guide to the available literature and suggestions as to how this should be approached.     

The international accounting course state of the art

The objective of this article is to report to professors interested in developing or updating an international accounting course the experience of other professors who are already teaching such a course. The information presented here is based on review and analysis of international course syllabi offered at 31 U.S., Canadian, British and New Zealand universities.     

发挥专家委员会在行业自律管理中的作用

一、专家委员会基本情况 2002年11月,辽宁省资产评估协会在全国资产评估行业地方协会率先成立了由60人组成的专家委员会,制定了《辽宁省资产评估协会专家委员会工作规程》。专家委员会的成立是辽宁省评估行业自律性 管理体制的创新,是行业政策及专业技术研究咨询机构,其基本目标是致力于提高资产评估报告书的质量,以提高评估行业的专业技术水平。