The 1990s: prescription for success

MCH materiel management has successfully utilized an information system to achieve the objectives of the past decade, and it is now well into accomplishing the objectives of the 1990s. Those objectives revolved around revenue enhancement, which will occur through further integration of the information system throughout the institution. Currently the information system links accounts payable, general ledger, budgeting, and, to a lesser degree, nursing and the ancillaries. However, the plan is to enhance its integration to all departments in order to control and track not only official inventory but all patient chargeable items. This system will be able to ensure that all patient chargeable items are infact billed. One should consider, for example, the revenue effect in the surgery department, considering the dollar volume of noninventory purchases. Thus it becomes apparent that for materiel management in the 1990s there are many opportunities and challenges. Management must be able to utilize the resources available to find success and excel toward achievement of future goals.     

Gearing up for the 1990s

It would be difficult to address personnel issues in this article, due to the complexities inherent in staffing requirement. However, the approach discussed here is to keep systems simple yet controlled, and to make information available to reduce orientation and training time. By having many of the systems discussed in place, materiel management should be able to react quickly to the hospital's changing needs. In addition, controlling qualitative assets and measuring performance is accomplished, allowing feedback to administration from both a performance and a potential standpoint. By ensuring that the present system is working as efficiently as it was designed, and by having key indicators in place to monitor that performance, the foundations will be in place to react to changing demands on space, inventory investment, and staffing. Having the proper tools to react to these pressures in a professional manner will be necessary to ensure that the logistical systems meet the requirements of the institution as it approaches the 21st century.     

UK Consumer Spending: Prospects for the Late 1990s

Over the last eighteen months, strong growth of personal consumption has fuelled the growth of the UK economy raising fears of a 1980s style consumer boom. The boost to consumption provided by "windfall gains" from building society conversions has added to these fears. In this article, Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Andrew Sentance and Geoffrey Williams discuss the forces behind this recent pick-up in consumption and assess the prospects for consumer spending in the late 1990s.     

An Economic Programme for the 1990s

Outlines how a refurbished Medium-Term Financial Stralegy could restore economic stability and remove the necessity for (fallible) economic forecsting by the Treasury.     

Individualism and collectivism: into the 1990s

New, employer-led initiatives in the management of human resources are said to have pitched the emphasis towards the ‘individualistic’ rather than the ‘collectivistic’ aspects of the employment relationship. The marginaliza-tion of trade unions and collective bargaining which this has entailed are but two (albeit fundamental) facets of a wide-ranging set of issues and repercussions. Individualization of employment policies throws up dilemmas and unresolved challenges for managers, trade unions and employees.

In embarking upon a major new empirical research project it has become necessary to revisit and review the utility of the currently available literature. In particular, how well would the traditional approaches to modelling individualism and collectivism cope with the new directions taken by recent managerial initiatives? The results of this analysis contribute the heart of this article. It is suggested that previous approaches ignore key dimensions of change which managers are currently pursuing. A new set of categories is proposed for understanding the mix of individual and collective elements in current developments. It is argued that these more accurately reflect current issues and tensions in management strategy.     

Trade union recruitment strategies: facing the 1990s

Despite a high level of initiatives few unions have developed systematic recruitment strategies, in particular when measured against three key criteria-the employment of a ‘dedicated’ national official; a specific budget; and a comprehensive monitoring system. This reflects an organisational ‘culture’ restricting recruitment potential.     

Shop stewards in the 1990s: a research note

Evidence suggests that the unions suffered badly during the 1980s, but how has this affected the lynch-pin of workplace industrial relations, the shop steward? The evidence of this research is that the shop stewards of the 1990s display remarkable stability in their influence and role when compared to earlier surveys.     

The Regulatory Crisis of the 1990s: Some Solutions

Much of the regulatory crisis arises from over-zealous enforcement. Most methods of countering it are unsatisfactory and expensive. Self-inspection, as under the 'Hoists and Lifts' model, would be much cheaper and more effective.     

The Wage Penalty for Married Women of Career Interruptions: Evidence from the 1970s and the 1990s

The goal of this paper is to assess how the wage penalty for career interruptions by married women changed between the 1970s and the 1990s. We estimate the wage penalty for career interruptions using the work-history model and PSID data. We use several approaches to control for various forms of endogeneity and selection bias. Our empirical results suggest that (i) the wage penalty for married women's career interruptions increased from 40.4% to 73.7% over the period, (ii) the ratio of the wage penalty for married women to that of married men also increased, from 1.33 to 2.43, (iii) Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions show that changes in education- or occupation-specific wage penalties account for most of the wage penalty increase.