Everything I know about business I learned from monopoly

How do game designers approach their work? Perhaps in the same way that managers should. Here, the author, an expert in board-game design and the world's foremost authority on Monopoly, translates six tenets of game design into management principles. Three tenets focus on giving players the right level of structure. First, design simple and unambiguous rules: That also holds true in business; people engage most when responsibilities, objectives, and evaluation criteria are clear. Second, avoid frustrating the casual player. Just as not every game player aspires to be a grand master, not every employee wants to think like an executive. Third, establish a rhythm so that players know intuitively whether they are at the beginning, middle, or end of the game. Managers can also engineer such shifts of momentum and motivation for workers. Three more principles focus on providing entertainment. The most important is to tune into what's happening off the board. For many people, the real joy of a great game--or a great job--comes from the larger social experience surrounding it. Another key is to offer chances to come from behind. Even struggling employees want to believe, "The odds may be stacked against me, but just one great stroke and I'm right back in it." Finally, managers, like game designers, should provide outlets for latent talents. Games themselves can be useful in the workplace. For instance, an afternoon of game playing builds relationships and increases an organization's social capital. And simulation games can sharpen employees' business judgment. Managers may come to appreciate that games succeed depending on how well designed they are--and that many design challenges have their equivalents in the art of management.     

The stock market speaks: How Dr. Alchian learned to build the bomb

At RAND in 1954, Armen A. Alchian conducted the world's first event study to infer the fuel material used in the manufacturing of the newly-developed hydrogen bomb. Successfully identifying lithium as the fusion fuel using only publicly available financial data, the paper was seen as a threat to national security and was immediately confiscated and destroyed. The bomb's construction being secret at the time but having since been partially declassified, the nuclear tests of the early 1950s provide an opportunity to observe market efficiency through the dissemination of private information as it becomes public. I replicate Alchian's event study of capital market reactions to the Operation Castle series of nuclear detonations in the Marshall Islands, beginning with the Bravo shot on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll which remains the largest nuclear detonation in US history, confirming Alchian's results. The Operation Castle tests pioneered the use of lithium deuteride dry fuel which paved the way for the development of high yield nuclear weapons deliverable by aircraft. I find significant upward movement in the price of Lithium Corp. relative to the other corporations and to DJIA in March 1954; within three weeks of Castle Bravo the stock was up 48% before settling down to a monthly return of 28% despite secrecy, scientific uncertainty, and public confusion surrounding the test; the company saw a return of 461% for the year.     

注册会计师考试学习心得

本人2007年参加了注册会计师全国统考,并进入2007年财务成本管理科目全国前十名。在未通过注册会计师考试时,总觉得考注会是一件蛮难的事情。因为当中的知识点相当多,而且关联性很强。但是只要认真的学习了,通过考试也不是不可能的。考试     

NetGain EM使您站得更高，与业务部门一起管理IT

传统的IT管理产品集中在如何管理IT技术上，而不是如何管理IT业务系统。Netgain EM使管理者能轻松满足管理IT业务系统的需求，转变企业的环境，使业务部门和IT部门领导者能够拥有统一的语言，通过统一的界面面对挑战，理解新变化所带来的影响。     

Low amplitude P, QRS and T wave pattern in lead I--the "isoelectric lead I sign"

An applicant's electrocardiogram contains a low amplitude P, QRS and T wave pattern in lead I. The diagnostic and prognostic implications of this ECG pattern are discussed.     

Learning to lead at Toyota

Many companies have tried to copy Toyota's famous production system--but without success. Why? Part of the reason, says the author, is that imitators fail to recognize the underlying principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS), focusing instead on specific tools and practices. This article tells the other part of the story. Building on a previous HBR article, "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System," Spear explains how Toyota inculcates managers with TPS principles. He describes the training of a star recruit--a talented young American destined for a high-level position at one of Toyota's U.S. plants. Rich in detail, the story offers four basic lessons for any company wishing to train its managers to apply Toyota's system: There's no substitute for direct observation. Toyota employees are encouraged to observe failures as they occur--for example, by sitting next to a machine on the assembly line and waiting and watching for any problems. Proposed changes should always be structured as experiments. Employees embed explicit and testable assumptions in the analysis of their work. That allows them to examine the gaps between predicted and actual results. Workers and managers should experiment as frequently as possible. The company teaches employees at all levels to achieve continuous improvement through quick, simple experiments rather than through lengthy, complex ones. Managers should coach, not fix. Toyota managers act as enablers, directing employees but not telling them where to find opportunities for improvements. Rather than undergo a brief period of cursory walk-throughs, orientations, and introductions as incoming fast-track executives at most companies might, the executive in this story learned TPS the long, hard way--by practicing it, which is how Toyota trains any new employee, regardless of rank or function.     

会计披露在东亚金融危机中的作用及应吸取的教训(一)

编者按《会计披露在东亚金融危机中的作用:吸取的教训》是联合国贸易和发展会议的一份研究报告,该报告对会计披露与亚洲金融危机的关系进行了深刻的剖析,指出缺乏透明,可靠和可比的会计信息是导致亚洲金融危机的主要原因之一,并用实证方法分析了东亚5国对国际会计准则的严重背离,提出了加强监管和遵循国际会计准则的政策建议.     

How I turned a critical public into useful consultants

When Peter Johnson was an executive in the private sector, he viewed conflict with company outsiders as, at best, an annoyance. But when Johnson became the administrator of Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Oregon, he realized that outsiders had the power to bring the organization down. To survive, BPA had to listen to the people affected by the agency's decisions-BPA's harshest critics. BPA had long been respected, but by the time Johnson arrived in 1981, the agency was reviled. People were put off by BPA's father-knows-best approach to decision making, whereby the agency first made decisions and then explained them. So Johnson took what many thought was an unimaginable risk. Despite the warnings of attorneys and his own deep apprehensions, he opened up BPA's decision making to the public. The first attempts to involve BPA's critics were full of fireworks, but thanks to BPA's rock-solid commitment to public involvement, success soon followed. Experiences early on proved to Johnson that involving the public in BPA's decision making was a practical alternative to litigation. Moreover, BPA's stakeholders--once the agency's adversaries--became BPA's partners in making better decisions, and the agency gained authority and legitimacy.     

Commercialising the service class and economic restructuring-a response to my critics

The Commercialisation of Accountancy is reviewed in this issue of AOS in two extended essays—one by Hugh Willmott and Prem Sikka (1997) and the other by Yves Dezalay (1997). Whilst agreeing with many of the insightful criticisms of my work, I would like to take this opportunity to defend elements of the text which were criticised. In particular, I would like to expand upon the criticism made by Willmott and Sikka that I should have examined how the economic restructuring of the past two decades has presented some accountants (and indeed other expert labour groups) with opportunities, whilst restricting the life chances of many others. I accept this criticism; however, I would argue that the inter- and intra-group struggles for position are implicit in the work throughout much of the text and that they are explicitly mentioned in chapter six and the conclusion (the chapters which deal with class). Dezalay also refers to this inadequacy and suggests that the work suffers from the binary simplicity of Perkin's thesis which emphasises the public sector-private sector divide (see Perkin, 1989). What follows will attempt to clarify my views in this area and to raise questions and point to future areas of research.     

升值之言该如何听

自今年6月中国暗示将松动人民币汇率以来,人民币升值幅度仅为0．4％,这大大低于华盛顿的期待,因此,中美两国的关系日益紧张起来。随着失业率的膨胀,以及选举年即将到来,美国国会再一次将人民币汇率摆上了议事日程：9月6日,华盛顿两位高官为缓和中美关系前往北京,就人民币及其他重要问题进行高峰会晤,以期达成共识。     

How companies tackle health care costs: Part I.

From the experience of a cross-section of Fortune "500" companies and top nonindustrials, these authors develop a profile of the newer types of health plans and benefits designed to cut health care costs. After examining the various plans, their funding, and their results, however, the authors conclude that another form of health insurance, more like other kinds of insurance policies that cover only catastrophic events, is the most promising from all points of view. In a second article, Regina Herzlinger will examine corporate efforts to reshape the system of supplying health care.     

Does sustainable development lead to sustainability?

The shortcomings and contradictions of the present understanding of sustainable development as a concept and a strategy suggest that the very idea of sustainable development must be subjected to the most thorough-going reevaluation. In rejecting simplistic versions of sustainable development strategy, this paper offers the strategy of sustainable cities both as an alternative strategy and as a catalyst to long-term global sustainability. In so doing, it seeks not to replace all components of the strategy of sustainable development but instead to place them within a restructured strategic framework locating the design and building of sustainable cities at its centre.     

如何评估应收账款

对于应收账款的评估,由于没有相关的评估操作规范指南相配套,再加之受债务人资料、评估人员的精力、时间以及耗费的成本的限制,实际工作中可操作性不强,造成评估工作沿用审计的方法,除确有证据予以核销的债权外,大部分以账面值作为评估值,影响了评估结果的客观、公正.