Research by the people, for the people

Most research is carried out on behalf of private enterprise, the military, national governments, or in pursuit of the scientific community's intellectual interests. The result is that research agendas often favour elite groups helping them to maintain positions of privilege. Taxpayers and consumers experience the consequences and also foot the bill. Little research is conducted directly on behalf of citizens or communities. This article describes an alternative, more democratic approach. ‘Community-based research’ is rooted in the community, serves a community's interest, and frequently encourages citizen participation at all levels.     

Understanding "people" people

Nearly all areas of business--not just sales and human resources--call for interpersonal savvy. Relational know-how comprises a greater variety of aptitudes than many executives think. Some people can "talk a dog off a meat truck," as the saying goes. Others are great at resolving interpersonal conflicts. Some have a knack for translating high-level concepts for the masses. And others thrive when they're managing a team. Since people do their best work when it most closely matches their interests, the authors contend, managers can increase productivity by taking into account employees' relational interests and skills when making personnel choices and project assignments. After analyzing psychological tests of more than 7,000 business professionals, the authors have identified four dimensions of relational work: influence, interpersonal facilitation, relational creativity, and team leadership. This article explains each one and offers practical advice to managers--how to build a well-balanced team, for instance, and how to gauge the relational skills of potential employees during interviews. To determine whether a job candidate excels in, say, relational creativity, ask her to describe her favorite advertising campaign, slogan, or image and tell you why she finds it to be so effective. Understanding these four dimensions will help you get optimal performance from your employees, appropriately reward their work, and assist them in setting career goals. It will also help you make better choices when it comes to your own career development. To get started, try the authors' free online assessment tool, which will measure both your orientation toward relational work in general and your interest level in each of its four dimensions.     

British privatization--taking capitalism to the people

From 1983 to 1986, John Moore served in the Thatcher government in Britain, launching that country's privatization program. In "British Privatization--Taking Capitalism to the People, " he describes the thinking behind privatization, the objections raised against it, and the actual measures taken to implement it. With privatization, corporate performance has improved and the government has been able to focus on regulation, not ownership. But in the end, says Moore, the greatest success of British privatization was that it transformed the public's attitude toward ownership and economic responsibility.     

Leading clever people

In an economy driven by ideas and intellectual know-how, top executives recognize the importance of employing smart, highly creative people. But if clever people have one defining characteristic, it's that they do not want to be led. So what is a leader to do? The authors conducted more than 100 interviews with leaders and their clever people at major organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cisco Systems, Novartis, the BBC, and Roche. What they learned is that the psychological relationships effective leaders have with their clever people are very different from the ones they have with traditional followers. Those relationships can be shaped by seven characteristics that clever people share: They know their worth--and they know you have to employ them if you want their tacit skills. They are organizationally savvy and will seek the company context in which their interests are most generously funded. They ignore corporate hierarchy; although intellectual status is important to them, you can't lure them with promotions. They expect instant access to top management, and if they don't get it, they may think the organization doesn't take their work seriously. They are plugged into highly developed knowledge networks, which both increases their value and makes them more of a flight risk. They have a low boredom threshold, so you have to keep them challenged and committed. They won't thank you--even when you're leading them well. The trick is to act like a benevolent guardian: to grant them the respect and recognition they demand, protect them from organizational rules and politics, and give them room to pursue private efforts and even to fail. The payoff will be a flourishing crop of creative minds that will enrich your whole organization.     

注重财务预测

市场对全球金融危机后的财务预测可能会更加关注。董事们有责任确保市场的合理知情权。由于财务预测有助于董事们行使这一职能,因此,保证预测有合理的可信度十分重要。     

与灾区人民同呼吸——中国建设银行董事长郭树清、行长张建国、监事长谢渡扬慰问灾区、指导抗震救灾工作

地震以来,中国建设银行员工情系灾区、支持灾后重建的工作一直在持续不断地进行着：出台了做好地震灾区信贷工作十大服务新举措,包括对受灾地区涉及保障群众基本生活、灾后重建的行业信贷,施行非限制性行业执行准入和审批、受灾地区客户的中短期授信业务（期限不超过3年）可暂不执行“先评级、后授信、再单笔申报”的程序,直接按信贷业务授权方案报批单笔业务、对于列入政府灾后重建计划的项目,在财政资金尚未到位之前,可发放短期搭桥贷款,     

Will the people move back to the city?

The evidence for a reversal of the trend of population movement from the cities to the suburbs in the United States is examined. The data used are from published reports of the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The author concludes that the evidence does not support the theory that people will move back to the city; rather, it suggests that there is, and seems likely to be, a significant out-flow of people from central cities in all regions of the country.     

Reforming the UN: the view of the American people

It may come as a surprise that surveys of the US people on the subject of the UN and global issues show that the US government policy of ignoring major UN reform is at odds with strong preferences by the American people for many major UN reforms. Illustrating both ignorance and some surprising discretion, it is also true that the US public opposes few of the many reforms tested. The Americans Talk Issues Foundation (ATI) has conducted six opinion surveys of US people on the UN and global issues in the past three years, the highlights of the latest of which are reported here.     

为了广厦千万间

自古以来，从孟子“让居者有其屋”的理想，到杜甫“安得广厦千万间”的疾呼中看出，住房问题不仅是传统社会的美好愿景，也是现代人们心中的“安居梦”，更是一项关系百姓民生与福祉的大工程。当前，今年1000万套保障房建设进展如何？老百姓离保障房还有多远？这两个问题一直萦绕在他们心头。     

Technologies for the people: a future in the making

India’s post-independence policy of using science and technology for national development, and investment in research and development infrastructure resulted in success in space, atomic energy, missile development and supercomputing. Use of space technology has impacted directly or indirectly the vast majority of India’s billion plus population. Developments in a number of emerging technologies in recent years hold the promise of impacting the future of ordinary Indians in significant ways, if a proper policy and enabling environment are provided. New telecom technologies—a digital rural exchange and a wireless access system—are beginning to touch the lives of common people. Development of a low-cost handheld computing device, use of hybrid telemedicine systems to extend modern healthcare to the unreached, and other innovative uses of IT at the grassroots also hold promise for the future. Biotechnology too has the potential to deliver cost-effective vaccines and drugs, but the future of GM crops is uncertain due to growing opposition. Some of these emerging technologies hold promise for future, provided a positive policy and enabling environment.     

Why people follow the leader: the power of transference

We all admire leaders. In trying to understand how leadership works, however, we often lose sight of the fact that followers are a crucial part of the equation. Regrettably, they get short shrift in the management literature, where they are described as merely responding to their leaders' charisma or caring attitudes. What most analyses seem to ignore is that followers have their own motivations and are as powerfully driven to follow as leaders are to lead. In this article, psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and management consultant Michael Maccoby delves into the unconscious recesses of followers' minds. He looks closely at the often irrational tendency to relate to a leader as some important person from the past--a parent, a sibling, a close friend, or even a nanny. Sigmund Freud discovered this dynamic when working with his patients and called it"transference." But as important as it is, the concept remains little understood outside the realm of clinical psychoanalysis. This is unfortunate, because a solid understanding of transference can yield great insight into organizational behavior and endow you with the wisdom and compassion to be a tremendous leader. The author explains the most common types of transference--paternal, maternal, and sibling--and shows how they play out in the workplace. He notes that they have evolved as our family structures have changed. Whether followers perceive a leader as an all-knowing father figure, as an authoritative yet unconditionally loving mother figure, or as a brother or sister who isn't necessarily a model of good behavior, the leader can manage transferential ties by bringing unconscious projections to light. Then debilitating resentment and animosity can give way to mutual understanding and productivity--and a limping organization can start to thrive.     

论经营城市与以人为本理念的确立

经营城市这一概念已经深入人心,但不少城市在如何经营这个问题上却陷入了误区。本文通过对经营城市土地、市政公共行业和企业的过程中出现的一些现象的思考,阐明经营城市不仅要考虑经济效益,同时也要考虑社会效益,要以人为本。经营城市必须牢固树立以人为本的理念。     

Maximizing your return on people

Though most traditional HR performance metrics don't predict organizational performance, alternatives simply have not existed--until now. During the past ten years, researchers Laurie Bassi and Daniel McMurrer have worked to develop a system that allows executives to assess human capital management (HCM) and to use those metrics both to predict organizational performance and to guide organizations' investments in people. The new framework is based on a core set of HCM drivers that fall into five major categories: leadership practices, employee engagement, knowledge accessibility, workforce optimization, and organizational learning capacity. By employing rigorously designed surveys to score a company on the range of HCM practices across the five categories, it's possible to benchmark organizational HCM capabilities, identify HCM strengths and weaknesses, and link improvements or back-sliding in specific HCM practices with improvements or shortcomings in organizational performance. The process requires determining a "maturity" score for each practice, based on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high). Over time, evolving maturity scores from multiple surveys can reveal progress in each of the HCM practices and help a company decide where to focus improvement efforts that will have a direct impact on performance. The authors draw from their work with American Standard, South Carolina's Beaufort County School District, and a bevy of financial firms to show how improving HCM scores led to increased sales, safety, academic test scores, and stock returns. Bassi and McMurrer urge HR departments to move beyond the usual metrics and begin using HCM measurement tools to gauge how well people are managed and developed throughout the organization. In this new role, according to the authors, HR can take on strategic responsibility and ensure that superior human capital management becomes central to the organization's culture.     

Job sculpting: the art of retaining your best people

Hiring good people is tough, but keeping them can be even tougher. The professionals streaming out of today's MBA programs are so well educated and achievement oriented that they could do well in virtually any job. But will they stay? According to noted career experts Timothy Butler and James Waldroop, only if their jobs fit their deeply embedded life interests--that is, their long-held, emotionally driven passions. Butler and Waldroop identify the eight different life interests of people drawn to business careers and introduce the concept of job sculpting, the art of matching people to jobs that resonate with the activities that make them truly happy. Managers don't need special training to job sculpt, but they do need to listen more carefully when employees describe what they like and dislike about their jobs. Once managers and employees have discussed deeply embedded life interests--ideally, during employee performance reviews--they can work together to customize future work assignments. In some cases, that may mean simply adding another assignment to existing responsibilities. In other cases, it may require moving that employee to a new position altogether. Skills can be stretched in many directions, but if they are not going in the right direction--one that is congruent with deeply embedded life interests--employees are at risk of becoming dissatisfied and uncommitted. And in an economy where a company's most important asset is the knowledge, energy, and loyalty of its people, that's a large risk to take.     

向空中要地,助百姓安居

保障房因为与百姓安居息息相关而成为＂两会＂期间代表、委员热议的话题之一。全国政协委员、中国城建集团董事长、中国城市发展研究院院长于炼说：＂保障房不属于房地产产业,应该属于社会福利的延续和补充。＂全国政协委员、清华大学经济管理学院金融系主任李稻葵表示,保障房制度将是解决目前房地产问题的＂解毒剂＂,如果建得好、管理得好,可以成为各级政府长期持有的、基础坚实的财政收入来源。一家中国企业通过＂向空间要地＂建筑技术的实际应用,使保障房的社会福利特质、可持续的财政收入和房地产开发之间实现了完美结合,是于炼委员建议的那种＂以社区为单元实现民生保障,提升市民生活品质＂的城市民生建设中最行之有效的建筑技术创新案例     

Auto-static for the people: risk-minimizing hedges of barrier options

We present and test a method for computing risk-minimizing static hedge strategies. The method is straightforward, yet flexible with respect to the type of contingent claim being hedged, the underlying asset dynamics, and the choice of risk-measure and hedge instruments. Extensive numerical comparisons for barrier options in a model with stochastic volatility and jumps show that the resulting hedges outperform previous suggestions in the literature. We also demonstrate that the risk-minimizing static hedges work in an infinite intensity Levy-driven model, and a number of controlled experiments illustrate that hedge performance is robust to model risk.     

世行贷款提升来宾市防洪排涝能力

世界银行执董会上批准向广西来宾水环境综合治理项目提供贷款8000万美元,项目将通过防洪设施和洪水预警系统建设,提高来宾市防洪排涝能力,减少洪水风险,确保来宾市民生命财产安全,改善城市河道水质和人居环境。来宾市位于广西壮族自治区中部,常住人口260万,红水河及其主要支流龙洞河、北之江和草鞋沟穿城而过。频繁而严重的内涝灾害已经成为来宾市城区发展的心腹大患,遇到短时强降雨,城区极易出现内涝,一旦遭遇特大强降雨,城区往往是汪洋一片,受灾惨重。受气候变化影响,特大强降雨会越来越频繁。城区