Evaluative differences for production and marketing subunits: Australian managers' perceptions

In this article the relevance of a set of 42 field-based measures of subunit performance is rated by 155 production managers and 134 marketing managers. The results suggest that customer satisfaction is an important criterion of production subunit effectiveness as well as of marketing subunit effectiveness. The sense in which we think of marketing subunits buffering production subunits in organizations is questioned.The authors are from Department of Management, San Diego State University and, School of Economic and Financial studies, Macquarie University respectively. They are grateful to John Brown, Bob Hinings and John Waterhouse for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

2009高交会：机器人热舞显身手

还记得前两届的深圳高交会上,会做三十余种菜肴的大型“机器人”和能弹奏木琴发出悦耳音乐的机器人吸引了众多眼球,而2009高交会上,     

归去,来兮?--被亏损逼入调整期的中国电子制造

在电子产品追求差异化渐成趋势的今天,一味追求规模制造能力已经很难成为电子制造永恒主题了.而中国电子制造的根本出路又在哪里呢?     

水利工程设备制造监理规定

第一章　总　　则第一条　为加强对水利工程设备制造的监督管理 ,提高设备质量和投资效益 ,根据国家有关法律、法规 ,结合水利工程设备特点 ,制定本规定。第二条　本规定适用于水利工程设备制造监理活动。设备制造监理是指设备的设计和制造全过程的监理。第三条　本规定所称水利工程设备是指水利工程基本建设项目和生产、科研等项目所需的设备。第四条　水利工程设备制造监理是指依法成立的工程设备制造监理单位 ,受项目法人委托 ,按照监理合同的约定 ,对水利工程设备制造的质量、进度和投资等实施监督和管理。第五条　水利工程的大中型设备…     

水利行业实验室标准的管理

笔者结合长期的工作经验,介绍了水利行业实验室标准的控制与管理办法。     

Australian Experiments in Wage Policy

Industrial conciliation and arbitration have been pivotal in pay determination in Australia throughout the twentieth century. This paper examines how these institutions influence macroeconomic performance, paying special reference to their impact on cost inflation. It goes on to evaluate the contribution of the Accord (incomes policy) in the last decade. Consensus and participation within the institutional framework are shown to be essential for effective wage policy.     

澳大利亚选煤技术的最新发展

文章概况地介绍了澳大利亚煤炭工业所发生的一系列变化,并列举了目前煤炭产量的统计数据.文还介绍了一些新建洗煤厂以及所采用的洗选工艺,总结了有关重介加工、粉煤处理、浮选和脱水的最新技术进展.     

Telecommunications development in Asia-Pacific : The case for a new Australian role

This article describes the role of Australia in economic cooperation and telecommunications development in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly Asia. Australia's economic imperative focuses on north-east Asia while targeting markets for telecommunications in the relatively poorer nations of south-east Asia. A new role is advocated for Australia to take the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum it instigated beyond the purpose of economic cooperation directly into the cultural and human realm. Australia is challenged to use the new communications technologies to facilitate an active, shared learning process which could move Asia-Pacific into a new global order. A case is put for research on the use and impacts of the new telecommunications technologies in the service of humankind.     

Performance evaluation of production systems monitored by statistical process control and off-line inspections

Quality and productivity performance measures are very often considered in separate phases of the production system design process. However, the production system architecture affects the efficiency of the quality control system as well as the quality control configuration has an impact on the performance of the production system.The paper proposes a new analytical method for evaluating the performance of production systems in which statistical process control (SPC) techniques are implemented. Machines behaviour is monitored by measuring quality characteristics of the produced parts through off-line inspection devices and sampling inspections. The numerical results show the good accuracy of the proposed method, provide new insight in the relations among the two areas and pave the way to the joint design of production logistics and quality control systems.     

Towards 2000: A tougher future for Australian business?

The paper reports on the future business environment expected by top level Australian executives. It forecasts environmental changes to the year 2000 and updates projections reported in an earlier study. Specifically, top managers from 171 of Australia's largest 500 corporations provide their views concerning world ecology, the economy, technology and political-social developments. Their perceptions are then linked to specific competitive strategies that are evoked by the long-range forecast which they expect.     

A place for food in Australian schools: a socio-historical review of food education

The historical development of food education in secondary schools in New South Wales Australia is a compelling yet under-researched area of interest. This review starts by exploring how food curricula have evolved since the 1700s to the present day juxtaposed on socio-economic and political factors. This review is interested in the role secondary food education may play in ‘supplying’ people into professional studies towards a career as a food technologist. Accordingly this review compares contemporary secondary food curriculum with related curricula in the higher education sector and establishes a marked dissonance between the two. The implications of this are then put forward. The drive to empower students to be enterprising and innovative twenty first century problem solvers in relation to food design through the interdisciplinary nature of food science is discussed, despite the uncertainty as to what degree Food Technology in schools is currently promoting these life-long and life-wide abilities in students. The authors suggest the lack of a theoretical underpinning may be holding the subject back from becoming a robust discipline. For this reason this review puts forward a conceptual framework for the study of food. The following review is relevant to secondary and higher education food education stakeholders (teachers, academics, curriculum developers, professional food industry) and higher education providers nationally and internationally, as the way in which food education is presented in secondary schooling is not contained to the Australian context alone.     

Threshold tests for the control of mergers: The Australian experience

Merger policy in Australia has been formulated for a small open economy. Tight merger control has been avoided in order not to impede rationalisation and improved international competitiveness. From 1977 to early 1993 a merger or acquisition was only prohibited if it would lead to a firm gaining a dominant position in a substantial market. As a result, few mergers were stopped and some which would probably have substantially lessened competition were allowed to proceed without detailed investigation. Since January 1993 a threshold test of substantial lessening of competition has applied — a reversion to the test included in the original 1974 Trade Practices Act. This is likely to mean that more proposed mergers will come under scrutiny and the trade-offs between efficiency gains and anti-competitive detriments will need to be evaluated in a greater number of individual cases. New draft merger guidelines released in November 1992 generally reflect contemporary thinking in industrial economics.     

Economies of Scale and Scope in Australian Telecommunications

This paper employs a composite cost function toexamine the cost structure of Australian telephoneservices. The composite cost model combines thelog-quadratic input price structure of the translogmodel with a quadratic structure for multiple outputs. Quadratic output structures permit the measurement ofeconomies of scale, economies of scope, andsubadditivity without prejudging their presence. Model estimates, on Telstra system data from 1926 to1991, show that the production of Australian telephoneservices exhibits economies of scope but no rayeconomies of scale.     

Gender Discrimination in Training: An Australian Perspective

Analysis of the Australian How Workers Get Their Training survey indicates considerable male-female differentials in the incidence and duration of training. For external training, which women can undertake without the sanction of the firm, the gender effect is that women undertake more training than men, other things being the same. However, for in-house training, which requires the sanction of the firm, the gender effect is that women undertake less training than men, other things being the same. One interpretation of this is that the gender effect reflects both the discriminatory attitudes held by firms and the greater propensity to train among women, with the relative weights varying across types of training according to the discretion that women have in determining the training outcome.     

Employee Voice in Union and Non-union Australian Workplaces

The fall in unionism and the rise in the non-union workplace over the past two decades raises the question as to whether workers now have a reduced capacity to initiate issues and articulate grievances. For some commentators independent unions are the only source of genuine voice. Others have argued that the adoption of the HRM paradigm within an enterprise will provide workers with adequate voice mechanisms. This paper addresses the issue by comparing employee voice in non-union and unionized Australian workplaces.     

An improved model for supplier selection under capacity constraint and multiple criteria

Ghodsypour and O'Brien [2001. The total cost of logistics in supplier selection, under conditions of multiple sourcing, multiple criteria and capacity constraint. International Journal of Production Economics 73(1), 15–27] study multiple sourcing problem with multiple criteria and capacitated suppliers. Considering the buyer's quality requirements as a constraint, they develop a mixed integer non-linear programming model to find the least-cost cyclic ordering policy for the buyer. They propose to solve the model by enumerating over all possible supplier combinations. Although the problem is interesting and their analysis is correct, we point out two issues with their assumptions, namely, capacitated suppliers and cyclic ordering policy. We discuss two different capacitated supplier settings: (i) long-run average annual capacity, and (ii) exact annual capacity. First, under long-run average annual capacity assumption we propose a model which provides the same or a better solution and is much easier to solve than their model. Then, we discuss how to modify our and their models to handle exact annual capacity assumption.     

Electronic surveillance and cohesive teams: room for resistance in an Australian call centre?

A number of employees individually and cooperatively resist the controls of the electronic surveillance systems in the PowerGrid call centre. However, this is not the case in all teams. One team is faced with a labour process that directs their resistance to be focused directly at management, rather than at management via the machine.