Multi-skilling in small and medium-sized engineering firms: evidence from Wales and Germany

A cross-national empirical study of forty-six engineering SMEs in Wales and two regions of Germany analyses the extent to which multi-skilling of staff is occurring, the underlying reasons for such developments, and how well placed firms are in relation to prevailing labour-market and training infrastructures strategically to develop hybrid occupations. We identify four types of skill accretion, only some of which presage net enhancements of the order of skills exercized. New quality assurance or continuous improvement programmes, and organizational restructuring, were the main reasons for multi-skilling. A majority of companies encouraged skill expansion on an ad hoc basis, yet strategic exploitation of multi-skilling incorporating comprehensive training support remained infrequent, especially in Germany. Nevertheless, a minority of the German multi-skilling leads to the award of innovative 'hybrid' qualifications fusing two skilled occupations. The breadth of German initial craft training both facilitates and inhibits potential for further multi-skilling in practice. In Wales, greater flexibility in occupational and training structures provides largely unrealized potential advantages over Germany in developing multi-skilling, especially as a means to resolve recurrent shortages of skilled workers. Welsh SMEs have preferred tentative, incremental, 'bolt-on' approaches to multi-skilling that facilitate only limited external transferability.     

Infectious Diseases, Public Policy, and the Marriage of Economics and Epidemiology

The assumption of rational choice helps in understanding howpeople respond to infectious diseases. People maximize theirwell-being by choosing levels of prevention and therapy subjectto the constraints they face. Objectives and constraints arenumerous, necessitating tradeoffs. For example, this approachpredicts how people respond to changes in the risk of infectionand to the availability of diagnostic tests. The combinationof individual rationality with epidemiological models of infectiondynamics predicts whether individual choices about infectiousdisease prevention and therapies produce the best possible socialoutcomes. If not, individuals' choices generate rationales forgovernment interventions to influence the levels of preventiveand therapeutic activities. Optimal policy usually means acceptingendemic infection, but at a level lowered by a coordinated packageof interventions. Economics combined with epidemiology providesmuch qualitative guidance on the design of such packages, includingimmunization programs.      

Exploring the role of goal theory in understanding training motivation

A model to test conceptions from goal theory within an existing framework of training motivation was developed and tested with employees participating in training in a non‐profit organization. It was hypothesized that goal orientation ('distal factors’) along with self‐efficacy, expectancy and valence (‘proximal factors’) would predict goal intentions as well as training outcomes such as affective responses to training, perceptions of training utility and intention to transfer or use the training provided. Results revealed that goal orientation predicted a significant proportion of variance in the proximal antecedents (valence (33 per cent), expectancy (39 per cent) and self‐efficacy (31 per cent)) whereas the proximal antecedents explained 43 per cent of the variance in goal intentions. In turn, goal intentions were related to training outcomes (affect (b = 0.7), utility (b = 0.6) and transfer intention (b = 0.5)). Goal intentions mediated the relationship between proximal antecedents and training outcomes, providing evidence that goal intentions play a pivotal role in the causal path from proximal factors to training outcomes. Valence alone was found to be a significant mediator of the relationship between goal orientation and goal intentions.     

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Ghost Doctors: Absenteeism in Rural Bangladeshi Health Facilities

Unannounced visits were made to health clinics in Bangladeshto determine what proportion of medical professionals were attheir assigned post. Averaged over all job categories and typesof facility, the absentee rate was 35 percent. The absenteerate for physicians was 40 percent at the larger clinics and74 percent at the smaller subcenters with a single physician.Whether the medical provider lives near the health facility,the opportunity cost of the provider’s time, road access,and rural electrification are highly correlated with the rateand pattern of absenteeism.     

Prices and Protocols in Public Health Care

This article addresses the problem of how to determine the optimalallocation of public expenditure in the health sector. The firstpart poses the question: How should the set of services providedin the public health care system and the fees charged for thembe chosen to maximize the health status of the population witha fixed budget? First, the findings show that policy reformshould take into account the response of the private sector.Substituting for a reasonably well-functioning private sectoris not as valuable as providing services the private sectorcannot. Second, the assumptions needed to justify the cost-effectivenessof medical interventions as a criterion for setting prioritiesare so restrictive as to make this method usable in few, ifany, circumstances. Third, prices for any one service shouldbe set to balance the conflicting goals of encouraging its useand of conserving the budget for more effective services. The second part broadens the objective of policy to cover thestandard welfare economics concerns of utility and market failure,that latter being extensive in the health sector. It reexamineswelfare maximization rules to show that only the market failurecomponents of shadow prices are needed to calculate the welfaregains from public investments.     

RISK ATTITUDE,PLANTING CONDITIONS AND THE VALUE OF SEASONAL FORECASTS TO A DRYLAND WHEAT GROWER*

The value of a seasonal forecasting system based on phases of the Southern Oscillation was estimated for a representative dryland wheat grower in the vicinity of Goondiwindi. In particular the effects on this estimate of risk attitude and planting conditions were examined. A recursive stochastic programming approach was used to identify the grower's utility-maximising action set in the event of each of the climate patterns over the period 1894-1991 recurring in the imminent season. The approach was repeated with and without use of the forecasts. The choices examined were, at planting, nitrogen application rate and cultivar and, later in the season, choices of proceeding with or abandoning each wheat activity. The value of the forecasting system was estimated as the maximum amount the grower could afford to pay for its use without expected utility being lowered relative to its non-use.     

How process enterprises really work

Many companies have succeeded in reengineering their core processes, combining related activities from different departments and cutting out ones that don't add value. Few, though, have aligned their organizations with their processes. The result is a form of cognitive dissonance as the new, integrated processes pull people in one direction and the old, fragmented management structures pull them in another. That's not the way it has to be. In recent years, forward-thinking companies like IBM, Texas Instruments, and Duke Power have begun to make the leap from process redesign to process management. They've appointed some of their best managers to be process owners, giving them real authority over work and budgets. They've shifted the focus of their measurement and compensation systems from unit goals to process goals. They've changed the way they assign and train employees, emphasizing whole processes rather than narrow tasks. They've thought carefully about the strategic trade-offs between adopting uniform processes and allowing different units to do things their own way. And they've made subtle but fundamental cultural changes, stressing teamwork and customers over turf and hierarchy. These companies are emerging from all those changes as true process enterprises--businesses whose management structures are in harmony, rather than at war, with their core processes. And their organizations are becoming much more flexible, adaptive, and responsive as a result.