Leadership,Trustworthiness, and Ethical Stewardship

Leaders in today’s world face the challenge of earning the trust and commitment of organizational members if they expect to guide their companies to success in a highly competitive global context. In this article, we present empirical results indicating that when leadership behaviors are perceived as trustworthy through the observer’s mediating lens, trust increases and leaders are more likely to be viewed as ethical stewards who honor a higher level of duties. This article contributes to the growing body of literature about the importance of ethical stewardship in the trust relationship.     

A case-control comparison of direct healthcare-provider medical costs of chronic idiopathic constipation and irritable bowel syndrome with constipation in a community-based cohort

Objective: Patients with constipation account for 3.1 million US physician visits a year, but care costs for patients with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C) or chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) compared to the general public have received little study. The study aim was to describe healthcare utilization and compare medical costs for patients with IBS-C or CIC vs matched controls from a community-based sample.

Methods: A nested case-control sample (IBS-C and CIC cases) and matched controls (1:2) for each case group were selected from Olmsted County, MN, individuals responding to a community-based survey of gastrointestinal symptoms (2008) who received healthcare from a participating Rochester Epidemiology Project (REP) provider. Using REP healthcare utilization data, unadjusted and adjusted standardized costs were compared for the 2- and 10-year periods prior to the survey for 115 IBS-C patients and 230 controls and 365 CIC patients and 730 controls. Two time periods were chosen as these conditions are episodic, but long-term.

Results: Outpatient costs for IBS-C ($6,800) and CIC ($6,284) patients over a 2-year period prior to the survey were significantly higher than controls ($4,242 and $5,254, respectively) after adjusting for co-morbidities, age, and sex. IBS-C outpatient costs ($25,448) and emergency room costs ($6,892) were significantly higher than controls ($21,024 and $3,962, respectively) for the 10-year period prior. Unadjusted data analyses of cases compared to controls demonstrated significantly higher imaging costs for IBS-C cases and procedure costs for CIC cases over the 10-year period.

Limitations: Data were collected from a random community sample primarily receiving care from a limited number of providers in that area.

Conclusions: Patients with IBS-C and CIC had significantly higher outpatient costs for the 2-year period compared with controls. IBS-C patients also had higher ER costs than the general population.     

Inventory-driven costs

In the 199os, Hewlett-Packard's PC business was struggling to turn a dollar, despite the company's success in winning market share. By 1997, margins on its PCs were as thin as a silicon wafer, and some product lines hadn't turned a profit since 1993. The problem had everything to do with the PC industry's notoriously short product cycles and brutal product and component price deflation. A common rule of thumb was that the value of a fully assembled PC decreased 1% a week. In such an environment, inventory costs become critical. But not just the inventory costs companies traditionally track, HP found, after a thorough review of the problem. The standard "holding cost of inventory"--the capital and physical costs of inventory--accounted for only about 10% of HP's inventory costs. The greater risks, it turned out, resided in four other, essentially hidden costs, which stemmed from mismatches between demand and supply: Component devaluation costs for components still held in production; Price protection costs incurred when product prices drop on the goods distributors still have on their shelves; Product return costs that have to be absorbed when distributors return and receive refunds on overstock items, and; Obsolescence costs for products still unsold when new models are introduced. By developing metrics to track those costs in a consistent way throughout the PC division, HP has found it can manage its supply chains with much more sophistication. Gone are the days of across-the-board measures such as,"Everyone must cut inventories by 20% by the end of the year," which usually resulted in a flurry of cookie-cutter lean production and just-in-time initiatives. Now, each product group is free to choose the supply chain configuration that best suits its needs. Other companies can follow HP's example.     

Information Risk in TIPS Market: An Analysis of Nominal and Real Interest Rates

This study investigates the presence of information risk in two closely linked interest rate securities traded in separate markets: the nominal interest rate observed in the Treasury bond market and the real interest rate observed in the relatively new Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) market. We find that information flows unilaterally from the Treasury bond market to the TIPS market with a one-day lag. The information risk arising from asymmetric information flows may cause less informed traders to demand a higher rate of return (OHara, 2003). Our study provides an empirical explanation of why the TIPS yield has been relatively high throughout its nascent trading history.     

Awareness and perceptions of the Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing's Future: views from nursing students, RNs, and CNOs

Johnson & Johnson launched the Campaign in February 2002. Data from surveys of nursing students, RNs, and CNOs reflect a high level of awareness of several key elements of the Campaign--advertisements, recruitment materials, the discovernursing.com Web site, and regional "Promise of Nursing" fundraising events. The J & J Campaign for Nursing's Future represents the largest involvement of the private corporate sector, and through this initiative we are learning new and innovative ways to examine the challenges confronting the nursing workforce and develop actions to help resolve them.     

Analyzing fluctuating unit census for timely staffing intervention

A computer information system, which can provide cost-saving measures useful in adequately allocating nursing staff in the face of decreasing patient stays, increasing patient admissions and discharges, and the unexpected transfers surrounding busy nursing units, is explored.     

Forestry Commission for the Chop

The weakness of government 'enterprise' is divulged in a revealing account by a Forestry Commissioner who finally resigned.     

Pollution,profits, and stakeholders: The constraining effect of economic performance on CEO concern with stakeholder expectations

This study examined the constraining effect of economic performance on the relationship between CEO stakeholder orientations and four pollution performance categories. Economic performance was found to moderate the relationship for two of the four categories. Additionally economic performance was found to consistently interact with some CEO stakeholder orientations and not others. Overall the results suggest that CEO concern with stakeholder expectations is in large part moderate by the economic performance of the firm.Robert S. Dooley is a doctoral student in Strategic Management.Linda D. Lerner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing at Tennessee Technological University. She has conducted research and published in the areas of corporate social performance, women in management, and business venturing.