How variation in management perceptions affects organizational performance

This research project uses innovative techniques (multiple respondents and partial relative standard deviations) to examine organizational management ratings of their implementations of market orientation, learning orientation, entrepreneurial management, and organizational flexibility. This study included manufacturers and service businesses, and also not-for-profits in education and healthcare to reflect the 21st century economy. The major finding of this study was larger than the expected response variation within management teams and how this correlated negatively with performance. The results are eye-opening and should be a concern for both management in organizations and the research community.     

The clean restaurant. II: Employee hygiene

Poor personal hygiene causes more than 90% of the sanitation problems in the foodservice industry. Government statistics show improper hand washing alone accounts for more than 25% of all foodborne illnesses. In Part II of R&I's sanitation series, experts describe in detail proper procedures for reducing cross-contamination in the workplace and suggest ways to deal with a new problem--style vs. safety, including what apparel, jewelry, cosmetics and hair styles can and cannot be worn on the job.     

Development of Trust: A Study of Interfirm Relationships in Vietnam

The radical political and economic reforms sweeping through former socialist countries during the last decade have opened rich opportunities for privately owned businesses to emerge and develop. Since the market institutions and infrastructures in these countries are largely underdeveloped, private firms in transition economies rely extensively on interfirm partnerships. This raises the question of how—in the absence of institutions that legitimate markets, contracts, and private property—managers of new business ventures develop new relationships. This paper addresses this issue through analysis of multiple subcontracting relationships formed at a private garment company in Vietnam. This analysis suggests that firms in transition economies develop interfirm trust in ways that are quite different from their counterparts in more highly developed economies.     

Jobs '90. Attitude aptitude

Is your job all it's cracked up to be? Take R&I's job$ quiz and compare your opinions about career and industry issues with those of your executive colleagues.     

The U.S. Multinational Advertising Agency and Public Policy

The overseas activities of U.S. multinational advertising agencies raise several important public policy issues. Host governments are likely to watch U.S. advertising agencies for unwanted signs of domination over local firms. They will also be sensitive to undesirable cultural influence along with several other real or imagined evils.

The U.S. government is unlikely to have significant interest in the specific activities of multinational advertising agencies. But. advertising agencies should be very wary of the impact of indirect regulation. Agency operation is going to be caught up in the increasing web of legislation designed for general regulation of multinational businesses.     

Resilient Growth: Fantasy Plans and Unplanned Developments in India's Flood‐Prone Coastal Cities

Academic and policy literatures on urban climate resilience tend to emphasize ‘good planning’ as the primary means for addressing the growing risk of flooding in Asia's coastal megacities. Cities have come to rely on disaster and climate resilience plans to future‐proof their landscapes and protect vulnerable populations. Yet while data is collected, models are built and plans are drafted, environmentally destructive development practices continue unabated and often unchallenged. This article examines and seeks to explain the contradictions between a growing awareness of the risks of climate‐induced flooding in resilience plans and the continuation of development practices widely acknowledged to exacerbate those risks. It analyzes these contradictions in the context of Mumbai and Kolkata, India's largest coastal cities, which are facing the severest threats from climate‐induced flooding. Based on analyses of key resilience planning documents and both planned and unplanned developments in some of Mumbai's and Kolkata's most ecologically sensitive areas, our analysis reveals that resilience planning, promoted by the central government and international consultants, and presented in locally produced ‘fantasy plans’, fails to address the risks of climate‐change‐related flooding owing to tendencies to sidestep questions of politics, power and the distributional conflicts that shape urban development. We conclude that efforts to reduce urban flood risk would benefit from the research, methods and analytic concepts used to critically study cities, but significant gaps remain between these fields.