Is this the right time to come out? Case study

In this fictional case study, Adam Lawson is a promising young associate at Kirkham McDowell Securities, a St. Louis underwriting and financial advisory firm. Recently, Adam helped to bring in an extremely lucrative deal, and soon he and a few other associates will be honored for their efforts at the firm's silver anniversary dinner. George Campbell, vice president in mergers and acquisitions, is caught unprepared when Adam tells him that, after serious reflection, he has decided to bring his partner, Robert Collins, to the banquet. George is one of Adam's biggest supporters at the firm, and he personally has no problem with Adam being gay. But it is one thing for Adam to come out of the closet at the office. It is quite another to do so at a public company-client event. After all, Kirkham McDowell's client roster includes some very conservative companies--one of the country's largest defense contractors, for example. George is concerned with how Adam's openness about his sexual orientation will play with their clients and, as a result, how senior management will react. Adam has not come to George for permission to bring Robert to the dinner. But clearly Adam wants some sort of response. George has never faced sexual diversity issues in the workplace before, and there is no company policy to guide him. Just how negative an effect could Robert have on Adam's career with the firm and the firm's relationship with its clients? Isn't it possible that even the firm's most conservative clients will simply decide that Adam's choice of guest is a personal matter--not a business one?(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

小微企业改变未来

事实上,小微企业的发展才是整个工商业不断壮大的坚固基石和肥沃土壤小微企业的重要性在发展中国家,小微企业起着至关重要的作用。印度要想在未来的几十年中拥有8%～10%的经济增长速度,目前就必须培育一个强大的小微企业部门。这是因为,小微企业部门不仅为全社会提     

Manage your human sigma

If sales and service organizations are to improve, they must learn to measure and manage the quality of the employee-customer encounter. Quality improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma are extremely useful in manufacturing contexts, but they're less useful when it comes to human interactions. To address this problem, the authors have developed a quality improvement approach they refer to as Human Sigma. It weaves together a consistent method for assessing the employee-customer encounter and a disciplined process for managing and improving it. There are several core principles for measuring and managing the employee-customer encounter: It's important not to think like an economist or an engineer when assessing interactions because emotions inform both sides' judgments and behavior. The employee-customer encounter must be measured and managed locally, because there are enormous variations in quality at the work-group and individual levels. And to improve the quality of the employee-customer interaction, organizations must conduct both short-term, transactional interventions and long-term, transformational ones. Employee engagement and customer engagement are intimately connected--and, taken together, they have an outsized effect on financial performance. They therefore need to be managed holistically. That is, the responsibility for measuring and monitoring the health of employee-customer relationships must reside within a single organizational structure, with an executive champion who has the authority to initiate and manage change. Nevertheless, the local manager remains the single most important factor in local group performance. A local manager whose work group shows suboptimal performance should be encouraged to conduct interventions, such as targeted training, performance reviews, action learning, and individual coaching.     

低收入国家的农村金融市场:最近的争论和教训

贷款的拖欠及呆帐已经干扰了低收入国家的农业信贷计划,尤其是农业发展银行。不难发现,拖欠贷款,甚至在再贷款之后,占未偿清贷款的30％以上。会计报表可能将贷款问题掩盖起来,而这些问题往往要比资金报告里所提到的问题严重得多。大量文献论述了低收入国家拖欠贷款问题,尤其关于农业信贷和公共部门的发展银行。文献里的传统观点是,借款人拖欠贷款有两种原因:他们没能力偿还贷款,或者他们不愿偿还贷款。不能偿还贷款的原因可能是收入不足,收入不足可以解释为偶然事件造成的,如坏天气、虫灾、价格突然下跌,或者由于结构上的缺陷,如不适当市场、基础设施或技术等。不愿偿还贷款的主要原因是:贷款被视为福利补贴或政治资助。或者更简单些,借款人从借款时就不打算还款,因此将贷款转入消费支出。     

测量市场洞察力

企业要与客户建立更加紧密的联系,应该从提高对营销分析的能力开始。在经济不景气的大环境下,分析的能力不仅对于企业维持卓越的营销效果至关重要,更是企业未来发展不可或缺的重要禀赋。