South Korean Hotel Meat Buyers' Perceptions of Australian, Canadian and U.S. Beef

This study conducted in November 1995 evaluates Korean attitudes towards Canadian beef relative to competing beef from the United States and Australia using a stated preference methodology. Executive chefs and purchasing managers from major 4-star and 5-star hotels in South Korea were interviewed. Koren buyers (chefs and purchasing managers) strongly prefer beef from the US with quality similar to US prime. For a comparable high quality beef product from Canada or the US the estimated model predicts there is a 28% chance of the aggregate group choosing Canadian beef versus a 49% chance of this same group choosing US beef. It will generally require significant price cuts or other major marketing efforts to influence non-Korean chefs and Korean purchasing managers to purchase Canadian beef versus US beef.     

Partnership to build research capacity

Today's nursing leaders are setting the stage for the next evolution--bringing together skilled clinicians and administrators with peers in education to create new approaches to leading the profession forward. Partnerships share goals, common purpose, mutual respect, willingness to negotiate and compromise, informed participation, information giving, and shared decision making. The shared practice academia effort between a public university and a private health care system situated in the island state of Hawai'i is described. The medical center and school of nursing pursued individual strategic efforts to build research capacity and used the opportunity to fund academic practice research projects. The mutual need and recognition of the high stakes involved, in concert with stable, committed leaders at all levels, were key to the early success of their efforts. Through the formal research partnership mechanism, a discrete focus was created for efforts and used to move to tactical, operational, and interpersonal integration in this relationship.     

LEGISLATED PROTECTION AND THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION

Tariff bindings and administered protection are two characteristics of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that are little understood. Tariff bindings place a ceiling on tariffs that is not always reached, whereas administered protection provides all industries with some minimum import protection, effectively creating a floor for protection. How do these policies affect applied most favored nation (MFN) tariff rates that are enacted through the legislature? I model tariffs determined by a dynamic legislative process and show that low applied MFN tariffs are less likely with tariff bindings and more likely with administered protection than under purely legislated protection.     

Managing Design in Small High-Growth Companies

Cost-cutting measures may keep investors happy, but such belt-tightening does little for a company's long-term growth. In an era of ever-shrinking product life cycles, effective product design skills are essential to any company's ongoing vitality. To remain competitive, even the largest manufacturers must learn to replicate the entrepreneurial drive and innovativeness that characterize small, high-growth firms. To foster a better understanding of the product design skills of small, high-growth firms, Peter Dickson, Wendy Schneier, Peter Lawrence, and Renee Hytry describe the results of a survey of CEOs from companies that have been included in the Inc. 100 or Inc. 500 lists. On average, 50% of the sales for these companies came from new products launched during the past 3 years. The survey addresses three fundamental questions. First, which aspects of design management do the CEOs of small, high-growth firms believe they manage well, and which give them difficulty? Second, to what extent are the CEOs involved in design decisions? Finally, how important is good product design to these firms? The respondents face the most difficulty in making the transition from sequential to concurrent engineering and design. Many cite a need for improved management of such skills as design for manufacturability, involvement of suppliers in the design process, estimation of costs during the design process, and the use of computer-aided design tools during the design process. In contrast to these engineering-related aspects of product design, the respondents are more confident in their ability to handle such marketing-related tasks as generating new design ideas and involving customers in the design process. The survey results indicate that CEOs of small, high-growth firms are deeply involved in design decisions. In over half the companies surveyed, CEOs indicated they had primary responsibility for design decisions. Most respondents also reported increasing their investment in design, with approximately 75% increasing their investment in product/service design over the past 3 years and almost 50% increasing their investment in packaging design. CEOs of Inc. 100 and Inc. 500 firms clearly recognize the importance of design. Approximately 70% of the respondents believe that design issues will be of increasing importance for U.S. firms' competitiveness in the coming years, and the majority feel it is important that their managers be knowledgeable about design. Approximately 75% of the CEOs believe that adopting new, fast-track approaches to new product design would improve their firms' competitiveness.     

Why not accounting and finance: An African American perspective

The authors investigated the role of influence factors and information sources why African Americans choose or do not choose a career in accounting or finance. The most important factor was career-based occupational growth. Students were more deeply influenced by information on the university's website than any other media source. The findings will provide useful insights for the university's administrators, and accounting and finance professional bodies in formulating strategies to promote accounting and finance careers.     

Outsourcing the State? Public–Private Partnerships and Information Technologies in India

This paper examines public–private partnerships (PPPs) for development through the example of telecenters in two Indian states. How might a developmental state position itself with respect to civil society under a PPP model of service delivery? We find that each state’s political economy is reflected in its PPP strategy, but that in both states the emerging middle classes rather than the poor benefit most from ongoing telecenter projects. Outsourcing development services to private entities need not “privatize” the state but does alter the way in which citizens “see” the state. Service delivery through telecenters becomes a symbol of government efficiency and responsiveness.     

A new method for early detection of mass concern about public health issues

During a public health crisis, risk communication professionals and other risk managers need timely and reliable information about the public reaction as soon as possible in order to effectively carry out their responsibilities. Based on a data-set of microblog news posts, this article presents a method that can forecast to what extent news about a public health issue will be disseminated. The study makes advances in rapidly tracking citizens’ reaction towards public health issues by monitoring news media on microblog sites. The findings show that the proposed method can detect early on the intensity of social reaction on a public health issue as well as provide alert signals. The method can also complement existing risk detection systems and help in the design of other powerful risk analytics tools.     

Advanced practice nurse outcomes 1990-2008: a systematic review

Advanced practice registered nurses have assumed an increasing role as providers in the health care system, particularly for underserved populations. The aim of this systematic review was to answer the following question: Compared to other providers (physicians or teams without APRNs) are APRN patient outcomes of care similar? This systematic review of published literature between 1990 and 2008 on care provided by APRNs indicates patient outcomes of care provided by nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives in collaboration with physicians are similar to and in some ways better than care provided by physicians alone for the populations and in the settings included. Use of clinical nurse specialists in acute care settings can reduce length of stay and cost of care for hospitalized patients. These results extend what is known about APRN outcomes from previous reviews by assessing all types of APRNs over a span of 18 years, using a systematic process with intentionally broad inclusion of outcomes, patient populations, and settings. The results indicate APRNs provide effective and high-quality patient care, have an important role in improving the quality of patient care in the United States, and could help to address concerns about whether care provided by APRNs can safely augment the physician supply to support reform efforts aimed at expanding access to care.