PERSPECTIVE: Ten Years Of Experience Teaching A Multi‐Disciplinary Product Development Course⋆⋆

Integrated Design for Marketability and Manufacturing (IDMM at Stanford) is an Integrated Product Development course (IPD at Michigan) that is distinguished by hands‐on manufacture of customer‐ready prototypes executed by cross‐disciplinary teams of students (MBAs and graduate Engineering and Design students) in a simulated economic competition against benchmark products and against each other. The course design is such that teams can succeed only by performing well in each of the marketing, manufacturing, engineering, and design dimensions. Student failure modes include adopting the wrong product strategy, failure to execute a sound strategy of producing a product that meets market needs, failure to drive costs down, poor product positioning and/or communication, poor forecasting and inventory management, and poor team dynamics. Instructors adopting this course model will face challenges that derive from its definitively cross‐functional nature. The course involves faculty from Business, Engineering, and Design in a world where teaching load, compensation and infrastructural support is most often tallied on a unit‐specific basis. The course requires faculty with broad interests in a world in which narrow academic depth is often more highly valued. Other challenges the course presents include maintaining a sense of fairness in the final product competition, so that students can move beyond the anger of a potential failure to learn from their experience. Also, in its current manifestations on the Stanford and Michigan campuses the course requires expensive general‐purpose machine tools and instruction for students to build fully functional (customer‐ready) product prototypes. We provide our current resolutions to these challenges, and the rewards for making the effort. In the end, the course's survivability can be traced to the benefits it provides to all stakeholders: students, faculty, and administrators. These benefits include a course that integrates disciplines in a way that students believe will increase their integrative skills and marketability, a course that faculty can embrace as a vehicle for their own development in teaching and research, and that administrators find sufficiently novel and engaging to attract the attention of outside constituencies and the press. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.     

Four supply chain management systems: From supply chain strategies to human resource management

This article develops a conceptual model that supports and aligns supply chain strategies with organizational culture and leadership styles. We examine various supply chain theories and organizational behavior concepts to develop an integrated supply chain: the human factor model. Based on the underlying dimensions of environmental uncertainty and product complexity, we propose a 2x2 typology to identify four different supply chain systems that can be used by organization leaders to identify suitable supply chain strategies and compatible people management practices. We provide a useful and practical framework to analyze the alignment between the external environment and the internal organization of a supply chain system.     

Non-audit services and financial reporting quality: evidence from 1978 to 1980

We provide evidence on the long-standing concern about the potential conflicts of interest of auditors that provide clients with non-audit services using rarely explored non-audit services fee data from 1978 to 1980. In this setting, we find evidence of improved earnings quality when auditors provide non-audit services, especially those related to information services. This is consistent with better audit quality resulting from knowledge spillovers in the joint offering of audit and consulting services. Events related to the 1982 repeal of mandatory non-audit services disclosures are associated with a small positive stock price reaction, suggesting that the disclosure repeal has no adverse economic consequences. Furthermore, following the repeal we find no change in the earnings quality of client firms. In sum, our data suggest that non-audit services offered by audit firms can be associated with improved audit and reporting quality in client firms via auditors’ reputational incentives, synergies, and knowledge transfers.     

Impact of irrigation water quality on human health: A case study in India

Untreated or partially treated wastewater, which is a negative externality of urban water use, is widely used for irrigation in water scarce regions in several countries including India. While the nutrients contained in the wastewater is considered as beneficial to agriculture, the contaminants present in it pose environmental and health risks. This paper examines the morbidity status, its determinants as well as the cost of illness for households living in the areas irrigated with wastewater in comparison with those using normal quality water. Primary data collected from six villages irrigated with wastewater along Musi River which is fed with wastewater and one control village where normal quality water is used for irrigation has been used for the analysis.It is seen that higher rates of morbidity exist in the wastewater irrigated villages when compared to the control village. Specifically, adult and female morbidity rates are significantly higher than child and male morbidity rates. From the logit analysis it is seen that exposure to wastewater and engagement in activities based on it places the households in higher risk groups to report morbidity. Small and marginal farmers incur higher economic cost of illness. However, it has been difficult to ascertain the cause and effect relationship as most of the households have reported more common illnesses like fever, head ache, skin itching, stomach ailments, etc. The study points out the need for a comprehensive risk assessment and adoption of risk management measures including setting standards for treatment and discharge of wastewater and regulations on the type of uses etc. to prevent unplanned use of untreated or partially treated wastewater while taking into account local conditions.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Political Economy of Tariffs

We seek to analyze the determinants of senatorial response to "generic" trade bills that seek to impose restrictions on the lowering of tariffs. The analysis is based on the response of senators to the trade expansion acts of 1962 and 1974. In the recent past these have been the only bills that are "generic" in nature since they are not targeted at any particular industry. Within the same framework we also examine the issue of "legislator shirking", a term used to imply the response of senators based on pure personal ideology rather than the interests of the constituents. Regression results show the growing influence of state specific factors and the diminishing role of party and personal ideology on senatorial response. Interestingly, we find that despite the similar generic nature of the two bills examined, the influence of personal ideology on the response of senators varies across the two bills examined.     

Cashlessness in India: Vision,policy and practices

Over the past few years, an increasing convergence can be observed between international and Indian initiatives towards cashlessness, often involving a broad range of actors and influences. Despite this convergence, it is also clear that the conceptualization and implementation, or goals and outcomes of cashlessness can vary considerably, which indicates the need for a closer look at the Indian case. In this introductory note to the special issue on cashlessness in India, we outline the variety of institutions, stakeholders (regulatory, financial and technological actors), technologies and policies involved. As we have observed, digital payments and financial inclusion are two significant planks of cashlessness in India. Perhaps as a result, digital payments have been intentionally defined in a broad manner in India – ranging from anti-cash to less-cash and now contactless payments in the aftermath of Covid-19. Considering the variety of legal, economic, social and technological concerns involved, this special issue adopts 2 complementary foci to study cashlessness in India: technological visions and the systems undergirding it, and practices of end users. The special issue includes four papers. The first paper argues that the Digital India programme may lead to the commercialization of bias. The second paper historicizes the Indian demonetization of 2016 and examines its stated and unstated goals. The next paper provides a conceptual model on technology adoption in the context of digital payments. The final paper argues that users strategically switch between multiple payments media based on the context in which the transaction is taking place.