The utilization of activity-based cost accounting in hospitals

Healthcare costs are being examined on all fronts. Healthcare accounts for 11% of the gross national product and will continue to rise as the "babyboomers" reach retirement age. While ascertaining costs is important, most research shows that costing methods have not been implemented in hospitals. This study is concerned with the use of costing methods; particularly activity-based cost accounting. A mail survey of CFOs was undertaken to determine the type of cost accounting method they use. In addition, they were asked whether they were aware of activity-based cost accounting and whether they had implemented it or were planning to implement it. Only 71.8% were aware of it and only 4.7% had implemented it. In addition, only 52% of all hospitals report using any cost accounting systems. Education needs to ensure that all healthcare executives are cognizant of activity-based accounting and its importance in determining costs. Only by determining costs can hospitals strive to contain them.     

Coca‐Cola's marketing challenges in Brazil: The tubaínas war

This case presents the challenges the Coca‐Cola Company faces in Brazil. Not only is Coke up against its nemesis, Pepsi, but it must also compete with hundreds of local brands, many of which do not pay taxes. These local brands are generically called tubaínas. The case provides background information on the history of Coke in Brazil, trends in the Brazilian soft drink market, and competition by Pepsi and the many local soft drink firms. In addition, Coke's strategies for competing are outlined. The main question raised by the case is what marketing strategies can Coke adopt to better compete in Brazil. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Social Constructivism,Mental Models,and Problems of Obedience

There are important synergies for the next generation of ethical leaders based on the alignment of modified or adjusted mental models. This entails a synergistic application of moral imagination through collaborative input and critique, rather than “me too” obedience. In this article, we will analyze the Milgram results using frameworks relating to mental models (Werhane et al., Profitable partnerships for poverty alleviation, 2009), as well as work by Moberg on “ethics blind spots” (Organizational Studies 27(3):413–428, 2006), and by Bazerman and Chugh on “bounded awareness” (Harvard Business Review, 2006; Mind &; Society 6:1–18, 2007) Using these constructs to examine the Milgram experiment, we will argue that the ways in which the experiments are framed, the presence of an authority figure, the appeal to the authority of science, and the situation in which the naïve participant finds herself or himself, all create a bounded awareness, a narrow blind spot that encourages a climate for obedience, brackets out the opportunity to ask the moral question: “Am I hurting another fellow human being?” and may preclude the subject from utilizing moral imagination to opt out of the experiment. We will conclude that these forms of almost blind obedience to authority are correctable, but with difficulty. We will argue that linking the modification of mental models to an unbinding of awareness represents an important synergistic relationship and one that can build effectively on the lessons learned from our experience with moral imagination.     

Trade Facilitation and Export Diversification

This paper shows that improved trade facilitation can help promote export diversification in developing countries. We find that 10 per cent reductions in the costs of international transport and domestic exporting costs (documentation, inland transport, port and customs charges) are associated with export diversification gains of 4 and 3 per cent, respectively, in a sample of 118 developing countries. Customs costs play a particularly important role in these results. Lower market entry costs can also promote diversification, but the effect is weaker (1 per cent). We also find evidence that trade facilitation has stronger effects on diversification in poorer countries. Our results are highly robust to estimation using alternative dependent and independent variables, different country samples, and alternative econometric techniques. We link these findings to recent advances in trade theory that emphasise firm heterogeneity, and trade growth at the extensive margin.     

Seven challenges to combining human and automated service

We introduce this special issue by addressing seven key challenges associated with managing hybrid human-automated service systems. These consist of the following:

• 1 What strategic and tactical issues arise when managing hybrid service systems?
• 2 How should the core “value proposition” be set?
• 3 What special considerations arise in the design and implementation phases?
• 4 How can service delivery be managed to identify systemic problems and to address service breakdowns?
• 5 How can communications with clients improve the functioning of service systems?
• 6 What performance measures should be used to monitor process, outputs, client perceptions, and financial outcomes?
• 7 How can we coordinate the various interdisciplinary activities needed to address the previous six issues?

We consider these challenges after first characterizing the historical evolution of service delivery, reviewing some of the literature in the administrative sciences, and proposing a conceptual framework. Copyright © 2009 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multiple pasts, converging presents, and alternative futures

This paper introduces a variant of scenario planning, supported by some related new concepts in futures studies. The traditional snapshot and chain portrayals of scenarios are replaced by a network, which enables the consideration of multiple views of the present and the past, occurring in multiple systems (e.g. global and local). A fractal “leaf of goals” metaphor is developed, illustrating the argument that activities, events and objectives lie on a continuum: any one event is itself a composite of an indefinite number of component events.Using this concept, network scenarios are developed, consisting of nodes (representing events) and links (representing influences). Because events are socially constructed, each node can be seen as an end-state summary of a smaller network scenario. The networks are created (typically in workshops with participants from the systems being studied) using modified versions of the futures wheel and backcasting, as well as a new variant entitled middlecasting. By working iteratively between past and future events, the networks are steadily refined.A further departure from conventional scenario planning is that scenario networks do not begin at the present time, but extend about as far into the past as they do into the future. By beginning in the past, the roots of network fragments can be identified more clearly in the context of their multiple presents.The method is illustrated with an example of a project to democratize public radio in Indonesia. A scenario network was successfully created, but the delineation of multiple pasts and presents turned out to need further clarification.