Salesforce support systems: Potential applications to increase productivity

Microcomputer based sales support systems have been held out by meany as a solution to the increasingly high cost of the personal selling effort. Promises of increased productivity through both greater efficiency and effectiveness have been made by many vendors. The author proposes some guidelines which provide sales managers with assistance in deciding when and where such systems can be used to increase the productivity of the salesforce.     

Serving the homeless and low-income communities through Business & Society/Business Ethics class projects: The University of Wisconsin-Madison plan

For several years, MBA students enrolled in a Business & Society/Business Ethics class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been volunteering their services at homeless shelters and in low-income communities. Students also work with low-income residents and relevant stakeholders on evolutionary team projects aimed at improving living conditions in low-income communities. These projects include starting a grocery co-op, credit union, day-care center, job training center and a transportation business. In addition, student groups develop service networks that link low-income communities with student organizations, other university professors and United Way volunteers. This article provides an evolutionary summary of these projects with the hope that other professors will adopt them for their classes. Denis Collins is an Assistant Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published numerous articles in the areas of business ethics, business and society, social philosophy, participatory management and gainsharing. He is coauthor, with Thomas O'Rourke, of Ethical Dilemmas in Business (South-Western Publishing, 1994) and coeditor, with Mark Starik, of Sustaining the Natural Environment: Empirical Studies on the Interface Between Nature and Organizations (JAI Press, 1995).     

Are nurses less satisfied than other workers?

Are nurses less satisfied than other workers? In this study comparing job satisfaction of baccalaureate nurses with elementary teachers and accountants, the three groups rated many aspects of their jobs similarly. Nurses were not comparatively or pervasively less satisfied with their jobs than these other professionals except in the areas of salary, chance for administrative participation, and job security.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF NAURU1

The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the vise of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take, but to what the farmer can afford to give.     

The possibility of positive rent gradients reconsidered

Despite empirical evidence to the contrary most residential location models are consistent only with a negative rent gradient. Richardson has suggested including average neighborhood plot size as an argument of the utility function; a positive rent gradient is not then a priori inconsistent with equilibrium. However, Richardson does not define the concept of equilibrium, and the purpose of this paper is to suggest a reasonable definition and to show that the rent gradient is negative if the utility function is strictly quasi-concave and if individual and average neighborhood plot size are substitutes.     

CEREAL SUPPLY POLICY INSTRUMENTS: AN ATTITUDINAL SURVEY AMONG FARMERS IN ENGLAND

Against a background of steadily mounting cereal surpluses in the European Community and a recognition that the cereals sector is a major contributor to the Community's budgetary problems, a survey was carried out of English farmers' attitudes and preferences concerning a range of alternative cereal supply policy instruments. Personal interviews were held with 102 farmers in two contrasting agricultural districts — one an intensive cereal-growing district in eastern England, the other an area of mixed livestock and arable farming in western England. Amongst cereal producers in both areas a quota was the preferred policy instrument; in the east because of the security it offered, but in the west because it was perceived to be the least damaging instrument for the industry as a whole. A price reduction was the preferred option of small livestock farmers in the western area. None of the other instruments — co-responsibility levy, set-aside, nitrogen use restrictions — received much support. Farmers were particularly negative about schemes involving the withdrawal of land from agricultural use.