Vorwort der Schriftleitung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Budgetdefizit und Leistungsbilanzsaldo-Replik

Summary In a previous article I explained the gradual deterioration of Austria's current balance in the seventies and its pronounced deficit in 1976 and 1977 within the framework of the relative absorption approach by reference to capacity utilization rates that were high compared to those of other countries. The high utilization rates in turn were the consequence of an expansive economic policy, in particular of an expansive fiscal policy. Guger-Wörgötter, on the other hand, interpret the deficit in the Austrian current balance as the result of weak foreign demand and view the budget deficit as an attempt to compensate for insufficient aggregate demand; they conclude that full employment policies should be continued disregarding the economic development abroad. The present paper presents additional evidence that the deficit in the current balance is attributable to the fact that Austria's economic policy maintained a higher rate of capacity utilization than abroad. Such a policy serves a useful purpose and can be financed by foreign currency reserves only in the case of a cyclical demand deficiency; in the long run, however, it can be sustained at best only under a regime of flexible exchange rates (continuing devaluation).     

No ordinary boot camp

Many companies now run boot camps--comprehensive orientation programs designed to help new hires hit the ground running. They're intense and intimidating, and new employees emerge from them with strong bonds to other recruits and to the organization. But at Trilogy, organizational consultant Noel Tichy discovered one program that's a breed apart. In this article, Tichy gives us a detailed tour of Trilogy's boot camp, Trilogy University, to demonstrate why it's so different--and so effective. Like the best boot camps, it serves as an immersion in both the technical skills new recruits will need for their jobs and Trilogy's corporate culture, which emphasizes risk-taking, teamwork, humility, and a strong customer focus. But this is a new-employee orientation session that's so fundamental to the company as a whole that it's presided over by the CEO and top corporate executives for fully six months of the year. Why? In two three-month sessions, these top executives hone their own strategic thinking about the company as they decide what to teach the new recruits each session. They also find the company's next generation of new products as they judge the innovative ideas the recruits are tasked with developing--making the program Trilogy's main R&D engine. And they pull the company's rising technical stars into mentoring roles for the new recruits, helping to build the next generation of top leadership. After spending months on-site studying Trilogy University, Tichy came away highly impressed by the power of the virtuous teaching cycle the program has set in motion. Leaders of the organization are learning from recruits at the same time that the recruits are learning from the leaders. It's a model, he argues, that other companies would do well to emulate.     

The wisdom of deliberate mistakes

Before the breakup of the Bell System, U.S. telephone companies were permitted by law to ask for security deposits from a small percentage of subscribers. The companies used statistical models to decide which customers were most likely to pay their bills late and thus should be charged a deposit, but no one knew whether the models were right. So the Bell companies made a deliberate mistake. They asked for no deposit from nearly 100,000 new customers randomly selected from among those who were considered high risks. Surprisingly, quite a few paid their bills on time. As a result, the companies instituted a smarter screening strategy, which added millions to the Bell System's bottom line. Usually, individuals and organizations go to great lengths to avoid errors. Companies are designed for optimum performance rather than for learning, and mistakes are seen as defects. But as the Bell System example shows, making mistakes--correctly--is a powerful way to accelerate learning and increase competitiveness. If one of a company's fundamental assumptions is wrong, the firm can achieve success more quickly by deliberately making errors than by considering only data that support the assumption. Moreover, executives who apply a conventional, systematic approach to solving a pattern recognition problem are often slower to find a solution than those who test their assumptions by knowingly making mistakes. How do you distinguish between smart mistakes and dumb ones? The authors' consulting firm has developed, and currently uses, a five-step process for identifying constructive mistakes. In one test, the firm assumed that a mistake it was planning to make would cost a significant amount of money, but the opposite happened. By turning assumptions on their heads, the firm created more than dollar 1 million in new business.     

Defining and developing competence: A strategic process paradigm

In this paper, competence is defined in operational terms as the degree to which the firm or its subunits can reliably meet or exceed objectives. Two antecedents to competence (and thus competitive advantage) are then developed and defined. These are the ‘comprehension’ of the management team working on developing competence and the ‘deftness’ of their task execution. Empirical results from a study of 160 new initiatives in 40 organizations from 16 countries suggest that: (1) it is feasible to operationalize and measure these constructs; (2) comprehension and deftness are important correlates of an organization's degree of competence as defined; and (3) a process-centered paradigm for understanding competence development shows promise.