Violations of Service Fairness and Legal Ramifications: The Case of the Managed Care Industry

Adapted from Chan's (2000) model depicting success of litigation, this paper argues that with the application of various legislation, health maintenance organizations' (HMOs') violations of service fairness to each group: enrollees, physicians, and hospitals give rise to each group's lawsuits against the HMOs. Various authors (Bowen et al., 1999; Seiders and Berry, 1998) indicate that justice concepts such as distributive, procedural, and interactional justice can be applied to the area of service fairness. The violation of these underlying justice principles with HMOs' service unfairness to enrollees, physicians, and hospitals is examined. A general synopsis of the ethical issues in the managed care industry is provided. The various lawsuits launched by each group: enrollees, physicians, and hospitals together with the key statutes used are discussed. This paper also highlights the provisions and ramifications of the 11 April 2000 landmark agreement that Aetna made with Texas Attorney General John Cornyn to settle the 1998 lawsuit brought against the company. Lastly, the current ethical issues in the managed care industry are further discussed. The value of this paper can be adapted to the study of organizations' service fairness violations in other industries or in the educational, governmental, and not-for-profit sectors both nationally and internationally.     

Formal business process engineering based on graph grammars

Designing and managing a company's specific landscape and its business processes has been identified as a great challenge for several years. Business processes are highly dynamic and distributed and can only rarely be planned, modeled and analyzed completely. For a computer-aided business process system, which supports the designing and managing process, first of all a powerful uniform formalism is necessary, where all necessary knowledge concerning company's and its processes can be represented. In this paper we will concentrate on the introduction of such a formal methodology to describe business processes, company organization structures and information technology structures in one uniform formalism. The ideas we use are mainly based on methods from graph grammars, process management, Artificial Intelligence and business process (re)engineering.     

以就业为导向做好专业建设的实践与探索

专业建设是高职学校改革和发展的重要组成部分,又是课程建设的基础、纲领。本文通过以就业导向做好专业建设的实践,对如何做好高职的专业建设的问题,进行了探索。     

高职《商品学》课程教学改革探索

在高职教学中,课程教学是教学活动的基础,改革传统的课程体系和教学方法,是体现高职教学特点和实现专业人才培养目标的关键。本文通过对连锁经营管理专业中《商品学》课程教学改革的研究与实践,构建了课程的培养目标和课程体系,提出了课程教学组织实施和考试模式改革的具体办法。     

试论职业培训中心的管理自我诊断

管理自我诊断是职业培训中心改进工作、促进中心发展的重要环节。本文论述了管理自我诊断的内涵、原则和方 法。     

Tinbergen in De Economist

Jan Tinbergen's scientific writings cover six main areas of research. His articles in De Economist represent these areas; in some cases the contributions to De Economist were of a pioneering nature (business cycles, economic models, economic integration); in others De Economist was the first or even single outlet for Tinbergen's work. This article provides an overview of these contributions. The wide scope of Tinbergen's areas of research goes together with a unity in approach, the characteristics of which are: policy relevance, quantification and measurement, balance in analysis and presentation, and learning from experience. Tinbergen's articles in De Economist bear witness to this approach which at the time also met with scepticism and resistance as this overview shows. According to Houthakker, Tinbergen's main contribution may be that, amidst the pleas of interest groups and the slogans of the laity, an attempt is made that the voice of the professional economic researcher be heard. Tinbergen's work still sets an agenda for both economic research and policy making.     

Are emerging economies less efficient? Performance persistence and the impact of business group affiliation

By drawing a theoretical distinction between the persistence of superior and poor performance, we reconcile the conflicting predictions of the ‘revisionist’ and accepted views on the persistence of firm performance in emerging economies. Using a sample of manufacturing firms in the United States and India, we show that superior firm performance in emerging economies persists only as much as developed economies in line with the revisionist argument. We also provide evidence consistent with the accepted view that poor firm performance persists longer in emerging economies compared to developed economies. Further exploration of the latter shows that, contrary to predictions of extant theories, firms in emerging economies that are affiliated with an MNC or a business group have a greater persistence of poor performance than firms that are unaffiliated with these intermediate governance structures, and hence would be better off operating at arm's length. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

农村税费改革相关问题的深入思考

针对进一步扩大农村税费改革试点的要求，章从农村税费改革成功与否的衡量标准入手，对农村税费改革中难点问题的根本症结进行了深入分析．指出问题的根本源自不同利益主体间利益的重新分配，并在此基础上提出了解决问题的基本思路。     

从博弈论看商务谈判僵局的本质和处理

商务谈判中的僵局是谈判双方都不愿看到但又不得不面对的难题。只有了解了商务谈判僵局产生的本质才能够更好地处理好谈判中的僵局。从博弈论的角度,对商务谈判僵局的本质进行了分析,指出在挖掘共同利益的过程中既可以寻求到瓜分共同利益的有效途径,又可寻找到共同利益与个体利益实现的最佳结合点。     

论英语教学与学生的非智力因素培养

目前，英语学习中智力和非智力因素是影响学生学业成绩的两个重要因素。人的智力包括注意力、观察力、思维和记忆能力；而非智力是指人的意志、兴趣、动机和情感。本文就教师如何在英语教学中培养学生的非智力因素，促进他们消除学习方法上存在的某些障碍作了一些分析，以便帮助他们提高学习成绩。