When times get tough, what happens to TQM? Case study

When Mueller Chemical Company's biggest customer, Ameriton, demanded that MCC install a total quality management system five years ago, the effort seemed worth it. Morale improved dramatically at the German company, as did quality and productivity. But now, in this fictional case study, Ameriton has gone bankrupt. As a result, MCC has had to cut its work force, and senior managers are meeting to decide whether TQM should be part of the downsized MCC. Horst Koblitz, director of TQM, and Division Manager Eva Stichen both vote yes. Stichen's division, which never supplied Ameriton, has turned its process-control system into the company's best thanks to TQM. The division is more cost-efficient, product defects are nearly nonexistent, and its safety record is spotless. As Koblitz notes, Ameriton's failure is no reason to abandon all that MCC has built. Furthermore, shareholders and customers would think that MCC was panicking. MCC just needs to tailor its TQM program to a smaller organization. But CFO Georg Becker doesn't think MCC has the time or resources for fine-tuning. And as he sees it, that might be just as well. The distractions that came with TQM took MCC away from its goal of becoming the chemicals market leader in Europe. While the company organized teams, developed measurement systems, and filled out quality reports, its competitors took away much of the market share MCC was after. TQM was a good long-term approach, but it didn't come with a plan for MCC's current situation. And CEO and Chairman Dieter Mueller won't compromise; TQM must either stay or go.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Managing Cultural Diversity in Collaborations: A focus on management tensions

Abstract

This article explores the management of cultural diversity in public and not-for-profit collaborations spanning organizational, professional and national boundaries. Through the framing of a culture paradox, it identifies three interrelated tensions pertaining to the management of cultural diversity towards collaborative advantage. These tensions address: interactions between organizations within a collaboration; interactions between individual actors and their orientation towards the collaboration and their host organization; and the quantity and extent of cultural diversity within a collaboration. The culture paradox and its inherent management tensions provide theoretical and practical conceptualizations that are relevant to management and governance of collaboration.     

Keeping Your Financial Planner to Yourself: Racial and Cultural Differences in Financial Planner Referrals

Literature suggests that the use of a financial expert by Black households improves savings and investment behaviors. However, these households lack the financial knowledge and sophistication needed to select an appropriate financial expert. This admitted inability results in Black households relying on the recommendations of friends and family in selecting and hiring a financial expert. However results from this study suggest that Blacks who have successfully chosen a financial expert, i.e., are satisfied, are nearly two times (92 %) less likely than non-Blacks to refer their financial planner to others. Decomposition analyses indicate that over 80 % of satisfied Blacks should be willing to provide a referral yet only 50 % do. The largest significant component of the difference in referral rates is culturally based perception differences of the variables used in determining the net benefit of providing a referral.     

Opting Out of Pay Devolution? The Prospects for Local Pay Bargaining in UK Public Services

Abstract : Throughout the 1980s, government ministers strongly advocated the decentralization of pay determination in the public services. Despite this exhortation, by the end of the decade rates of pay and salary structures were rarely determined at workplace level. This paper explores the resilience of national pay determination and considers whether it will survive the radical restructuring of public services initiated in the last few years. The analysis focuses mainly on the health and education services, arguing that distinctive organizational, occupational and political characteristics of the services still constrain the devolution of pay bargaining. In the face of tight budgets and the recent introduction of pay restraint, service managers have sought to make paybill savings through unilateral changes in work organization rather than through devolved collective bargaining.     

The impact of water scarcity on food,bioenergy and deforestation

We evaluate the impact of explicitly representing irrigated land and water scarcity in an economy‐wide model with and without a global carbon policy. The analysis develops supply functions of irrigable land from a water resource model for 282 river basins and applies them within a global economy‐wide model. The analysis reveals two key findings. First, explicitly representing irrigated land has a small impact on global food, bioenergy and deforestation outcomes. This is because this modification allows irrigated and rainfed land to expand in different proportions, which counters the effect of rising marginal costs for the expansion of irrigated land. Second, changes in water availability have small impacts on global food prices, bioenergy production, land use change and the overall economy, even with large‐scale (c. 150 exajoules) bioenergy production, due in part to endogenous irrigation and storage responses. However, representing water scarcity and changes in water availability can be important regionally, with relatively arid areas and/or areas with rapidly growing populations fully exhausting our estimated maximum irrigation capacity that allows for improved irrigation efficiency, lining of canals to limit water loss, and expanding storage to fully capture average annual water flows.     

The case of the hidden harassment

The past year has seen a growing public awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace. The question of what constitutes sexual harassment and how to recognize it has been debated in the news, the courts, and Congress. This HBR case study is less concerned with defining it than with examining what a manager should do about it. When Filmore Trust manager Jerry Tarkwell found out one of his employees was being sexually harassed on the job, he thought he knew exactly what to do. Following company policy, he immediately notified the bank's equal employment office. Then he called Jill McNair, the employee being harassed. Her response dumbfounded him. "You had no right to call EEO before talking to me," McNair said angrily. Do you have any idea what could happen to me and to my career if people find out about this?" Tarkwell didn't understand; McNair wasn't to blame. He believed the only person who should be worried was the harasser. Tarkwell tried to spell out the procedure for her. "All you have to do is write a letter and ..." McNair cut him off. "If this gets investigated by EEO, everyone in the building could be questioned. I'll probably get transferred, and then I won't have a chance at promotion. And who'd want to work with me? Every man in the company would be afraid I'd report him if he so much as opened a door for me."(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Exploring “Underachievement” Among Highly Educated Young British-Bangladeshi Women

Abstract

Current mainstream wisdom portrays the young British-Bangladeshi community as underachieving in education. However, this study suggests that young British-Bangladeshi women tend to be high achievers in education. This research interrogates the multifaceted experiences of British-Bangladeshi women students to better understand the contested nature of their transition from educational achievement to labor market participation. The analysis draws on a combination of fieldwork done in two colleges in East London and Leeds in 2007 and secondary data collected by the Higher Education Statistical Agency on students who graduated from British higher education institutions in 2006. Although it focuses on the reality of young British-Bangladeshi women, the study shows that – especially for certain ethnic minorities – the absence of social resources, social networks, and egalitarian class relations can hamper the process of making good on educational achievements.     

An Investigation of the Success of Targeting Newspapers and Efficiency of Advertising in Ireland

ABSTRACT

Segmentation and targeting have been considered a central component of marketing strategy for any organization for decades. This study considers the ability to utilize Irish print media to successfully target a high value segment. The aim of this study is twofold: first, to examine reader profiles of Irish daily papers and, second, to consider the accuracy of claimed target readers. Data from the Joint National Readership Survey was utilized to profile readers of the major newspapers available in Ireland. Results suggest once actual circulation size is taken into account there is unlikely to be any advantage in buying advertising space in a publication that claims to target a specific target reader with a smaller circulation, rather than buying advertising in a large circulation mainstream tabloid.