Business Forum articles from March 1997

Business Forum archives from March 1997

Reaping diversity's competitive rewards. (diversity in the workplace)
March 22, 1997... Can a company use worker diversity to its financial and societal advantage? This author tells how one company managed diversity to help capture an important market - and changed an entire industry. Although American business has wrestled with...

Creating a culture of diversity management: moving from awareness to action.
March 22, 1997... Your firm may only be at the "intellectual awareness" stage of diversity management. These authors explain the critical stages for enacting a comprehensive program to manage diversity for success. Many fledging corporate diversity programs were...

Reengineering the employee recruitment: retain the best that remains.
March 22, 1997... In this age of greater employee involvement and fewer employees in a firm's work force, it is essential for businesses to find and keep the best people available. To accomplish this requires a fresh approach to recruitment. The recruitment...

Changing environment requires strategic planning to prevent employee lawsuits.
March 22, 1997... Court decisions and legislative action have given employees new protections in the workplace. As a result, managers must be increasingly vigilant to avoid surprise lawsuits. American workers first gained many on-the-job legal protections from...

The coming age of organizational resilience.
March 22, 1997... "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Con forms" - Motto of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair To ensure growth and survival in today's business environment, companies are developing new and unique approaches to attract and retain customers....

Limitless vs. sustained growth strategies: what's the answer to the corporate growth dilemma?
March 22, 1997... Today, a growing number of economists are again proposing limitless corporate growth. They suggest that technological and commercial innovations will revolutionize the economy and recommend that companies concentrate on the link between...

The problems and promise of electric vehicle production.
March 22, 1997... The driving forces behind electric vehicles in the United States - and the rest of the world - are air quality, energy security, and the assumption of future economic benefits. Because the electric vehicle (EV) has no tailpipe emissions, urban...

Charging ahead with electric vehicles.
March 22, 1997... New models of electric vehicles are making their debut as automakers march toward the government's deadline for getting specific volumes of pollution-free vehicles onto American highways. Manufacturing electric vehicles is one feat - but keeping...

The economic case for electric car mandates.
March 22, 1997... The California Air Resources Board has mandated that 10 percent of all new cars sold in the state by the year 2010 be zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). Can such a dramatic intervention into the operations of the free market by a governmental entity...

Do HMOs promote efficient treatment alternatives? (health maintenance organizations)
March 22, 1997... Meeting the Challenges of Competition and Disenrollments Do HMOs have a treatment bias that favors less-costly "continuing care" over alternative treatments that have higher upfront costs? This author's analysis of multiple treatment options...

Communications industry in the post-divestiture era: not the expected results.
March 22, 1997... Operating since 1900 as a regulated monopoly, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) has provided local and long distance telephone service for practically the entire United States. The monopoly was broken on January 1, 1984, when AT&T divested...

Insights into the behavior of Russian managers.
March 22, 1997... The day before the coup that overthrew former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the four of us landed in Moscow. We were part of a team of 12 American business professors charged with developing a values-based MBA program in cooperation with a...

The new accounting standard for earnings per share and its potential implications.
March 22, 1997... A new accounting standard on earnings per share that was issued in February 1997 by the Financial Accounting Standards Board represents a significant step toward the international harmonization of accounting standards. This is a major revision of...

Understand the audit process to save on audit fees.
March 22, 1997... The auditor's annual fee is a material, unavoidable cost for many companies, yet few companies manage their audit involvement the way they do other costs. Small companies are especially hard hit in this area. Studies show that, in fact, small...

The future of American corporations. (virtual corporations)(Column)
March 22, 1997... In 1996, IBM had sales of $75.9 billion and a work force of 233,000. Dell Computer, in the same industry, had sales of $7.8 billion - 10.3 percent of IBM's. Question: How many people were on Dell's payroll in 1996? I suspect that the average...

Computers - headache or panacea?(Column)
March 22, 1997... Computers affect our lives to a very large degree. As a matter of fact, the major reason for having children today is to have built-in helpers for home computers in addition to having somebody who is able to program the VCR. There exist machines...

The sad tale of Hippocratia. (the state of the healthcare system)(Column)
March 22, 1997... Plato gave us "The Republic," Thomas Moore, "Utopia," Francis Bacon, "The New Atlantis," and Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan." Now, for your entertainment and consideration, I give you "Hippocratia." Once upon a time, there was a great doctor - so...

Reengineering employee recruitment: retain the best that remains.
March 22, 1997... In this age of greater employee involvement and fewer employees in a firm's work force, it is essential for businesses to find and keep the best people available. To accomplish this requires a fresh approach to recruitment. The recruitment...