Search results

The purpose of this paper is to review the historical development of Lean Six Sigma and to identify the relevant opportunities for the application of Lean Six Sigma within the university setting. The paper also discusses the challenges of Lean Six Sigma implementation in higher education, as well as the cultural changes necessary to provide an appropriate climate for its long-term success.

The paper contains a comprehensive discussion of the development of Lean Six Sigma over the past three decades. Additionally, the paper describes how Lean Six Sigma may be applied in the university setting to improve processes in curriculum delivery; business and auxiliary services; admissions and enrollment management; and research.

Lean Six Sigma can be applied to facilitate process improvements in curriculum delivery; business and auxiliary services; admissions and enrollment management; and research. While obstacles to Lean Six Sigma implementation exist, the process improvements and resulting cultural changes are worthwhile and noteworthy.

The paper serves as a guide for how Lean Six Sigma processes can be utilized in the higher education setting. Other researchers and practitioners may use the paper as a practical orientation to Lean Six Sigma in the university setting.

Due to the unique culture of higher education, the application of Lean Six Sigma to university processes has been sparse. The paper provides a needed orientation as to how Lean Six Sigma may be applied to improve some of the more important functional aspects of the university.

Little research has been contributed to how the behaviors associated with emotional intelligence may be practically applied to enhance both individual and group decision‐making. The purpose of this paper is to identify practical approaches to the application of emotional intelligence to the decision‐making process. These practical approaches are designed to instruct and aid decision makers in the utilization of emotional intelligence skills to improve decision‐making.

Goleman's and Boyatzis et al.'s four essential elements of emotional intelligence and their associated 20 behavioral competencies are utilized to develop a methodology for the practical application of emotional intelligence skills to decision‐making. A series of questions and observations are outlined to assist decision makers in the improvement of emotional intelligence awareness, as well as the utilization of emotional intelligence skills to enhance decision‐making processes.

Organizations and individuals may benefit from the development and utilization of behaviors attributed to emotional intelligence. The practical application of emotional intelligence skills can enhance individual and group decisions and outcomes.

The practical application of emotional intelligence skills becomes a strategy for the development of the individual's and organization's ability to assess the impact and consequences of decisions, while simultaneously improving the quality and effectiveness of the decision‐making process.

The leader of the knowledge‐based organization is faced with the continuing dilemma of delivering the highest quality and most technologically innovative products or services at the lowest possible cost in a rapidly changing environment. This paper aims to start with the identification of the complexities of managing the knowledge‐based organization, using emotional intelligence to balance the interests of the individual and organization, and it may also be redefined as an organizational development process rather than an outcome.

In order to be effective the knowledge‐based leader must possess the characteristics most often associated with the description of emotional intelligence and must also be effective at injecting these same characteristics throughout the organization. Utilizing the premises of Stewart's intellectual economy and adapting the work of Buckingham and Coffman to the knowledge‐based organization, a series of questions is outlined to assist leaders, managers and workers in the improvement of emotional intelligence awareness and the utilization of emotional intelligence as an organizational development process.

Knowledge‐based organizations may benefit from the utilization of behaviors most often attributed to emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence may be redefined as a process rather than an outcome for organizational development.

The knowledge working environment must utilize innovative processes to maintain the engagement and effectiveness of the workforce. Applying emotional intelligence as an organizational development process rather than an outcome, it becomes a strategy for the development of the individual and the organization concurrently rather than treating them as opposing interests.

Investors’ decision-making is based on quantitative and rational analyses, and some other factors deriving from the market expectations are also contribute significantly on the shareholders’ response to market interactions. The present study aims to discover whether emotional intelligence and thinking style have a significant effect on the quality of investors’ decision-making.

To gather data, a questionnaire was designed and developed and distributed among the participants during the first half of 2015. Moreover, the SAS software and the log-linear method was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that emotional intelligence, thinking style and quality of decision-making are not dependent and emotional intelligence and thinking style are not interdependent on each other.

The current study used a unique model to test the hypotheses, and the results may be different from those of previous studies.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Effective discussion is inextricably linked to democracy. Social studies curriculum and instruction should engage students in practicing democratic skills and habits of mind. This case study provides a microanalysis of one U.S. History teacher’s commitment to fostering discussion in her classroom as a theorized pedagogical practice. A better understanding of what motivates teachers to engage students in classroom discussions paralleled with rich descriptions of how this teacher plans and implements discussion could encourage others to try this approach to teaching and learning.

I contend that traditional ways of conceptualizing the “disclosure dilemma” are limited due to a lack of attention to the more subtle ways teachers’ personal experiences and understandings help shape their practices. The decision to “dis-close” personal opinions on a controversial issue is, perhaps, less important than the exploration of what those personal opinions are and the degree of influence on pedagogy regardless of the decision to make those opinions public. In this way, disclosure can be understood as simply a willingness to be transparent about positionality with regard to the content being taught. As context for this conversation, I offer discussion of my experiences as an elementary social studies teacher educator in which I strived to engage such transparency as both method and content. In the end, I offer reflections about what is difficult, yet critically important about engaging in this work.

ATTENTION has been repeatedly drawn to certain drawbacks in the library profession which tend to hinder progress in many ways, and recently some discussion has taken place concerning the long hours and short pay of library assistants. Some years ago there appeared, we believe, in one of Mr. Greenwood's valuable Library Year Books, an analysis of the hours of work in a large number of British Municipal Libraries, and it was made plain from this that a majority of assistants had to work considerably more than forty‐eight hours weekly. Conditions may have changed since then, although it is open to doubt, but the fact remains that too many assistants, and a considerable number of librarians in small places, are now working so long, and in such broken spells, as to preclude any possibility of attaining self‐culture or reasonable recreation. The case of the small town librarian is particularly distressing. In some instances he is a man who has been well‐trained in a large town library, and inspired by a mistaken ambition, elects to attain a position of independence by accepting the chief librarianship in a library of which he afterwards finds himself the sole officer. He is responsible for the cleaning, as well as the ordinary work of a librarian, and his efforts to convert a miserable library rate of a few pounds into an engine of immense efficiency (as expected by the local authority) are enough to make the financial operations of even an American millionaire seem petty in comparison. We have had several cases like this brought to notice within a few weeks, and they give added point to any plea for reform which may be advanced. One young man, well‐educated and well‐trained, undertook the charge of a small municipal library, chiefly because it happened to be near London, and he wished to be in touch with that great and attractive centre. He very soon discovered that the hours of the library were so arranged as to occupy his whole time and keep him employed all day, from 9 a.m. or earlier, till 10 p.m., with two short breaks which did not suffice for a visit to London. On Sunday he was too tired to think of London, apart from which, the institutions which interested him were closed, so that it is possible this librarian has not yet seen the longed‐for London of his cherished anticipations ! There are cases like this in the smaller libraries all over the country, where one official has to perform all the work in an unlimited number of hours. If, as is done in some places, the hours of opening are greatly curtailed in order to give the librarian his deserved and well‐earned rest, then the public suffer. On the other hand, a library administered by a single officer and kept open from nine to ten hours daily, is rather of the nature of a slave‐compound, in which an official is kept prisoner in the interests of the omnipotent ratepayer. Wherever small staffs are kept, there exists this tendency towards long hours, and a consequent eterioration in the efficiency and educational qualifications of assistants. A standing complaint among those who are engaged in the educational work of the Library Association is that so many candidates are deficient in the most elementary subjects, such as composition, spelling and arithmetic. This is undoubtedly caused by the employment of imperfectly educated assistants, who are afterwards tied so fast to their library duties that they are unable to find any time for study and reading. In libraries where small staffs and long hours of opening are found together, it is almost certain that the work‐hours of the assistants will be excessive, and the efficiency of the service impaired.

The purpose of this paper is to be a teaching case about organic wine in Argentina, in a sustainable perspective, showing the advantages that this country has related to others in terms of organic and biodynamic production of wine. It shows also the potential of this kind of production, and its limitations, using for that the case of Bodega Colomé, owned by Donald Hess, a global wine producer.

This paper uses case study methodology; this is an adequate approach, as Argentina has some specific characteristics (geography, labor and other conditions) that makes it unique. The information about Bodega Colomé was obtained from secondary data such as academic articles, specialized magazine articles, web sites about wine production, and an interview conducted with the General Manager of Bodega Colomé, Caspar Eugster, in July, 2009.

Organic and biodynamic wine production are discussed as an alternative to the traditional production in developing countries, specifically in Argentina, where a series of factors – geographic characteristics (altitude), lands and technology used in a sustainability logic, labor conditions, tradition, history, brand and nature characteristics – allow a competitive advantage to develop. Donald Hess, president of Bodega Colomé, bets in the direction of investment maintenance in organic wines, given the favorable conditions cited, adding brand value, but this kind of production is impossible for less expensive wines as producing wines organically is labor intensive.

The main limitation of this case is its uniqueness and its findings cannot be applied to the universe of companies in Argentina, the country studied; but it encourages future research and more investigation about the subject. The main implication of this case is the possibility of generating some discussion about the theme: do the wine producers of developing countries, such as Argentina, Chile and Brazil produce organic wine (added into the company's sustainability actions) for export, or should they dedicate themselves to the production of traditional wines for internal market?

This case study is relevant for groups of students or professionals interested in discussing the strategies of wine production and marketing. The case may also be used by policy formulators of the winegrowing industry.

The organic and biodynamic production of wine is a recent subject and there are few studies about this theme. Mainly, the role of Latin American players is not very clear and this paper contributes to the discussion about the opportunity of organic and biodynamic wine production as a possible source of competitive advantage to Latin American wine producers in the global market.