Search results

In 1980 at the Ford Motor Company, quality wasn’t job one; survival was. Buffeted by stagnant product lines, hidebound management practices and nimbler Japanese competitors, the once‐dominant car maker was on its way to losing $1.6 billion – its first loss since going public. Ford cars were too often poorly built and out of step with the marketplace. The problem: a fragmented organizational structure that made producing new models a frustratingly slow, cumbersome and inefficient process.

Growing a business in tough times isn't easy, but it can be done.

Craig Ahlstrom has never met Peter Magowan. But he wants his job.

On April 2, 1987, IBM unveiled a series of long‐awaited new hardware and software products. The new computer line, dubbed the Personal Systems 30, 50, 60, and 80, seems destined to replace the XT and AT models that are the mainstay of the firm's current personal computer offerings. The numerous changes in hardware and software, while representing improvements on previous IBM technology, will require users purchasing additional computers to make difficult choices as to which of the two IBM architectures to adopt.

According to John Grant’s New Marketing Manifesto, contemporary consumers “act their shoe size not their age” by resolutely refusing to grow up. They are not alone. Managers too are adopting a kiddy imperative, as the profusion of primers predicated on children’s literature – and storytelling generally – bears witness. Winnie the Pooh, the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Hans Christian Andersen are the marketing gurus du jour, or so it seems. This paper adds to the juvenile agenda by examining the Harry Potter books, all four of which are replete with references to market‐place phenomena, and contending that scholarly sustenance can be drawn from J.K. Rowling’s remarkable, if ambivalent, marketing imagination.

What is it about academia anyway? We profess to hate it, spend endless amounts of time complaining about it, and yet we in academia will do practically anything to stay. The pay may be low, job security elusive, and in the end, it's not the glamorous work we envisioned it would be. Yet, it still holds fascination and interest for us. This is an article about American academic fiction. By academic fiction, I mean novels whosemain characters are professors, college students, and those individuals associated with academia. These works reveal many truths about the higher education experience not readily available elsewhere. We learn about ourselves and the university community in which we work.