Redundancy, although viewed by many as a social evil, is also seen by some people as a lime of opportunity. It is after all the first time a large proportion of the population has…
Abstract
Redundancy, although viewed by many as a social evil, is also seen by some people as a lime of opportunity. It is after all the first time a large proportion of the population has received such substantial amounts of money. In some cases this is spent on expensive imported goods and luxury holidays: in others it is the chance to fulfil some life‐long dream of running their own business — a village store, a pub in the country, a boarding house at the seaside. Thus, when there is a call for volunteers to be made redundant, those with a strong inner urge to be their own boss are quick to apply. Amongst these applicants of course are many of the firm's best workers and sadly as John Wellens noted in the October edition of Industrial and Commercial Training: “In a way, it has its pathetic side, because many of those who feel the urge the strongest are the very people who actually need the security of permanent and assured employment in a safe job with a guaranteed wage.” In other words the volunteers will include many whom the company cannot afford to lose and who are not suited to going into business on their own. There is therefore a clear need for personnel officers to be able not only to identify such workers but also to have the means to persuade them that they should remain as employees. Unless special care is taken such persuasion attempts can lead to discontent. Ideally the learning process should be one of self‐realisation in which workers can find out for themselves whether or not they have the necessary qualities to go it alone. It was to give people such an experience, to help them learn what it is like to be their own boss before they put their own resources on the line, that the business simulation VENTURE FORTH was developed. It is a computer experience designed to give participants insights into their entrepreneurial attitudes and capabilities and explores such questions as: • have you the right temperament to be your own boss? • can you strike a good bargain or are you taken for a sucker? • can you cope with the taxman? • can you forecast consumers' needs? • can you cope with the unexpected? • can you establish commercial credibility? • can you gather reliable commercial intelligence, appreciate its full significance and make sound commercial judgements? In order that company trainers can have a brief insight into this new type of learning experience, we present, in the following section some extracts from this training pack.
Aimee La France, Rosemary Batt and Eileen Appelbaum
The long-term financial stability of hospital systems represents a “grand challenge” in health care. New ownership forms, such as private equity (PE), promise to achieve better…
Abstract
The long-term financial stability of hospital systems represents a “grand challenge” in health care. New ownership forms, such as private equity (PE), promise to achieve better financial performance than nonprofit or for-profit systems. In this study, we compare two systems with many similarities, but radically different ownership structures, missions, governance, and merger and acquisition (M&A) strategies. Both were nonprofit, religious systems serving low-income communities – Montefiore Health System and Caritas Christi Health Care.
Montefiore's M&A strategy was to invest in local hospitals and create an integrated regional system, increasing revenues by adding primary doctors and community hospitals as feeders into the system and achieving efficiencies through effective resource allocation across specialized units. Slow and steady timing of acquisitions allowed for organizational learning and balancing of debt and equity. By 2019, it owned 11 hospitals with 40,000 employees and had strong positive financials and low reliance on debt.
By contrast, in 2010, PE firm Cerberus Capital bought out Caritas (renamed Steward Health Care System) and took control of the Board of Directors, who set the system's strategic direction. Cerberus used Steward as a platform for a massive debt-driven acquisition strategy. In 2016, it sold off most of its hospitals’ property for $1.25 billion, leaving hospitals saddled with long-term inflated leases; paid itself almost $500 million in dividends; and used the rest for leveraged buyouts of 27 hospitals in 9 states in 3 years. The rapid, scattershot M&A strategy was designed to create a large corporation that could be sold off in five years for financial gain – not for health care integration. Its debt load exploded, and by 2019, its financials were deeply in the red. Its Massachusetts hospitals were the worst financial performers of any system in the state. Cerberus exited Steward in 2020 in a deal that left its physicians, the new owners, holding the debt.
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Brett Bligh and Michelle Flood
In this chapter, we discuss the Change Laboratory as an intervention-research methodology in higher education. We trace its theoretical origins in dialectical materialism and…
Abstract
In this chapter, we discuss the Change Laboratory as an intervention-research methodology in higher education. We trace its theoretical origins in dialectical materialism and activity theory, consider the recommendations made by its main proponents and discuss its use in a range of higher education settings. We suggest that the Change Laboratory offers considerable potential for higher education research, though tensions between Change Laboratory design recommendations and typical higher education contexts require consideration.
Afsaneh Roshanghalb, Emanuele Lettieri, Davide Aloini, Lorella Cannavacciuolo, Simone Gitto and Filippo Visintin
This manuscript discusses the main findings gathered through a systematic literature review aimed at crystallizing the state of art about evidence-based management (EBMgt) in…
Abstract
Purpose
This manuscript discusses the main findings gathered through a systematic literature review aimed at crystallizing the state of art about evidence-based management (EBMgt) in healthcare. The purpose of this paper is to narrow the main gaps in current understanding about the linkage between sources of evidence, categories of analysis and kinds of managerial decisions/management practices that different groups of decision-makers put in place. In fact, although EBMgt in healthcare has emerging as a fashionable research topic, little is still known about its actual implementation.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the Scopus database as main source of evidence, the authors carried out a systematic literature review on EBMgt in healthcare. Inclusion and exclusion criteria have been crystallized and applied. Only empirical journal articles and past reviews have been included to consider only well-mature and robust studies. A theoretical framework based on a “process” perspective has been designed on these building blocks: inputs (sources of evidence), processes/tools (analyses on the sources of evidence), outcomes (the kind of the decision) and target users (decision-makers).
Findings
Applying inclusion/exclusion criteria, 30 past studies were selected. Of them, ten studies were past literature reviews conducted between 2009 and 2014. Their main focus was discussing the previous definitions for EBMgt in healthcare, the main sources of evidence and their acceptance in hospitals. The remaining studies (n=20, 67 percent) were empirical; among them, the largest part (n=14, 70 percent) was informed by quantitative methodologies. The sources of evidence for EBMgt are: published studies, real world evidence and experts’ opinions. Evidence is analyzed through: literature reviews, data analysis of empirical studies, workshops with experts. Main kinds of decisions are: performance assessment of organization units, staff performance assessment, change management, organizational knowledge transfer and strategic planning.
Originality/value
This study offers original insights on EBMgt in healthcare by adding to what we know from previous studies a “process” perspective that connects sources of evidence, types of analysis, kinds of decisions and groups of decision-makers. The main findings are useful for academia as they consolidate what we know about EBMgt in healthcare and pave avenues for further research to consolidate this emerging discipline. They are also useful for practitioners, as hospital managers, who might be interested to design and implement EBMgt initiatives to improve hospital performance.
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Himanshukumar R. Patel and Vipul A. Shah
The two-tank level control system is one of the real-world's second-order system (SOS) widely used as the process control in industries. It is normally operated under the…
Abstract
Purpose
The two-tank level control system is one of the real-world's second-order system (SOS) widely used as the process control in industries. It is normally operated under the Proportional integral and derivative (PID) feedback control loop. The conventional PID controller performance degrades significantly in the existence of modeling uncertainty, faults and process disturbances. To overcome these limitations, the paper suggests an interval type-2 fuzzy logic based Tilt-Integral-Derivative Controller (IT2TID) which is modified structure of PID controller.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, an optimization IT2TID controller design for the conical, noninteracting level control system is presented. Regarding to modern optimization context, the flower pollination algorithm (FPA), among the most coherent population-based metaheuristic optimization techniques is applied to search for the appropriate IT2FTID's and IT2FPID's parameters. The proposed FPA-based IT2FTID/IT2FPID design framework is considered as the constrained optimization problem. System responses obtained by the IT2FTID controller designed by the FPA will be differentiated with those acquired by the IT2FPID controller also designed by the FPA.
Findings
As the results, it was found that the IT2FTID can provide the very satisfactory tracking and regulating responses of the conical two-tank noninteracting level control system superior as compared to IT2FPID significantly under the actuator and system component faults. Additionally, statistical Z-test carried out for both the controllers and an effectiveness of the proposed IT2FTID controller is proven as compared to IT2FPID and existing passive fault tolerant controller in recent literature.
Originality/value
Application of new metaheuristic algorithm to optimize interval type-2 fractional order TID controller for nonlinear level control system with two type of faults. Also, proposed method will compare with other method and statistical analysis will be presented.
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THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from…
Abstract
THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from the greater value placed upon the recreations of the people in recent decades. It has the name of the pleasure city of the north, a huge caravansary into which the large industrial cities empty themselves at the holiday seasons. But Blackpool is more than that; it is a town with a vibrating local life of its own; it has its intellectual side even if the casual visitor does not always see it as readily as he does the attractions of the front. A week can be spent profitably there even by the mere intellectualist.
Before the appearance of our next issue, the Annual Meeting of the Library Association will have taken place. In many ways, as indicated last month, it will be an interesting…
Abstract
Before the appearance of our next issue, the Annual Meeting of the Library Association will have taken place. In many ways, as indicated last month, it will be an interesting meeting, largely because it is in the nature of an experiment. International conditions, the state of national and municipal finance, the absence of library workers with the colours, and the omission of social events, all tend to influence its character. It is possible, however, that these very circumstances may increase the interest in the actual conference business, especially as the programme bears largely upon the War. The programme itself is formidable, and it will be interesting to see how the section on the literature of the war, for example, will be treated. Probably the Publications' Committee have in mind the book symposia which are a feature of the meetings of various library associations in the United States. These consist of a few minutes' characterisation, by an opener, of a certain book or type of literature, and a discussion after it. The experiment was attempted in London last year at one of the monthly meetings, but owing to a misapprehension the speaker gave an excellent lecture on Francis Thompson of more than an hour's duration, when he had been expected to give a brief description of Francis Meynell's biography of that poet. If any gatherings for a similar purpose are arranged, we hope the speakers will be primed sufficiently to avoid that error. As for social events, their omission is less likely to be felt in London than anywhere else in the Kingdom. London is a perennial source of social amusement in itself, and the evenings can readily be filled there—“chacun à son goût”—really better than by attending pre‐arranged gatherings.
Under this heading are published regularly abstracts of all Reports and Memoranda of the Aeronautical Research Council, Technical Reports and Translations of the United States…
Abstract
Under this heading are published regularly abstracts of all Reports and Memoranda of the Aeronautical Research Council, Technical Reports and Translations of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration and publications of other similar Research Bodies as issued.
This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Personnel Review is split into 8 sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Career/Manpower Planning and Recruitment; Health…
Abstract
This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Personnel Review is split into 8 sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Career/Manpower Planning and Recruitment; Health and Safety; Industrial Relations and Participation; Pay, Incentives and Pensions; Performance, Productivity and Motivation; Redundancy and Dismissal; Work Patterns; and Training and Development.
Barrie O. Pettman and Richard Dobbins
This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.
Abstract
This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.