Peter John Sackett and Michael G. Bryan
Manufacturing industry’s success in reducing time‐to‐market, costs, environmental impact; and improving quality, and flexibility, has exposed an underlying factor limiting further…
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Manufacturing industry’s success in reducing time‐to‐market, costs, environmental impact; and improving quality, and flexibility, has exposed an underlying factor limiting further significant improvement in competitive performance ‐ the effective management of production data. This article identifies the business benefits of product data management and examines the building blocks for a product data management strategy.
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In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of…
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In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.
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Sections of the world's population have always been short of food, the menace of famine ever present. Among primitive peoples, the search for food is their greatest preoccupation…
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Sections of the world's population have always been short of food, the menace of famine ever present. Among primitive peoples, the search for food is their greatest preoccupation. In the years before the first Great War, in the civilised countries of the west, including our own, the persistent poverty of the casual and unskilled workers, helped and held to a permanent state in so many cases by improvidence, was often stretched to near‐starvation, and with few agencies really capable of affording adequate relief. Families went short of food for fairly long periods, especially in the industrial areas and towns and this during times when a dozen stale loaves could be bought for a shilling and a pint of skimmed milk for a halfpenny. In the rural areas, nature helped a little and the country folk could talk of the pleasurable flavour of a rook pie and comb the hedgerows for edible roots, but here too were the cruel flashes when men went to prison for snaring a rabbit on private land or stealing a few swedes from a farmer's clamp.
Anne Marie McEwan and Peter Sackett
Global business pressures have forced manufacturers to restructure design and production processes, adopting radically different management practices to gain competitive…
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Global business pressures have forced manufacturers to restructure design and production processes, adopting radically different management practices to gain competitive advantage. Employee empowerment continues to receive attention as a means of effectively appropriating and deploying human skills and knowledge. Employees are seen as critical components of the innovation‐led model of manufacturing which is evolving in response to unstable markets. This paper explores the concept of empowerment and conditions for its effective realisation in Computer Integrated Manufacturing production. Existing theory which underpins the authors’ view of empowerment is considered as a framework to facilitate further investigation of empowerment in Computer Integrated Manufacturing.
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In an increasingly litigious environment, contemporary public sector organisations are encountering myriad challenges, not the least of which is the manner in which they manage…
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In an increasingly litigious environment, contemporary public sector organisations are encountering myriad challenges, not the least of which is the manner in which they manage one of their most valuable resources – information. This is occurring at a time when more sophisticated information technology is made available at the desktop of knowledge workers who can develop increasingly autonomous work practices. Consequently, if public agencies are to have confidence that they can provide accurate and reliable evidence of their decision making activities to government, they face an important challenge – the development of rigorous strategies and policies supported by an appropriate information management culture. A coherent corporate governance framework is an important mechanism to facilitate and ensure compliance with regulations and the development of appropriate internal accountability arrangements.
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Alexandra E. MacDougall, Zhanna Bagdasarov, James F. Johnson and Michael D. Mumford
Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical…
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Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical breaches continue to permeate corporate life, suggesting that there is something missing from how we conceptualize and institutionalize organizational ethics. The current effort seeks to fill this void in two ways. First, we introduce an extended ethical framework premised on sensemaking in organizations. Within this framework, we suggest that multiple individual, organizational, and societal factors may differentially influence the ethical sensemaking process. Second, we contend that human resource management plays a central role in sustaining workplace ethics and explore the strategies through which human resource personnel can work to foster an ethical culture and spearhead ethics initiatives. Future research directions applicable to scholars in both the ethics and human resources domains are provided.
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Julie Ashford, Martin Eccles, Senga Bond, Jesley Ann Hall and John Bond
The drive towards clinical effectiveness and cost‐effective care within the NHS is becoming increasingly apparent. Consequently, there is a need to change clinical practice, and a…
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The drive towards clinical effectiveness and cost‐effective care within the NHS is becoming increasingly apparent. Consequently, there is a need to change clinical practice, and a set of activities with which to implement the necessary and desirable changes is required. Resistance to accepting change at an individual and organisational level is common and it is postulated that the solution lies in adopting an eclectic approach where the range of factors affecting the implementation of change is considered. A possible framework for identifying suitable behaviour change strategies is proposed. Factors included are the context of change, the relevant theoretical and empirical literature and the implementation and maintenance of change. With practical application in mind, the framework is intended as a tool to assist health care professionals analyse the change process in a structured manner and develop potential strategies for achieving desirable behaviour changes within their own and others’ practice.