Building top management muscle in a slow growth environment: How different is better at Greyhound Financial Corporation

The turbulence experienced in the 1980s in the U.S. business environment has led to something of a motivational crisis among corporate managers. Increased competition, budget constraints, and changing demographics are forcing companies into adopting strategies geared toward downsizing and flatter organizational structures. While corporate America probably has begun to accept its leaner profile, it has not yet successfully addressed the issue of how to keep the best managerial talent tuned in and turned on in an era of dwindling resources. This article describes and assesses one corporation\u27s efforts to maintain top-managerial motivation through a unique form of job swapping called the Muscle Building program at Greyhound Financial Corporation in Phoenix, Arizona. Muscle building. a top-management job rotation program, helps prevent career gridlock, fosters management diversity, and provides for top-management succession. Hidden costs and benefits of the program and issues concerning its implementation are discussed

A Review of Selected E-Recruiting Websites: Disability Accessibility Considerations

Ten job boards1 and 31 corporate E-recruiting websites were evaluated for accessibility for people with disabilities. The examination was performed using both an automated accessibility testing software (Bobby v3.2) and an examination of a sub-sample of the sites through a “simulated” application process. The simulated application process was performed utilizing only the information available to a screen reader and navigating the site using only keyboard commands, duplicating how a blind individual would typically navigate the web. The purpose of this second method was to see if it would be possible to successfully proceed through the entire multi-step job search and application process. None of the job board pages (home, job search, signup, or resumé submittal pages) evaluated by Bobby were found to be accessible. The vast majority of corporate E-recruiting sites also failed Bobby’s tests. The simulated application process evaluation was slightly more promising, but still only three of the nine job boards and three of the twelve corporate sites evaluated were accessible enough to work through the entire process of registration, job searching, resumé submittal, and application for a position. Many of the issues encountered could easily be corrected through the consistent use of alternative text for essential submit image buttons (i.e. “apply,” “post resumé”)

Innovative Service-Based Business Concepts for the Machine Tool Building Industry

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityDuring the last decade, machine tool building companies have been forced to put innovative offers on the market. Due to the technical features of their products and the prevailing organizational structures in this sector, especially product-service systems are a promising way of creating a unique selling point. In this paper, potential new business concepts for machine tool builders will be presented which aim at fulfilling basic customer needs like the increase in quality, flexibility, productivity and the reduction of lead times, costs and risks. For the implementation of these product-service systems, practical examples are given.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Compan

Rethinking green entrepreneurship - fluid narratives of the green economy

Green entrepreneurs have been seen as key drivers for a transition to a green economy. However, there has been limited in-depth qualitative empirical research with green entrepreneurs to date, focusing instead on typologies categorising certain ‘types’ of green entrepreneur. Moreover, the literature rarely situates such individual activities within broader concepts such as the green economy. In contrast, we suggest that current discourses of the green economy are important in contextualising the ways that green entrepreneurs make sense of themselves and their businesses. Green entrepreneurs are thus negotiating varying tensions between their business activities, environmental philosophies, and wider contexts at the intersection between the green economy and the mainstream economy. Drawing on evidence from 55 interviews, we explore the narratives employed by green entrepreneurs to situate themselves within/outwith the wider green economy – the recursive framing of mainstream and niche ‘green’ activities provides a sense of the tensions and politics at play in the development of the green economy. We thus offer a new and more dynamic view of the evolving nature of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ a green entrepreneur, rather than relying on the fixed categories espoused in previous typologies. We conclude that it is important that policy makers recognise the complex and contentious nature of green entrepreneurship, and that it is essential to view the green economy as a diverse constellation of myriad actors rather than corporate reinventions of business as usual

Real estate loans of registrants under Regulation X

Regulation X: Borrowers of Securities Credit ; Mortgage loans - Law and legislation

Network Rules

Crawford compares the debate between the telcos and the online companies over broadband access regimes often called the network neutrality debate to the ongoing tussle between intellectual property maximalists and free culture advocates which are strikingly parallel sets of arguments. The maximalists claim that creativity comes from lone genuises (the romantic author) who must be given legal incentives to works but intellectual property scholars have carefully examined the incentives of their arguments and have pointed out that granting overly strong property rights to copyright holders might not be socially appropriate. Moreover, the network providers claim that they (the romantic builders) must be allowed by law to price-discriminate vis-a-vis content sources in order to be encouraged to build the network

The Role of Corporate HR Funcitons in MNCs: The Interplay Between Corporate, Regional/National and Plant Level

The HR literature has been abundant in providing typologies of the roles of HR professionals in their organisation. These typologies are largely related to the changing nature of HRM over time, and the context in which empirical work was carried out. In this paper we focus on the context of the increasing internationalisation of firms and how this has an effect upon modern-day typologies of HR roles. We explore these roles by focusing on the way in which HRM practices come about. Especially in a MNC setting of increasing internationalisation of firms the issues of coordination, shared learning and standardisation versus leeway for adapting to the local context (customisation) are prominent. These issues present themselves both at the corporate and regional level and at the national and local (plant) level. On all these levels HR practitioners are active and find themselves amidst the interplay of both (de-)centralisation and standardisation versus customisation processes. This paper thus explores the way in which HR practices come into being and how they are implemented and coordinated. These insights help us understand further the roles of international corporate HR functions that are being identified. Our data is based on 65 interviews, which were held (as part of larger study of HR-function excellence) with HR managers, line managers and senior executives of six multinational companies in eight countries from September to December 2004. This data reveals new classifications of processes by which HR activities are developed, implemented and coordinated, both in terms of who is involved and how these processes are carried out

The Role of Corporate HR Functions In Multinational Corporations: The Interplay Between Corporate, Regional/National And Plant Level

The HR literature has been abundant in providing typologies of the roles of HR professionals in their organisation. These typologies are largely related to the changing nature of HRM over time, and the context in which empirical work was carried out. In this paper we focus on the context of the increasing internationalisation of firms and how this has an effect upon modern-day typologies of HR roles. We explore these roles by focusing on the way in which HRM practices come about. Especially in a MNC setting of increasing internationalisation of firms the issues of coordination, shared learning and standardisation versus leeway for adapting to the local context (customisation) are prominent. These issues present themselves both at the corporate and regional level and at the national and local (plant) level. On all these levels HR practitioners are active and find themselves amidst the interplay of both (de-)centralisation and standardisation versus customisation processes. This paper thus explores the way in which HR practices come into being and how they are implemented and coordinated. These insights help us understand further the roles of international corporate HR functions that are being identified. Our data is based on 65 interviews, which were held (as part of larger study of HR-function excellence) with HR managers, line managers and senior executives of six multinational companies in eight countries from September to December 2004. This data reveals new classifications of processes by which HR activities are developed, implemented and coordinated, both in terms of who is involved and how these processes are carried out