Delivering ‘Effortless Experience’ Across Borders: Managing Internal Consistency in Professional Service Firms

This article explores how professional service firms manage across borders. When clients require consistent services delivered across multiple locations, especially across borders, then firms need to develop an organization that is sufficiently flexible to be able to support such consistent service delivery. Our discussion is illustrated by the globalization process of law firms. We argue that the globalization of large corporate law firms primarily takes place in terms of investments in the development of protocols, processes and practices that enhance internal consistency such that clients receive an ‘effortless experience’ of the service across multiple locations worldwide. Over the longer term the ability to deliver such effortless experience is dependent upon meaningful integration within and across the firm. Firms that achieve this are building a source of sustainable competitive advantage

Services brands' values: internal and external corporate communication

As services brands are a cluster of values, we explore the way in which values are communicated to both customers and staff. This work is based upon a literature review and themes highlighted from depth interviews with leading edge services branding consultants. Values tend to be communicated to consumers via their experience of the brand as a whole, including their interactions with employees, external brand communications and the tangible elements of the service offering. For employees, values are communicated via HR practices and polices, internal and external brand communications and the example set by senior managers

Turning Brownfields into Jobfields

A handbook for practitioners and citizens on making brownfields development work

Managing Partners and Management Professionals: Institutional Work Dyads in Professional Partnerships

This study presents an empirical analysis of the micro-dynamics of institutional work. Examining the ‘corporatization’ of large international law firm partnerships, the study identifies the dyadic relationship that develops between two different types of professionals, the managing partner and management professional, and demonstrates how their relationship becomes a key mechanism for institutional work. The study shows how, by working together, these individuals take advantage of differences in their relative social positions: specifically their formal authority, specialist expertise, and social capital. The study identifies seven forms of institutional work in which they engage and demonstrates how these multiple forms simultaneously encompass the creation, maintenance, and disruption of the institution of partnership. The study argues that this simultaneous occurrence helps to account for the phenomenon of sedimentation, whereby the gradually emerging institutional logic of the corporatized partnership is being integrated into the traditional partnership form

The use of low energy, ion induced nuclear reactions for proton radiotherapy applications

Medical radiotherapy has traditionally relied upon the use of external photon beams and internally implanted radioisotopes as the chief means of irradiating tumors. However, advances in accelerator technology and the exploitation of novel means of producing radiation may provide useful alternatives to some current modes of medical radiation delivery with reduced total dose to surrounding healthy tissue, reduced expense, or increased treatment accessibility. This paper will briefly overview currently established modes of radiation therapy, techniques still considered experimental but in clinical use, innovative concepts under study that may enable new forms of treatment or enhance existing ones. The potential role of low energy, ion-induced nuclear reactions in radiotherapy applications is examined specifically for the 650 keV d({sup 3}He,p){sup 4}He nuclear reaction. This examination will describe the basic physics associated with this reaction`s production of 17.4 MeV protons and the processes used to fabricate the necessary materials used in the technique. Calculations of the delivered radiation dose, heat generation, and required exposure times are presented. Experimental data are also presented validating the dose calculations. The design of small, lower cost ion accelerators, as embodied in `nested`-tandem and radio frequency quadrupole accelerators is examined, as is the potential use of high-output {sup 3}He and deuterium ion sources. Finally, potential clinical applications are discussed in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of this technique with respect to current radiotherapy methods and equipment

Non-rigid wages and merger profitability reversal under convex costs and centralized unionization

Can a merger from duopoly to monopoly be detrimental for profits? This paper deals with this issue by focusing on the interaction between decreasing returns to labour (which imply firms’ convex costs) and centralized unionization. First, it is highlighted that a wage ‘non-rigidity’ result applies: the post-merger wage is higher than in the pre-merger equilibrium. Second, it is shown that a ‘reversal result’ in relation to merger profitability actually realizes when the union is sufficiently oriented towards wages. Moreover, the higher the reservation wage, the degree of product differentiation, and the union's relative bargaining power, the higher the probability that a merger reduces profits

Market structure, countervailing power and price discrimination: the case of airports

Working Pape

Neurology

Contains research objectives and reports on six research projects.U.S. Public Health Service (B-3055)U.S. Public Health Service (B-3090)Office of Naval Research (Nonr-1841 (70))Air Force (AF33(616)-7588)Air Force (AFAFOSR-155-63)Air Force (AFAFOSR-155-63)Army Chemical Corps (DA-18-108-405-Cml-942)National Science Foundation (Grant G-16526