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It's far from plain sailing at technology giant Yahoo! The firm's profits and revenue have fallen. Competitors such as Google and Facebook are beating it in its core businesses of internet searching and social networking. And the company has slipped in mobile communications and other development areas.
Fifty years ago it was common to label manufactured products from matches to magnifying glasses and from fountain pens to frying pans with their country of origin. Those were the days before globalization, when products were predominantly made in one country rather than, as today, assembled in one country from components made across the world.
American car manufacturers, once the big beasts of world industry, have had a rough ride in recent years. The time came to choose between total closure or drastic change. They made the right choice but a process of restructuring and reducing costs was painful. As Josh Cable reports in the August 2012 issue of Industry Week, helping to guide Chrysler through the pain barrier has been Sicilian Mauro Pino, since 2010 the manager of Chrysler's car assembly complex in Toledo where he has successfully implemented the company's World Class Manufacturing system (WCM), an adaptation of the Toyota Production System.
A Pennsylvania court has decided that armed robberies are such a normal part of working in a liquor store that shopkeepers cannot claim for the mental harm of being involved in a hold-up.
The words 'flexicurity' and 'simplexity' don't exactly trip off the tongue but it seems that we are going to have to get more accustomed to pronouncing them as the economic crisis deepens.
It's what many a job applicant will long have suspected: some of the world's most innovative companies are not even bothering to read candidates' CVs.
Twentieth-century American poet Robert Frost once remarked: 'The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.'
The cup that cheers could be doing an awful lot more to lift its manufacturer.
Studies have revealed that attractive people are between two and five times more likely to be hired than unattractive people, slim women earn around 10% more than larger women doing the same job, tall men earn more than short men, and unattractive people are two to four times more likely to be laid off than their more attractive colleagues.
Noticing, understanding and managing one's own and others' emotions in order to get better results for the individual, team and organization as a whole - what is not to like about emotional intelligence?
When the Oxford English Dictionary defined the McJob as 'an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by expansion of the service sector? the worldwide fast-food restaurant chain cried foul.
Are petty jealousies in your IT department holding back your company? In the November 2010 issue of Computer Weekly, Bernoff and Schadler suggest that they might be.
At least a dozen people jumped to their death last year at the factory that makes some of the world's most sought-after technology products.
Poor communication, a demoralised workforce, an over-complex management structure, weak leadership and slow decision-making were among the problems that, four years ago, had brought set-top box manufacturer Pace to the brink of bankruptcy.
In ancient Rome, the sons of nobles who were too young for military service would prove their leadership potential by performing intricate drills on horseback at imperial funerals, temple foundings or in honour of military victory. The lusus Troiae, or 'Troy Game', was a display of communal skill, not a contest. It nevertheless highlighted qualities such as trust, respect, vision, focus, humility and empathy, which Rome considered essential in its leaders of the future.
Helping the bosses of small and medium-size firms in Romania to expand their businesses may seem a world away from the challenges that senior managers at IBM have to face, but the information-technology multinational sees it as a great way of developing its managers of the future.
The numbers tell a story of success. International Telephone and Telegraph (IT&T) was an $800,000 foreign-telephone business when Harold Geneen became president and chief executive in 1959. When he stood down in 1977, it was the USA's eleventh-largest industrial conglomerate, with more than 375,000 employees and some $16.7 billion in revenue.
The financial crisis might not have happened if more women had held top jobs in international finance. Research into business views on the causes of the financial meltdown reveals that the ‘macho’ culture and male-dominated working environment in many City firms caused excessive risk to be taken.
Most of us, at one time or another, have attended the leaving ‘do’ of a boss who reached the top in his or her field yet seemed always to dislike the job and could not wait to retire.
Perfectionism and goal-setting, like giving blood and surrendering one’s seat for an old lady on the bus, are unalloyed ‘good things’. Right?
Many organizations claim their workforce as their main competitive advantage, yet treat their employees in a similar way to those of their competitors. They base their recruitment procedures, wage rages, hours of work and other job conditions on industry norms. Consequently, little that the organization produces or does is particularly noteworthy from a customer?s point of view. Cable (Business Strategy Review, Spring 2008) argues that, to deliver a unique experience to customers, the workforce must be unusual, even 'strange'.
Intel knows better than most the importance of organizational change. It has needed constant strategic, organizational and management adaptation to ensure its survival in the highly volatile information-processing industry.
Mounting global competition and changing demographics mean that the battle to attract and retain star talent has never been fiercer. Yet a survey by Cranfield School of Management and recruitment-outsourcing specialist Capital Consulting reveals that...
In the early-1970s, 20 years before the arrival of cheap air travel, students' equivalent of the modern 'gap year' was to spend the long summer break between finishing A-levels and starting university 'inter-railing'. This involved buying a four or eight-week pass for unlimited travel on slow, uncomfortable and, usually, unpunctual trains, across the length and breadth of Europe...