David A. Gray

The Product Manager

Over the last twenty years many consumer goods companies have turned to the product management form of organization in order to bring about greater integration of resources for effective management of individual products or groups of products. The product or brand manager emerged as a significant element in the product decision system. What will the role of the product manager be in the future?

Mentofacturing: a vision for American industrial excellence

Executive Overview To be world industrial leaders, Americas basic industrial organizations will undergo a metamorphosis from manufacturing organizations to mentofacturing organizations. The focus in mentofacturing is the mind. The industrial revolution from manufacturing to mentofacturing involves developing organizations that emphasize learning, human development, risk-taking, and technology transfer. While some argue that American manufacturing is being deindustrialized, we believe that a metamorphosis coupled with a shrinking labor force is facing Americas basic industries. Chaparral Steel is an example of such a revolutionary organization. It has evolved a multi-product market mill strategy and unique culture resulting in high product quality, low product cost, and close attentiveness to customer service. The firms unique culture has developed from the core values and beliefs held by the companys founders. Chaparral Steel views employees as ‘human resources’ for development, rather than ‘labor cos...

The compensation of national union presidents: Moderating effects of union size

Over the last forty years numerous reseachers from the fields of economics, finance, and human resources management have proposed and empirically evaluated a number of models in efforts to identify determinants of executive compensation. Recently, similar research efforts have been undertaken to identify compensation determinants for union officers, both at the local and national levels. As an extension of these works, this study found measures of union financial strength, job complexity, performance and tenure in office to be directly related to national union presidents’ compensation. Although union income and relative union member earnings were the strongest determinants of officer compensation for the sample of unions as a whole, analyses of three subgroups of unions based on size revealed very different findings for large as opposed to small and medium-sized unions.

A quantitative model for manpower decision making

Todays society is continually influenced by various changes, requiring managers to plan for manpower requirements. An approach that can be used by firms to solve one of the most pressing of todays employment problems is examined. In effect, the problem becomes one of determining an optimal work force composition based on both sociological and skill components. The problem is viewed as one of establishing rank ordered priorities among multiple conflicting manpower objectives. This study discusses some of the internal and external constraints faced by the firm and suggests a particular technique, goal programming, to facilitate the manpower decision-making process. The technique is examined under two different circumstances to provide some indication of the models flexibility.

Bargaining for Job Safety and Health

In 1977, a grain elevator explosion in Westwego, Louisiana, took the lives of thirty-five workers. The next year, fifty-one men who were working on cooling tower for a West Viginia power plant died when their support scaffolding collapsed. And more recently, a Senate subcommittee hearing revealed that the incidence of lung cancer among uranium miners is nearly four times the national average rate for men of the same age. Clearly, as Lawrence Bacow writes in this book, occupational safety and health is a big problem that may be getting bigger. What can be done about it? This book argues that OSHA is not up to the task. Most accidents are caused by hazards that are unique to individual firms. A single regulatory authority like OSHA cannot be everywhere at once; it lacks the resources needed to ferret out firm-specific hazards and to ensure day-to-day compliance with health and safety regulations. If government is to make the workplace safe, it must enlist the help of the parties that have the greatest influence over safety and health on the job—labor and management. Bargaining for Job Safety and Health examines how labor and management work together and against each other to abate occupational hazards. It describes OSHAs influence, both positive and negative, over collective bargaining on health and safety issues. Through a series of case studies in develops a theory to explain why some unions are more aggressive than others in pursuing health and safety objectives. The book also outlines strategies that OSHA might take to encourage labor and management to assume a larger role in curbing job hazards through collective bargaining. Although it focuses on job safety and health, this book draws a number of very interesting parallels between OSHA and other types of regulatory programs. It should interest a wide audience, including labor and management officials, health and safety professionals, policymakers, labor relations scholars, and others interested in regulatory reform and program design.