Dean R. Manna

Exploring the need for emotional intelligence and awareness among sales representatives

The primary focus of this project is to see if emotional intelligence and awareness training should be introduced into sales training programs and to see if emotional intelligence training is necessary for success in the sales profession. A recent survey of 515 professional sales representatives located in Pittsburgh, PA area firms that were chosen based on relatively large size and established reputations in the area were asked to respond to a number of questions concerning sales training and related sales experience. Factor analysis results with industry type, insurance and financial type, as an example discovered four categories of data reduction: component 1 related to emotional intelligence (identifying personality types, presentation skills, controlling ones emotions, and adaptability to change) variables, component 2 was associated with experience (years of managerial experience and years of sales experience), component 3 for people skills (sales concepts and procedures and listening skills), and component 4 dealt with technical skills (writing skills and computer competencies). Not surprisingly, communication skills, negotiating skills, emotional intelligence, and presentation skills, and the need to differentiate personality types were found to be very important to the sales practitioners. Equally not surprising that they found their professional stressful and the relevance of college course in sales with somewhat mixed reviews.

Exploring the trust factor in e-medicine

The increasing presence of the Internet in the medicine market is making it necessary to examine the ethics and privacy issues related to dispensing medical advice and information on the Web. In order to successfully regulate e‐medicine practices, a comprehensive set of regulations must be established to supplement existing corporate attempts at self‐regulation. This paper details some of major factors that must be present to achieve acceptable levels of e‐privacy/e‐security at the B2C (business‐to‐customer) level and manage the confidentially and trust afforded to e‐clinicians. One of the most important issues among Web‐enabled medicine providers is how to secure trust and loyalty among customers. This can be accomplished by providing reliable and accurate information, while safeguarding an individuals private information from third‐party collaboration and loss of integrity. Various examples and a conceptual model using basic concepts of reliability theory and the resource‐based view of the firm were used to identify the factors necessary to achieve privacy and ethics in an e‐medicine environment.

E-recruitment of patients for clinical trials

Patient recruitment has long been a critical bottleneck in the clinical trials process. Current methods of media-driven recruitment efforts often fail to identify adequate patient numbers in a timely manner and cannot scale to meet the growing needs of pharmaceutical companies. The internet, on the other hand, is providing the opportunity to enhance patient recruitment. E-recruiting is proving to be a useful tool in recruiting study participants. It leverages the power of the internet to enrol qualified candidates for clinical trials in a more timely and efficient manner than traditional advertising. E-recruitment is a mass communication medium through which its ability to narrowcast can identify highly defined patient populations. The screening technology made available by health technology companies is a much smarter way to find qualified patients for clinical trials. In the end, web-based recruiting will prove to be a more efficient and cost-effective means of obtaining clinical study participants than traditional advertising methods.

Attitude toward the website scale development in professional sports: a research note

Purpose – Sports’ team websites are the front door to their relationship management programs with teams’ fan bases. As such, consumer attitudes toward these websites are a vital and important measure for the success of a teams CRM program. The purpose of this paper is to present the conceptualization and development of a four‐item unidimensional measure of attitude toward the Website.Design/methodology/approach – The data were collected via a pen and paper survey at a professional hockey event in the USA. The confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using generalized structural component analysis GeSCA www.sem‐gesca.org/. The scales face, convergent, predictive and discriminant validity are all empirically demonstrated via regression and correlation.Findings – The measure is shown to meet the four criteria for validation for positivist research in information systems set by Straub, Boudreau and Gefen in 2004. The internal consistency is assessed by Cronbachs alpha (0.917) as is the unidimensionality,...

Project management characteristics associated with Bloom's taxonomy of learning objectives

Critical thinking skills have traditionally played an important part in solving the unique and demanding tasks associated with Project Management (PM). Higher-order thinking skills usually involve the top three levels of Blooms (1956) Taxonomy, which includes analysis, synthesis and evaluation. A survey of practicing project managers in the Pittsburgh, PA area revealed several significant groups or clusters through principal components and factor analysis techniques. These constructs help define some of the major concerns of PM practitioners. Related to higher levels of critical thinking and PM tasks/problems, these constructs include the following: Quality Assurance and Response, Quality and Training, Project Resource Concerns, Project Goals and Team Concerns, Project Data Base and Resources, Computer Tools, Internet and Computerised Scheduling, Outsourcing and Prototyping, Project Acceleration and Design, and Co-Locate Project Personnel. These learning levels and related tasks/problems should provide useful insight into the PM discipline in order to develop the required critical thinking skills.