Ross L. Fink

American female expatriates and the civil rights act of 1991 : Balancing legal and business interests

I Businesses must comply with Title VII while recognizing that some countries l will still find it hard to accept women as managers. A merican multinational companies are facing a growing list of conflicting realities as they staff their international divisions. Primary/ among them is that managers currently based in the United States are reluctant to accept transfers to foreign posts. Meanwhile, an increasing number of managers in any organization are women, many anxious to attain greater status in the firm and interested in accepting positions that will offer visibility and challenge. This interest is legally protected under the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. At the same time, companies with operations in many parts of the world must still deal with local mores, customs, and laws. And those local traditions and preferences often difFer from-if they are not in total contrast to-American practices. Reconciling these facts while meeting staffing needs adds to the challenges faced by globally oriented companies.

Customer satisfaction and the marketing‐quality interface

Despite long‐standing interest in the quality movement by marketing scholars, marketing managers have not seized opportunities to provide leadership as the quality movement has centered attention on customer satisfaction. Significant corporate investments in quality programs suggest that the recent revision of the ISO 9000 standards to focus on collection and use of customer satisfaction data may provide marketing managers an invitation to meaningfully enter the quality dialogue. Collaboration between marketing and quality management is problematic because the two functions are highly differentiated. This article draws on work in organizational learning and organizational behavior to identify criteria for successful collaboration between marketing and quality management and to propose a process for meeting the new ISO 9000 requirements.

Quality Improvement Using Capital Budgeting and Taguchi’s Function

Quality improvement decisions are the catalyst for substantial technological improvements being made in the manufacturing sector. The new technology, however, has developed faster than techniques for evaluating capital investments in such improvements. This is largely because the benefits of quality improvement technology are difficult to quantify. The Taguchi loss function is incorporated into a net present value capital budgeting technique to provide an estimate of these benefits. Describes the loss function in relation to key quality costs: appraisal and prevention costs, and internal and external failure costs. External failure cost savings are generated by reducing variability in the manufacturing process. These savings are then compared with the cost of the quality improving technology. Results indicate that these savings can be substantial, depending on the achieved reduction in the process variability, the cost of capital, and on the estimate of the cost of processing a customer’s return of the pr...

A study of expediting practices in manufacturing firms

Abstract This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of one of the most common yet least optimized production management practices—expediting. The intention of this study was to generate quantitative insight into issues that underlie expediting decision making, such as the relative frequency of various causes of expediting, commonly used expediting strategies and tactics, and the interaction of expediting and the production scheduling environment in use. The study centered around a survey sent to 1768 manufacturing staff personnel, with 182 usable questionnaires returned. It is hoped that the data and conclusions presented in this paper will be of use to production management researchers who are interested in expediting as a managerial decision.

The Influence of Organizational Constituent Groups on Rater Attitudes toward Performance Appraisal Compliance

This article presents the results of a survey questionnaire developed to ascertain which of three constituent groups (Superiors, Peers, and Subordinates) in the workplace has the greatest influence on rater compliance with employee performance appraisal guidelines. The research found that superiors had the greatest influence on rater compliance with rating procedures.

Public Disclosure of Teaching Evaluations: Privacy and Liability Considerations

Abstract This article analyzes the issue of public disclosure of faculty teaching evaluations from a strictly legal perspective. Because public colleges and universities are quasi-governmental entities, it is expected that many of the privacy statutes afforded government employees may apply to faculty members. A brief discussion of potential liability under common law defamation and invasions of privacy torts is provided for private colleges and universities with an interest in the public disclosure issue as well. Finally, guidelines are presented to aid the reader in developing disclosure policies that will not violate the privacy interests of individual faculty members and will help reduce the institutions exposure to liability.

Ensuring an Inventor's Patent Rights: Recent Supreme Court Case Clarifies Timing of Application

Patent law encourages the development and transfer of technology by making the information regarding new inventions public knowledge, while providing the inventor with the right to exclude others from making, using or selling the invention for 20 years. Because the exclusive rights to the invention are limited in time, and to prevent the inventor from gaining additional time, the application for a patent must be filed within a statutorily prescribed time. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Pfaff v. Wells Electronics, Inc. clarified one aspect related to the timing of the patent application. This article specifically examines the Pfaff case and the question of when an invention subject to a contract to sell exists as it relates to the timing of patent applications.