Suchergebnisse

Today's business culture is one characterized by change. This change is prompted by increase competition, internationalization, market demands and financial considerations. If change is to be effectively managed, it is essential that business processes be * documented and analyzed to determine how best to implement change. The United States, through national legislation established the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, named after the. former secretary of commerce, in 1987. This was thirty-six years after Japan had created a national quality award naming it after Dr. W. Edwards Deming who had been very successful* in using statistical quality control methods to yield significant improvement .in Japanese quality processes. These process improvements related back directly to Japanese product quality. Many of us still remember when the phrase "made in Japan." could be equated to inexpensive low quality merchandise. In the last two decades Japan has totally reversed this image. Japanese companies are now viewed as world-class quality role models for other countries businesses to benchmark against. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was aimed at promoting total-quality-management (TQM) throughout America's businesses, industries and government. In doing so, American business would be able to more effectively compete with global markets. This paper will discuss the Malcolm Baldrige Award with comparison to the Deming Application prize. In addition, it will provide a snapshot of experiences from U.S. companies who have gone through the Baldrige examination process. The National Institute of Standards sends out thousands of Malcolm Baldrige information packets, but thus far only about one hundred apply for the annual award. Of those, a maximum of six companies may receive the award (two each from large companies, small business, and service industry). Judges do not always give out all possible awards. How could an award which encourages businesses to support the concepts of "continuous improvement" and ...

Although we know something about how venture capitalists' (VCs) evaluate opportunities, little is known about entrepreneurs' evaluation processes before venture creation. Opportunity evaluation beliefs are antecedents to goal choice or pre-nascent activities and are different from opportunity exploitation behaviors, which are goal striving or nascent activities. Results show that inexperienced pre-nascent entrepreneurs have not institutionalized VCs criteria as common knowledge and that evaluation criteria are used differently due to differences in learning and experience. Criteria common to VCs were not all predictive for any pre-nascent individual but, as a group, all VC criteria significantly predicted evaluations of potential success.

When it comes to nutrition, nearly everyone has an opinion. In the past, nutrition was considered to be an individual's responsibility, however, more recently governments have been expected (by some) to share that responsibility by helping to ensure that marketing is responsible, and that food chains offer healthy meal choices in addition to their standard fare, for example. In some countries, governments have gone as far as to remove tax from unprocessed foods or to introduce taxes, such as that imposed on sugary soft drinks in the UK, Mexico, France and Norway. Following on from the sugar tax, chocolate might be next! Is this the answer to our burgeoning calorie intake and increasing poor nutritional status, or is there another approach? In this narrative we will focus on some of the approaches taken by communities and governments to address excess calorie intake and improve nutritional status, as well as some of the conflicts of interest and challenges faced with implementation. It is clear that in order to achieve meaningful change in the quality of nutritional intake and to reduce the long-term prevalence of obesity, a comprehensive approach is required wherein governments and communities work in genuine partnership. To take no or little action will doom much of today's youth to a poor quality of life in later years, and a shorter life expectancy than their grandparents.

Abstract There are few studies in the literature concerning economic development that examine the impact of offshore oil and gas extraction on communities and even fewer that use annual data, examine more than one community and account for the degree of involvement of the community in the oil industry. This study rectifies these problems. The results support hypotheses derived from social disorganization and relative deprivation theories by demonstrating that higher levels of and rapid changes in development are associated with higher homicide and suicide rates, especially in communities that are more involved in resource extraction. The utility of the methods and the implications of the results for theory and future research are discussed.

IntroductionOfficial Australian estimates of socioeconomic inequalities in cause-specific mortality have been based on area-level socioeconomic measures. Using area-level measures is known to underestimate inequalities.
Objectives and ApproachUsing recently released census linked to mortality data, we estimate education-related inequalities in cause-specific mortality for Australia. We used 2016 Australian Census and Death Registration data (2016-17) linked via a Person Linkage Spine (linkage rates: 92% and 97%, respectively) from the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project (MADIP). Education, from the Census, was categorised as low (no secondary school graduation or other qualification), intermediate (secondary graduation with/without other non-tertiary qualifications) and high (tertiary qualification). Cause of death was coded according to the underlying cause of death using the ICD-10. We used negative binomial regression to estimate relative rates (RR) for cause-specific mortality at ages 25-84 years, in the 12-months following Census, comparing low vs high education, separately by sex and 20-year age group, adjusting for age.
Results80,317 deaths occurred among 13,856,202 people. For those aged 25-44 years, relative inequalities were large for causes related to injury and smaller for lesspreventable deaths (e.g. for men, suicide RR=5.6, 95%CI: 4.1-7.5 and brain cancer RR=1.3, 0.6-3.1). For those aged 45-64, inequalities were large for causes related to health behaviours and amenable to medical intervention, e.g. lung cancer (men RR= 6.4, 4.7-8.8) and ischaemic heart disease (women RR=5.0, 3.2-7.7), and were small for less preventable causes e.g. brain cancer (women RR=0.9, 0.6-1.3). Patterns among those aged 65-84years were similar to those aged 45-64 years.
Conclusion / ImplicationsIn Australia, inequalities in mortality are substantial. Our findings highlight the health burden from inequalities, opportunities for prevention and provide insights on targets to effectively reduce them.