Papers
Increasing Posts Volumes through Captive Markets and Complementarity
Most postal operators failed to recognize that they are well-suited to exploit the economic strategy of captive markets and complementarity. When postal operators do not have an e-commerce marketplace where they sell and ship goods to customers, they will have to compete on pricing and service to gain the right to ship the e-commerce packages. On the other hand, if postal operators have an e-commerce marketplace, they will have captive (source) packages in the postal network.
Successful organizations often undergo periodic assessments to ascertain existing strengths, challenges, and opportunities. Assessing or benchmarking is the practice of evaluating performance against a standard. Assessments often reveal gaps between actual and desired conditions, as established by industry best practices or another applicable standard. Gaps often provide opportunities for improvement.
Building automation systems (BAS) provide facility managers with the ability to monitor, track, and respond to the performance of facility assets. Round-the-clock monitoring ensures that all systems function optimally. Appropriately managed building automation systems increase facility assets’ reliability and reduce maintenance costs. Large organizations can achieve economies of scale by centralizing facility asset monitoring.
Employees’ Reaction to Enterprise Resource Planning: The Influence of Procedural Justice
Organizations adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, a software program integrating core business functions, to enhance organizational performance. However, ERP systems often run into implementation problems and thus have not lived up to all the promises suggested by advocates. Implementation problems may be traceable to lack of input from employees and delegation of ERP functionality to vendors and consultants. This study investigates the impact of procedural justice, perceived organizational support, and ERP leadership during the ERP implementation process on employee involvement with, and commitment to, ERP systems.
Establishing a Federal Credit Union
A credit union is a member-owned, member-controlled, not-for-profit cooperative financial institution formed to permit groups of persons to save, borrow, and obtain related financial services and to participate in its management. Member ownership and control are what make credit unions unique.
Building robust administrative capacity is important in the delivery of services to constituents. However, administrative capacity requires political will and vision, as well as shared goals and measurable metrics that optimize performance. It also requires an activist role in investment and training and industrial and trade policies. The balanced scorecard is a mechanism that could be used to facilitate citizens and government goal setting and to assess accountability and performance.
Building Information Modeling: An Informational Tool for Stakeholders
The evolving concepts of building information modeling (BIM) can serve as a vehicle for improving building design, as well as operability, maintenance, and safety. BIM aims to use computable data to capture and coordinate customer, and market requirements and to develop a cost-effective design and technical requirements.
Banks as Transmission Mechanism
The Federal Reverse, banks, and the public are essential in the process of monetary expansion. However, when the Federal Reserve increases the federal funds rate, it adversely affects the ability of the banking system to expand the money supply. Banks expand the money supply by loaning money to the public. Thus, credit is necessary to increase domestic currency in circulation and hence effective demand, production, and employment.
Brief Summary of Reliability Centered Maintenance: A Business Case for less Preventive Maintenance
The essence of preventive maintenance (PM) is to achieve the highest possible level of facility availability at the lowest cost. We can use reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) to develop effective PM programs. Availability is the instantaneous probability that a system or component will be available to perform its intended mission or function when called upon to do so at any point in time.
A well-implemented condition-based maintenance (CBM) regime requires management support, data analysis to determine cost-effective monitoring points and a knowledgeable and disciplined maintenance organization. The main objective of CBM is to ensure that assets fulfill their mission most cost-effectively.
What if Government Used an ERP System to Control Costs?
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are commercial software packages used by organizations and institutions to integrate business processes across organizational functions and locations.
The money supply is an important determinant of output, income, prices, and employment. Therefore, when the Fed drains reserves from the banking system or when the banking system refuses to provide entrepreneurs, merchants, and consumers with credit (money), output and hence employment diminishes.
The False Subprime Mortgage Argument
Recessions result from the fall of real income, a loss of consumers’ purchasing power. Subprime mortgages are loans made to homeowners perceived to have high credit risk. Loans expand the money supply and hence the economy. Therefore, subprime mortgages (loans) could not cause income to fall.
Life cycle cost (LCC) is an essential technique for evaluating the total cost of ownership between mutually exclusive alternatives. Executive Order 13123 requires government agencies to use life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) to minimize the government’s cost of ownership. Unfortunately, many stakeholders do not understand the concept of cost and proceed to reduce project acquisition (first) cost rather than the total project cost. However, over the life of the project, facility management cost is often two to three times higher than acquisition costs. Therefore, it is essential to design for minimum facility management costs.
The Challenges of Condition Based Maintenance
An effective condition-based maintenance regime requires a good understanding of asset criticality, failure rate modes, and, effects; as well as the total cost of failures. Therefore, understanding what to monitor for a given asset requires reliability and related financial data.
Recessions, Why do they occur?
The effectiveness of the economy and financial institutions depends on the ability of the Federal Reserve (Fed) to use monetary and credit policies in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. It also depends on the Fed effectively supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation’s banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers.
Leader Visibility: A Case Study Approach
This case study examines the impact of leader visibility on servant leadership and leadership in general. Interviews with leaders and followers indicate that leader visibility is necessary to influence constituents. However, at the New Jersey site of the ABC Chemical Company, where I conducted the study, leaders shunned visibility, which leads to less communication than required for high-performance organizations. Leaders that are not visible are less able to share the vision of the organization with employees.
Team cleaning could increase productivity by more than 50%. It relies on three or more cleaning employees to perform specialized tasks. Designers of a good team cleaning program initially create it on paper, then pilot test it to ensure that it is devoid of inefficient tools and equipment (Frank, 1999). Implementing team cleaning requires managerial commitment and upfront efforts, such as space analysis, workloading, acquisition of new equipment, training, and addressing personnel and union issues.
Team Cleaning: Reorganizing Custodial Work
Custodial work is a process with clearly defined, actionable, and measurable tasks. Therefore, it requires a thoughtful design to maximize quality and minimize cost. Thus, a good cleaning program is first created on paper, pilot-tested to ensure that it is devoid of inefficient tools and equipment (Frank, 1999). The result of a good cleaning program is that cleaning specialists do not perform redundant tasks nor expend unnecessary energy, and organizations achieve higher cleaning quality while minimizing cleaning costs.
Improving Accountability and Diversity through Assessment and Accreditation
Assessment and accreditation are important tools for improving accountability and diversity in educational systems, particularly when coupled with measurable goals and robust performance systems.
Implementing Organizational Innovations: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems
The vast majority of organizational innovations, although technically sound, do not succeed. Failure often resides in organizational implementation. Often organizations introduce innovations without employees’ involvement. As a result, they do not gain the employees’ commitment. Many corporate initiatives do not address employees’ social issues and only stress rigid top-down technical approaches as the key to organizational changes.
TQM at the XYZ Corp. New Jersey Site: A Case Study
This case study examines the quality management at the XYZ Company New Jersey manufacturing site. It attempts to assess the overall impact of quality on the site operations from the employees’ point of view. Interviews with site managers, supervisors, and employees support the claim that some organizations use Total Quality Management to legitimize their organizations (Moss-Kanter, Stein & Jick, 1992; Zbaracki, 1994).
Revisiting the drum major for justice and peace: M. L. King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher and leader of a nonviolent movement that continues to transform America and the world. He was one of the twentieth century’s most influential men and lived an extraordinary life. He led the civil rights movement that rebelled against segregation. He synthesized ideals drawn from many different cultural traditions and became one of the world’s best-known advocates of non-violent social change strategies.
Crude Oil Price: Shortage or Speculation?
All major oil companies use traders to ensure a regular supply of crude oil to their refineries. The trader’s role is to purchase crude oil in advance. Traders also resell crude oil purchased at a low price for a profit.