Environmental scanning— the state of the art

In recent years increasing attention has been devoted to amplifying individual elements of corporate planning systems—among them the environmental scanning element. Moreover, the unprecendented intensification of corporate environmental complexity has led to a proliferation of approaches to scanning the general environment. However, a recent survey of a dozen U.S. companies has questioned whether such scanning practices have, in fact, been established in an ongoing manner. The author provides evidence here, based on publicly available information, of at least nine leading organizations where the practice of scanning for planning appears to have taken firm root. A discussion of the many facets of the resulting composite picture of sophisticated wide angle scanning leads to the anticipation that it is, in fact, on the threshold of rapid diffusion in the corporate world.     

Does the Public Sector Lead the Wage Evolution in the French Economy?

Has the wage policy of the State in the French public sector (government services and State owned enterprises) had a leading effect on wages in the private sector up until the early 1980s? This paper firstly aims at verifying the existence and analysing the causes of this leading effect. The second aim is to estimate the scope of the changes which took place from the early 1980s. It shows that the wage policy of the State did influence disinflation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Indeed, it not only slowed down the growth of wages in the public sector but, by this means, it also influenced indireclty the growth of wages in the private sector.     

Do the benefits of the new OSHA HIV/HBV standard justify the costs?

On December 6, 1991, OSHA published its "final standard" for controlling occupational exposure to HIV and HBV. While the main thrust of the standard is sound, in some physicians' assessment, some of the detailed emphasis may be misdirected. They fear that the burdens imposed by the standard may be greater than the benefits derived from it. "Health Law" is a regular feature of Physician Executive contributed by Epstein, Becker, and Green. Mark Lutes of the firm's Washington, D.C., offices serves as editor for the column.     

Should the physician executive be the physician's advocate?

Medical staff commonly want to know if a prospective physician executive will serve as their advocate to management. A successful physician executive must like and respect physicians. But the question of advocacy must be answered thoughtfully, because the candidate must not imply that he or she will defend any action by any physician. A three-part conditional response is advisable.     

Following the Herd or Not?: Patterns of Renewal in the Netherlands and the UK

How do large firms conduct their strategic renewal journeys in an increasingly turbulent environment? Are there generic industry patterns, or are these renewal journeys country- or firm-specific? To answer these questions, we examine the relative incidence of external versus internal and explorative versus exploitative renewal actions, and their speed, in leading Dutch and UK financial service companies using longitudinal data. The context, content and process dimensions of strategic renewal are distinguished, and research questions about these attributes are formulated and investigated using new metrics. Findings show that while exploration/exploitation ratios are fairly similar for firms across the entire industry, systematic differences are evident between the external/internal renewal ratios of Dutch and UK firms, and that speed of renewal is largely determined at the firm level. Thus we find that industry-, country- and firm-specific factors all influence journeys of strategic renewal in distinctive and complementary ways.     

Children and Planning: To What Extent Does the Scottish Town Planning System Facilitate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Children are often not given explicit attention in land use planning outside of allocating space for schools, parks and playgrounds. This is problematic as children both use and navigate beyond these settings, and findings from research on and with children report how they are frequently marginalized in society. This is partly affected by the way town planning systems treat children's spatial needs and participation. Therefore, this article investigates whether and how the Scottish town planning system acknowledges children, particularly in light of the internationally recognized rights set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It uses critical discourse analysis of key Scottish planning policies, along with a survey of Scotland's planning authorities to ascertain the extent to which children are provided for and participate in the system. It argues that children's rights are not widely acknowledged or incorporated into town planning policy and practice, and suggests this must be addressed to achieve greater social justice and support Scotland's commitments as a signatory of the UNCRC.     

Can the patient be the focus of managed care?

If the question were simply put: "What is it that succeeds or fails to meet patients' needs in managed care?" Dr. John M Ludden would have a short answer. "It depends. Success depends on whether you are talking about individuals or about populations of patients. And it depends on whether you are talking about meeting patients' needs or their desires. It depends on whether you're talking about well patients or sick patients, young patients or older patients, new patients or established patients, rich patients or poor patients. And it depends on your ability to balance each of these qualities." This article explores how to translate high-quality care for a population to high-quality care for individuals.     

Sticky Price Models of the Business Cycle: Can the Contract Multiplier Solve the Persistence Problem?

We construct a quantitative equilibrium model with firms setting prices in a staggered fashion and use it to ask whether monetary shocks can generate business cycle fluctuations. These fluctuations include persistent movements in output along with the other defining features of business cycles, like volatile investment and smooth consumption. We assume that prices are exogenously sticky for a short time. Persistent output fluctuations require endogenous price stickiness in the sense that firms choose not to change prices much when they can do so. We find that for a wide range of parameter values, the amount of endogenous stickiness is small. Thus, we find that in a standard quantitative model, staggered price‐setting, alone, does not generate business cycle fluctuations.     

Does the capital of social capital matter? Relational resources of the board and the performance of Brazilian companies

Based on theories of social capital, in this study, we seek to assess the impact of a board’s social capital on the market value of companies listed on the Brazilian stock exchange. As our indicator of social capital, we use the relational resources identified in the direct, indirect and heterogeneous ties of the board. Employing panel data from 508 observations, our results indicate that heterogeneous relational resources have a stronger and more significant influence than the resources available from board members’ direct relationships. Additionally, as the effects of board interlock are endogenously determined by several factors related to the firm level, we seek to mitigate the endogeneity problem using models of instrumental variables and simultaneous equations. Our hypotheses were consistent after controlling for endogeneity. We also check whether the board’s social capital could present a U-inverted effect on the market value. This relationship was only plausible in social capital by indirect ties. Finally, we isolate the effect of relational resources within and between industries on Tobin’s Q. There was no significant effect through interlocks within the same industry. However, ties with companies in several other industries were significant.     

The changing role of the supervisory board chairman: the case of the Netherlands (1997–2007)

Over the last ten years, the corporate governance context in most Western countries has changed as a result of irregularities, increased regulation, heightened societal expectations and shareholder activism. This paper examines the impact of the changing context on the role of chairmen of supervisory boards in the Netherlands. Based on a combination of thirty semi-structured interviews with board members of leading Dutch corporations and secondary data on the position of supervisory board chairmen at the top-100 listed firms in the Netherlands, the study reveals that board chairmen have become increasingly involved in both their control and service roles. While the demographics (i.e., age, tenure, gender and nationality) of chairmen have hardly changed over the last decade, chairmen are spending considerably more time on boards and committees, have reduced the number of board interlocks and have become more active on the forefront of the corporate governance discussion. The paper highlights several implications for scholars and practitioners.     

A systematic review of executive coaching outcomes: Is it the journey or the destination that matters the most?

In this article, we focus on a specific type of personal and professional development practice -executive coaching- and present the most extensive systematic review of executive coaching outcome studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals to date. We focus only on coaching provided by external coaches to organizational members. Our purpose is twofold: First, to present and evaluate how executive coaching outcome studies are designed and researched (particularly regarding methodological rigor and context-sensitivity). Secondly, to provide a comprehensive review of what we know about executive coaching outcomes, what are the contextual drivers that affect coaching interventions and what the current gaps in our understanding of coaching practice. On that basis, we discuss and provide a research agenda that might significantly shift the field. We argue that methodological rigor is as important as context-sensitivity in the design of executive coaching outcome studies. We conclude with a discussion of implications for practice.     

International coopetition for innovation: Are the benefits worth the challenges?

International coopetition has rarely been studied in relation to innovation. Further exploration of effects of international coopetition, i.e. the pursuit of simultaneous cooperation and competition, on a firm’s innovation performance is especially important as such a relationship is challenging with a high propensity to fail. This observation formed the point of departure for this study, which aims to increase the understanding of the effects of international coopetition on firm innovativeness and how these effects are conditioned on the magnitude of the organizational adjustments a firm introduces. We use an unbalanced panel of 9839 firms that participated in four waves of the Swedish Community Innovation Survey between 2008 and 2014 as our empirical base. We illustrate that firms that cooperate with competitors internationally are more likely to exhibit higher propensity to introduce radical innovations, yet this effect is conditioned upon the magnitude of organizational adjustments. Overall, our study contributes to the understanding of the implications of international coopetition and what a firm needs to benefit from it.     

Which way to the frontier? Physician executives talk about the future

The author interviewed trustees, senior managers, and physicians at Moses Cone Health System in Greensboro, North Carolina, Legacy Health System in Portland, Oregon, and Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan. These three successful health care systems bracket the national market in size, geography, and managed care penetration. The comments of physicians are presented here, drawn from the book, Designing 21st Century Health Care: Leadership in Hospitals and Healthcare Systems. What emerges most clearly from their comments is the enormity of the task ahead. There is wide-spread agreement that substantial improvements in the quality and cost of care are possible, an encouraging stream of anecdotes and ideas about how to proceed, but a lack of consensus on critical components of how to organize practices and promote effective care.     

Is the German system of corporate governance converging towards the Anglo-American model?

This paper analyses whether the German corporate governance is converging towards Anglo-American practices. We summarise the extant empirical evidence on the various governance mechanisms that economic theory suggests ensure efficiency and describe recent legal developments. We find no clear signs of convergence in form, i.e. the main distinctive features of the German system have remained largely unaltered. However, changes occurred over the last decade (specially in the legal framework) suggest a certain convergence in function, i.e. some governance mechanisms have effectively incorporated aims and/or goals generally associated with the Anglo-American model.

Risk Management and the Responsible Corporation: How Sweeping the Invisible Hand?

Although enterprise risk management (ERM) has many benefits for corporations, there has been virtually no discussion of the extent to which its practice may be said to constitute corporate social responsibility. This article presents a prima facie case for the convergence of the two and examines this case through a consideration of four possible objections or challenges. The conclusion of this article is a tempered optimism that ERM has the significant, but as yet untapped, potential to constitute socially responsible activity, which, if realized, would enable Adam Smith's invisible hand of the marketplace to have an expanded sweep.     

FEMA and the Witt Revolution: Testing the Hypothesis of “Bureaucratic Autonomy”

In the wake of widespread criticism for its poor performance in Hurricane Andrew in 1992, FEMA became a more effective organization under the leadership of James Witt (1993–2001). One answer to the question of how and why FEMA improved so rapidly and significantly during this period is Carpenter’s (2001) theory of “bureaucratic autonomy.” This paper defines the minimum conditions Carpenter considers necessary for the term, evaluates their applicability to FEMA during this period, and briefly examines alternative explanations for FEMA’s organizational transformation. It concludes that the innovation and entrepreneurship FEMA demonstrated during this period do indeed meet the criteria for “bureaucratic autonomy.”