What’s
Up?
A
Quick Review of Issues and Events Involving People at
Work
Interesting Ideas to
Ponder
Sexes Handle Emotions
Differently
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2146003.stm
Scientists have come up
with a theory to explain why men and women seem to deal
with emotion in different ways. They believe that the
sexes use different networks in their brains to remember
emotional events. This may explain why women are more
likely to be emotional and to remember emotionally
charged occasions.
Researchers from Stanford
University used scan technology to measure the brain
activity of 12 men and 12 women who were shown a range of
images. These varied from neutral images such as fire
hydrants, to highly disturbing images of mutilated bodies
designed to trigger an emotional response. The brain
scans also revealed that exposure to emotive images
stimulated more areas in the women’s brains than
they did in the men.
Colleges Use
Recreation Centers to Draw
Students
http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/diet.fitness/07/29/rec.centers.college/index.html
Climbing walls,
racquetball courts, or a cool swimming pool with a water
slide may be among the student perks that colleges keep
behind their ivy-covered walls. A building boom in
recreation centers has been under way since the early
1990s, according to the National Intramural-Recreational
Sports Association. The college trade group’s 725
member institutions have 1,546 recreation centers, nearly
half built since 1995, including 25% built since
2000.
New
Report Sheds Light on Trends and Patterns in Marriage,
Divorce, and Cohabitation
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases/02news/div_mar_cohab.htm
By
age 30, three-quarters of women in the United States have
been married and about half have cohabited outside of
marriage, according to a comprehensive new report on
cohabitation, marriage, divorce, and remarriage recently
released by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC).
The report, prepared by
the National Center for Health Statistics, focuses on not
only individual factors but also community conditions
associated with long-term marriages, as well as divorce
and separation. Based on interviews with nearly 11,000
women 15 to 44 years of age, the study also examines
conditions associated with cohabitation, including the
impact that premarital cohabitation has on marriage and
marital stability.
Among the findings in the
report: Unmarried cohabitations overall are less stable
than marriages. The probability of a first marriage
ending in separation or divorce within five years is 20%,
but the probability of a premarital cohabitation breaking
up within five years is 49%. After 10 years, the
probability of a first marriage ending is 33%, compared
with 62% for cohabitations.
The study suggests that
both cohabitations and marriages tend to last longer
under certain conditions, such as: a woman’s age at
the time cohabitation or marriage began; whether she was
raised throughout childhood in an intact two-parent
family; whether religion plays an important role in her
life; and whether she had a higher family income or lived
in a community with high median family income, low male
unemployment, and low poverty.
Briefing Book:
Collaboration
http://www.internetweek.com
In
recent months, InternetWeek.com has chronicled all manner
of electronic collaboration: from sharing of engineering
drawing and specs; to working with partners in order to
set, enforce, and execute a procurement strategy aimed at
improving the corporate bottom line; to managing the
execution of contracts between business partners; to
collaborating on inventory requirements across a supply
chain.
Interesting Articles to
Read
Fast
Company
www.fastcompany.com
August 2002
She’s a Paper
Tiger
Is your office a mess? Is your company cluttered? Then
don’t mourn—organize! Barbara Hemphill
teaches companies and their executives how to do more
with less paper.
In a Word, Toyota
Drives for Innovation
“Oobeya” is Japanese for “big, open
office,” and it’s Toyota’s system for
cutting costs and boosting quality. It’s also the
secret behind the redesign of one of history’s
best-selling cars.
Handle With
Care
How UPS handles packages starts with how it handles its
people. Learn the five lessons on the art of delivering
for your people.
Forbes
Magazine
www.forbes.com
August 12, 2002
Removing the Scarlet A;
Age-Discrimination Laws Can Backfire on Older Job
Seekers
Age suits are now the fastest growing category of
discrimination complaints filed with the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission. They’re also the
most expensive. The median court award in
age-discrimination suits, a majority of them brought by
high-paid white males, is $269,000. But before all you
aging, well-paid boomers applaud, consider this:
Age-discrimination laws, which generally cover workers 40
and older, can backfire—namely, on those looking
for jobs. Yes, it’s dangerous to fire an older
worker. But in the real world, that’s a big
incentive not to take a chance by hiring one.
Forbes ASAP
Magazine
www.forbes.com/asap/
June 24, 2002
The Smother of
Invention
After 200 years of lumbering down the tracks, the
intellectual-property process in the United States is
beginning to go off the rails. Branches of the government
are intervening where they never have before. Opposing
camps, many with money and influence, are forming. Small
inventors are diverted from where they can make the
greatest contributions. And a culture of litigation,
circumvention, and secrecy has evolved from an area where
openness and law had long ruled.
Fortune
Magazine
www.fortune.com
August 12, 2002
Wonder Women of
Whistle-Blowing
Is it significant that the prominent heroes to emerge
from the two great business scandals of recent years were
women? Enron and WorldCom have become America’s
twin symbols of business malfeasance, but here’s a
different kind of similarity: In each case the public
learned the extent of the scandal in large part through
the actions of a brave woman who did the right thing by
going over her boss’ head.
HR
Magazine
www.shrm.org
August 2002
Paying the Price:
Learning From Talley’s Mistakes
Former Rent-A-Center CEO J. Ernest Talley’s
everyone-does-everything business model still may be
optimal for the rent-to-own industry, but experts agree
that his disdain for human resources (HR) cost
Rent-A-Center dearly.
“HR can be valuable
to a company’s return on
investment—it’s not just useful for avoiding
lawsuits,” says Keith Carrico, PHR, formerly HR
director at rent-to-own chain Rent One and now an
industry consultant in St. Louis. “It can be a
valuable component to your bottom line if you use it
properly.”
One lesson, says Jerry
Schlichter, senior partner of Schlichter, Bogard &
Denton in St. Louis and one of the attorneys representing
employees in the case of Wilfong et al. and EEOC v.
Rent-A-Center, is that businesses formed by self-starters
have to be aware of the importance of HR. “When a
company ignores the law or tries to avoid the influence
of HR professionals, disaster can come. When a Talley
wants to ramrod policies, the perspective of HR may
temper his inclinations and be a source of information
and knowledge that’s very important to running a
successful organization.”
Inc.
Magazine
www.inc.com
August 1, 2002
Hook, Line, and
Sinker
“Disciples of Fish” are bringing the
happiness revolution to corporate America. Maybe
you’ve heard of the “Fish
thing”—or more precisely, the Fish!
thing. It’s a management phenomenon that started
out quietly. In 1998, ChartHouse Learning, a small
company in Burnsville, MN, produced a videotape extolling
the happy work environment of Pike Place Fish, an even
smaller outfit doing business in Seattle’s famous
Pike Place open-air market. The video Fish! led to
a book (same title).
The Innovation Factor:
Built to Invent
This is part one of a three-installment series on
hyper-creative organizations and the strategies behind
them. The series explores innovation as it applies to
organizations, leaders, and markets. In this issue, the
focus is on continuously inventing organizations designed
expressly to churn out ideas.
Time
Magazine
www.time.com
July 21, 2002
Everyone, Back in the
Labor Pool
Eroding pension benefits, longer life spans, and a major
meltdown in stocks adds up to this: Most of us will have
to work well into our 70s.
T+D
Magazine
www.astd.org
August 2002
Built To Be Great: An
Interview With Jim Collins
T+D interviewed Jim Collins, researcher and author of
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and
Others Don’t. Collins’s team found the
following common threads among good to great
companies:
- Level Five Leadership:
Self-effacing, reserved leaders run the company instead
of semi-celebrities.
- First who, then
what—the right people are brought onboard before
the vision is set.
- Confront the brutal
facts (yet never lose faith). Leaders see the reality
but believe firmly in the company’s
success.
- The Hedgehog
Concept—the organization is the best in the world
at its core business.
- Culture of
Discipline—the company doesn’t need
hierarchy, bureaucracy, or excessive
controls.
- Technology
Accelerators—good to great companies pioneer
technologies but don’t use them as a means of
igniting a transformation.
- The Flywheel and the
Doom Loop—transformations at good to greats
happen little by little.
Online Learning
Centers
Online learning centers blend powerful new technology
such as the Internet, intranets, and e-learning courses
with traditional learning media, including audiotapes,
videotapes, instructor-led courses, books, and
articles.
W.R. Grace, a global
specialty chemicals company, launched its global learning
center in 2001. Surveys had indicated a widespread desire
for professional and personal development support
employees could use on their own.
Available 24/7 to the
company’s 6,000 employees in Europe, Asia, and
Africa, the center is organized around core competencies,
with lists of approved internal and external training
programs; recommended reading lists; a rental library for
audiocassettes, videotapes, and CDs; strategy guides; and
more.
Some of Grace’s tips
for developing an online learning center:
- Line up senior
management support.
- Build
gradually.
- Invite
involvement.
- Provide a variety of
learning tools.
- Make the learning center
a focal point.
- Make it part of the
whole organizational system.
- Keep it
visible.
- Ensure that the content
is fresh.
Interesting Places to
Go
2002 Baldrige
Regional Conference
California Council for Excellence
http://www.calexcellence.org/cce/education/indexc.htm
October 10, 2002 in Freemont, CA.
October 23, 2002 in Dearborn, MI.
Learn about the best
practices and performance strategies of these role model
organizations when senior leaders and representatives
present on all seven Baldrige criteria categories:
leadership; strategic planning; customer/student,
stakeholder, and market focus; information and analysis;
human resource/faculty and staff focus; process
management; and results. Take home valuable tips for
applying the Baldrige criteria to your whole organization
to improve your performance and strengthen your
results.
Conference on
Teleworking for Business, Education, Research, and
e-Commerce
Association of Information Technologies,
Telecommunications, and Office Equipment of
Lithuania
http://www.infobalt.lt/telebalt/call_for_papers.php
October 22-23, 2002
Vilnius, Lithuania
This conference aims at
strengthening the scientific and technological
cooperation between the European Union and the Newly
Associated States (NAS), in particular the Baltic
countries in the field of IT application to new methods
of work, business, education, research, e-commerce,
medicine, regional development, and social integration
using IT. Topics of interest include:
- Teleworking,
telecommuting, e-work history, and review.
- Teleworking pros and
cons, advantages, benefits and disadvantages, barriers,
and pitfalls in business.
- Teleworking social,
cultural, psychological, ethic, and legal
issues.
- Teleworking and
culture.
- Teleworking and social
integration for disabled people.
- Teamwork
groupware.
- Learning
organization.
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