Search results

Michael Barron and David Targett argue in favour of forecasting playing a relevant part in decision making. They point out that forecasting possesses reliable techniques, it is only when the gap between the producers of forecasts and the users is too great that managerial scepticism intervenes. They suggest ways of overcoming this.

In recent times there has been a change of emphasis in business forecasting. The shift has been away from the technical and statistical aspects. More thought is now being given to the way in which techniques are used and the context in which they are applied. This article is the first in a series of two which deal with these issues. It describes the role of the manager in forecasting. In particular, it discusses the tasks in designing and planning a forecasting system which are the key to its success and which fall within a manager's responsibility. The second article is concerned with the link between forecasts and the decisions they support.

Forecasting experts are not always sufficiently knowledgeable about the way their forecasts are used by managers. Consequently there is a tendency for them to focus excessively on forecast accuracy instead of decision usefulness. This article draws on modern information theory to provide some insights into the problem of identifying relevance and recognising value for money in market research and sales forecasts.

This paper considers the problems of evaluating the benefits of an investment in information technology and systems against a background of institutional change. It is based on a case study in the National Health Service and follows the progress of a project to introduce benefits realisation in NHS Trusts. The case illustrates the importance of personal, hands‐on attention to benefits management and calls attention to the different contingencies faced by managers in attempting to introduce evaluation or benefits realisation schemes. It concludes that, where managers face “certain” contingencies, formative evaluation will be beneficial, but where the contingencies are uncertain, structural changes in the organisation may be more effective in achieving benefits. The paper ends with a plea for evaluation activities to be re‐integrated into their organisational context.

The last decade of the twentieth century brought with it exponential growth of electronic commerce (EC). The growth of business‐to‐business (B2B) EC outpaced that of all other forms of EC. During roughly the same time period, benchmarking became an important approach for accessing organizational performance. Benchmarking is a methodology suitable for evaluating virtually any aspect of organizational performance in public or private organizations. In this manuscript B2B and benchmarking are discussed with the objective of developing directions for research and the application of B2B benchmarking. A framework for benchmarking B2B EC is proposed that describes five levels of benchmarking: independent B2B EC benchmarking, buyer‐seller (1:1) collaborative benchmarking, 1:M consortium benchmarking, 1:M:N collaborative benchmarking, and buyer‐intermediary benchmarking.

Managers have a particular opportunity at the moment to tackle core business issues rather than relatively peripheral matters. The opportunity arises out of the prolonged series of upheavals which have replaced the relative economic calm of the 50s, 60s and early 70s. It arises because an increasing number of “hard‐nosed” managers acknowledge that supposedly “soft” issues, such as motivation, culture and values, are central to even medium‐term business effectiveness. This, of course, was the central conclusion of Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence which has reached huge numbers of managers with its sales of over five million copies.

TO operate effectively in his environment a man should seek to appreciate the sources which created it. There are few better ways for the work study man, or others concerned with the efficient running of the industrial machine, to do so than by digesting Management Thinkers, published at 40p in the Pelican Library of Business and Management.

ALL TAXES must, at last, fall upon agriculture, wrote Gibbon. Today he would probably change it to ‘all taxes must, at last, be borne by others for agriculture’. It vexes every government in and out of Europe, hovering over Common Market desks and troubling lands like New Zealand.

NEVER since the Industrial Revolution have there been so many radical changes in the manner of producing goods as we are witnessing today. Manufacturing is new in its concepts, in technical and mechanical techniques and largely new in materials, methods and machines.

In spite of the central role accorded to small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in recent government White Papers on competitiveness and national vocational education and training (VET) policies, the involvement of small firms in national training efforts remains disappointingly marginal. Studies over 2,000 SMEs in the West Midlands region and indicates a worrying gap between interest and attitudes to training and actual take‐up of training opportunities, particularly in relation to programmes linked to national vocational qualifications(NVQs). Recommends that, given the low awareness of and low value assigned to NVQs by SME owner/managers, training policies for SMEs are distinguished sharply from national training efforts concerned with NVQs and the achievement of national targets.