Search results

The aim of the original and recent research in this study is to determine why, in these rapidly developing economies, management systems such as TQM, ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 fail to realize continuing improvement and remediation methodologies capable of improving technical performance and enhancing economic profit.

The research uses cultural frameworks to analyze the mechanisms which are preventing a greater realization of opportunities in the improvement of management systems, going on to suggest interventions. Within this approach there were three modes of data collection, an administered Likert questionnaire (developed from prior research in Poland, and pre‐tested in Lithuania, Greece and the UK) comprising every manager in the management levels of 12 heavy industrial factories in China and Poland, interviews with the senior managers, and the determination of the empirical (true) reality for environmental performance in each factory. Analysis of these data sets supported an evaluation of the alignment between perceived and actual environmental performance, and a comparison within and between countries.

The interactions between management levels were influenced by socio‐cultural factors, which in turn determined the means of communicating knowledge between these levels. This might have affected the perceptions and mind‐sets of employees in the management chain, and hence the practical effects of any decisions based on concomitant mind‐sets “on the ground”. New management systems might not be properly understood owing to these factors.

While the specific environmental impacts of culture were particular to each factory and cannot be generalized, the socio‐cultural phenomena on which they were based can be used for comparative purposes. There was a practical constraint, despite promises of confidentiality, on how questions were answered owing to a prevailing fear and punishment practice; in a process of remediation the constraint will be the reluctance of managers to step outside of this practice.

The practical outcomes of the study lie mainly in the re‐alignment of management perceptions subject to hierarchical constraints and cultures of dubious value.

The methodology, which included an assessment of the actual and potential risk to the environment for each factory (empirical reality), matched against cultural indicators is quite new. The paper has three areas of potential value: to researchers who wish to use a combination of soft and hard interpretations for environmental and quality performance; to management practitioners who can better interpret how the nature of communication between management interfaces affects the ability to take remedial action; and to academic researchers in a better understanding of socio‐cultural group dynamics.

This narrative inquiry centers on teachers' longitudinal experiences of policy-related reforms systematically introduced to T. P. Yaeger Middle School, a campus located in the fourth largest, second most diverse city in America. The embedded research study, with roots tracing back to 1997, uses five interpretive tools to capture six mandated changes in the form of a story serial. Special research attention is afforded pay-for-performance, the sixth reform in the series. The deeply lived consequence of receiving bonuses for his teaching performance prompted Daryl Wilson, Yaeger's long-term literacy department chair, to proclaim “data is [G]od.” Wilson's emergent, inventive metaphor aptly portrays the perplexing conditions under which his career ended, and how my long-term research project likewise concluded.

The institution of food and cookery exhibitions and the dissemination of practical knowledge with respect to cookery by means of lectures and demonstrations are excellent things in their way. But while it is important that better and more scientific attention should be generally given to the preparation of food for the table, it must be admitted to be at least equally important to insure that the food before it comes into the hands of the expert cook shall be free from adulteration, and as far as possible from impurity,—that it should be, in fact, of the quality expected. Protection up to a certain point and in certain directions is afforded to the consumer by penal enactments, and hitherto the general public have been disposed to believe that those enactments are in their nature and in their application such as to guarantee a fairly general supply of articles of tolerable quality. The adulteration laws, however, while absolutely necessary for the purpose of holding many forms of fraud in check, and particularly for keeping them within certain bounds, cannot afford any guarantees of superior, or even of good, quality. Except in rare instances, even those who control the supply of articles of food to large public and private establishments fail to take steps to assure themselves that the nature and quality of the goods supplied to them are what they are represented to be. The sophisticator and adulterator are always with us. The temptations to undersell and to misrepresent seem to be so strong that firms and individuals from whom far better things might reasonably be expected fall away from the right path with deplorable facility, and seek to save themselves, should they by chance be brought to book, by forms of quibbling and wriggling which are in themselves sufficient to show the moral rottenness which can be brought about by an insatiable lust for gain. There is, unfortunately, cheating to be met with at every turn, and it behoves at least those who control the purchase and the cooking of food on the large scale to do what they can to insure the supply to them of articles which have not been tampered with, and which are in all respects of proper quality, both by insisting on being furnished with sufficiently authoritative guarantees by the vendors, and by themselves causing the application of reasonably frequent scientific checks upon the quality of the goods.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.