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“I wish I could say I like working with a woman, but the truth is it's an awful lot of trouble. With a man, I know where I'm at; with a woman, I'm at sea. They just don't act like they know what they're doing.” These words of a US Sprint executive in an interview with Business Month magazine [3, p.43] echo the sentiments of many men who are forced to work for or with people of the opposite sex. Half the respondents in a recent Gallop poll do not care if it is a man or a woman that they work for. But almost all of those who do care prefer to work for a man. How are today's female junior managers who have spent fourteen years working side by side with men at school supposed to react in their first supervisory role that puts them in charge of more men than women? There is an abundance of leadership styles a woman can choose from. She can be masculine, she can be feminine, or she can take on the best of both worlds and be androgynous. This article attempts to address the most successful leadership traits for a woman that has a staff composed of men, fifty percent of which would rather be working for a man.

The recent years have been marked by the increasing participation of women in the labour force internationally. Especially in the industrialised countries of Western Europe and North America, this labour force participation is now well over 40%. Globally, however, the estimate is around 33%. A large number of these women are still found in the agriculture sector and the informal sector of industry. For those working in the formal industrial sector, a significant portion work in the shopfloor of assembly line operations for products ranging from electronics to textiles. Women in management comprise less than 1% of all economically active women. For the purposes of this paper, a “manager” is defined as a person who has latitude in decision making as to the allocation and use of organisational resources, including physical, financial, and human resources.

The purpose of the present study is to determine how the cash conversion cycle (CCC) affects the financial performance of manufacturing companies in Bangladesh.

The authors have collected data of 61 Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE)-listed firms from the 10 distinct manufacturing industries of Bangladesh for 18 years, from 2003 to 2020. The data have been analyzed through the two-steps system generalized method of moment (GMM) regression model, using profitability indicators return on asset (ROA) and earnings per share (EPS) as dependent variables, while CCC has been used as the independent variable, whereas asset turnover (ATO) and financial leverage (LEV) were used as control variables to assess the relationship between the CCC and financial performance.

The findings indicated that CCC has a negative connection with profitability – ROA and EPS, with the connection between CCC and EPS being highly significant. This indicates that reducing the inventory conversion time, reducing the period of receivable collection and making payments to creditors with potential delays might help Bangladeshi manufacturing firms boost their profitability. In addition, the firm-specific characteristics, namely ATO and LEV significantly affect the firm's profitability.

The research was based only on secondary sources and information was scarce. This research was conducted to determine the impact of the CCC on the corporate profitability of the manufacturing sector solely. There might be many other working capital variables that are still unexplored through this study.

The current study's findings are consistent with the traditional rule that minimizing the firm's days of the cash cycle may optimize financial performance. The results of this research have added to the existing body of knowledge on the topic of working capital management (WCM). Future research endeavors can be initiated for assessing the impact of the CCC on the firm's profitability in other industrial sectors or to identify other working capital variables that have much impact on corporate profitability.

This study is an original work of the researchers and adds value to the current literature in the domain of WCM and corporate profitability. The present study is the first one that covers firms in all the manufacturing industries in Bangladesh. The corporate managers, creditors, investors and other concerned stakeholders will be benefited from the findings of the present study.

This paper aims to develop and test a model of buyer–supplier relational investment that links supply chain integration (SCI) to supplier flexibility performance (SFLEX) advantages in different manufacturing environments. Relational stability (RS) and information quality (IQL) are viewed as key indicators of intermediating commitment investments in supplier relationships to help support supplier accommodations for special requests for order flexibility. The model is applied to investigate the relative importance of manufacturer relational investments with suppliers in both make-to-stock (MTS) and make-to-order (MTO) production environments.

A survey of 206 US manufacturing firms was used to test the proposed research model using structural equation modeling and multiple-group analysis techniques.

Social exchange investments in relationship stability and information quality are found to fully mediate the positive performance relationship between supply chain integration and supplier flexibility performance for manufacturers. However, the relative importance of each form of investment in enhancing supplier flexibility performance varies based on the buyer’s (manufacturer’s) order fulfillment environment (make-to-stock versus make-to-order).

The proposed model may assist manufacturers make more informed relational exchange investments and supply chain configuration decisions that most conducive to enhancing supplier flexibility performance for different production environments.

From providing public Internet access in rural communities to pioneering the development of a model automated document delivery system, libraries of every type in the state are engaged in a variety of multi‐library automation and connectivity efforts. The following descriptions include projects from academic libraries, public libraries, state agencies, and a library school.

Subjects provided creative responses to memoranda from an in‐basket exercise. In a 262 design, contingent/noncontingent extrinsic reward conditions were crossed with intrinsic motivation/no intrinsic motivation conditions. Results indicated that intrinsic motivation was associated with improved creativity, while offering contingent, extrinsic rewards were not. Thus, the hypothesized inoculation effect associated with intrinsic motivation was not supported. Results are discussed in terms of specific work history and creativity outcomes, with particular attention focused on defining creativity in the business context (i.e. applied creativity) rather than in more artistic settings (i.e. pure creativity).

The occupational stress and well-being literature often focuses on specific causes of stress as health risk factors to be managed, on attributes of work environments that are stressful and/or risky, or on prevention and intervention strategies for managing these causes of stress as well as individual stress responses at work (Quick & Tetrick, 2003). The occupational stress literature has not focused on how executives and organizations can cause positive stress for people at work. In this chapter, we explore a principle-based framework for executive action to create positive, constructive stress for people at work.

The first major section of the chapter discusses seven contextual factors within which the principle-based framework is nested. The second major section of the chapter develops nine principles for executive action. The third and concluding section of the chapter turns the focus to a set of guidelines for executive action in managing their personal experience of stress.

In decades past, workers were, in effect, told to leave their emotions at home and most complied. No more. A person with high emotional intelligence (EI) has the ability to understand and relate to people. In fact, this skill is now considered to have greater impact on individual and group performance than traditional measures of intelligence such as IQ. When emotional intelligence is present, there is increased employee cooperation, increased motivation, increased productivity, and increased profits. However, emotional intelligence is lacking in the US workplace. This lack is clearly chronicled in the comic strip, Dilbert, where Scott Adams, the creator, lampoons what occurs in the workplace: vapid corporate‐speak with no guts and no emotionally‐honest message. This article defines emotional intelligence, describes how the comic strip, Dilbert, daily depicts situations where emotional intelligence is lacking, and discusses the organizational benefits of having emotionally intelligent managers and employees.

This study aims to investigate workplace stress and its related patterns (sources, patient interactions, and coping strategies) among health care employees in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Academic research in this area is limited, and the globalization of health care services requires an examination of areas that have the potential to affect employee performance - which ultimately impacts health care service and quality. Based on a sample of 175 employees from both public and private health care organizations, results indicate the primary source of workplace stress is role ambiguity, while the lowest cause of stress is patients. The primary coping strategy used by our sample participants is productiveness and activity. Our findings are useful to healthcare management in order to address employee stress-related concerns, and increase the quality of health care provided.

The management of reputation and status is central to creative professional service firms (CPSFs) rendering the internationalisation process a particular challenge. The authors build on arguments that internationalisation requires moving from outsidership to insidership within client networks and focus on how CPSFs build signals about quality to start this process. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The exploration draws from the international business, professional services and organisational status bodies of literature. A multiple case study design was developed comprising ten Irish architecture firms. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted.

The findings clarify how relationships start in the internationalisation process through signal building about quality. This allows CPSFs to join client networks moving from outsidership to insidership. The findings systemise three different approaches for CPSFs: from outsidership to insidership within a local market network, within a global industry network and within a global project network.

Research within other sectoral and geographical contexts could support transferability of the findings.

The study has implications for international business strategies as it identifies multiple paths to relevant network insidership and the tactical responses managers can use to achieve this.

The authors believe that incorporating signal-building mechanisms into the internationalisation process is a novel approach to theorizing about how CPSFs move from outsidership to insidership. The authors offer important theoretical insights into the international business, professional service firm and organisational status literatures. CPSF business leaders should benefit as it helps them to focus on a portfolio of signal-building approaches that can start the internationalisation process.