Articles

An effective pricing decision should involve an optimal blending of internal financial constraints and external market conditions.

In most industrial firms, marketing efforts encompass three groups: product management, sales, and customer service units. Mangers have devoted much attention to managing effectively within each unit but not to coordinating across the units. The authors discusses why managing these marketing interfaces is increasingly important and complex at industrial firms, the interdependencies and organizational barriers that affect their joint activities, and the strengths and vulnerabilities of initiatives aimed at improving links among the marketing groups.

Chief information officers have the difficult job of running a function that uses a lot of resources but that offers little measurable evidence of its value. To make the information systems department an asset to their companies -- and to keep their jobs -- CIOs should think of their work as adding value in certain key areas. Accordingly, chief executive officers can take a number of steps to aid a CIO's efforts. This article, based on studies of information systems leaders in sixty organizations, presents a portrait of successful CIOs and the CEOs who support them.

One of the most useful concepts of the TQM movement in manufacturing is the application of poka-yoke, or fail-safe, methods to prevent human errors from becoming defects in the end product. Here the authors argue that these methods apply equally well to services and provide a framework for systematically applying poka-yokes to service encounters. They suggest that actions of the system, the server, and the customer can be fail-safed, and provide numerous examples to stimulate service managers to think in fail-safe terms.

Choosing the right strategy for negotiations with someone from another culture is a difficult task for which managers have few established guidelines. Implementing that strategy well can often be even more challenging. Whether you know a little or a lot about your counterpart's culture -- whether you are a novice or experienced negotiator -- you will find useful advice in this article on effectively choosing and implementing a culturally responsive strategy. Part 1, published in the Winter 1994 issue, presented eight culturally responsive strategies in a framework based on their feasibility.

During the past thirty years, Japan has developed global preeminence in many technologies used for both military and commercial applications, without making significant investments dedicated to the military economy. The United States, by contrast, has pursued guns and butter simultaneously by directing public expenditures toward military goals. As a result, its defense establishment became the largest single source of R&;D funding in the world. Despite this massive effort directed toward military ends, the relative strength of the U.S. technical base has declined. The author, in a forthcoming book, examines how Japan's concept of national security developed to encompass technological strength and how its institutions support that concept. This excerpt looks in detail at the pathways along which technology is diffused within and across Japanese industries. Excerpted primarily from chapter 8 of "Rich Nation, Strong Army": National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan, copyright (c) 1994 by Cornell University. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press.

What is corporate transformation and how can we define a successful one? The authors propose a definition based on behavioral changes throughout the organization and suggest a framework, built on their analysis of cases and interviews, for comparing transformations among firms.

How the partners in an alliance view their joint venture can have much to do with its success or failure. Do they fear that the other partner will get a larger payoff, while they operate in good faith? Or do they make seemingly counterintuitive unilateral commitments that involve acts of faith by one or both companies? Here the authors present a framework, derived from field interviews and viewed in game theory terms, for securing partners' cooperation, managing an alliance, and ensuring its success.

The case manager role represents a break with the conventional approach to the division of work. Individuals or small teams perform a series of tasks, such as the fulfillment of an order, from beginning to end, often with the help of information systems that reach through the organization. Case managers provide a way to increase organizational efficiency, timeliness, and customer satisfaction. The authors discuss some of the issues arising from case management and the lessons we can learn from the experiences of some pioneering firms.

The role of IT in shaping tomorrow's business operations is a distinctive one. IT has become a fundamental enabler in creating and maintaining a flexible business network. Using a framework that break IT-enabled business transformation into five levels, the author describes each level's characteristics and offers guidelines for delivering maximal benefits. He suggests that each organization first determine the level at which benefits are in line with the costs or efforts of the needed changes and then proceed to higher levels as the demands of competition and the need to deliver greater value to the customer increases.