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Selected AbstractsDesign Brings Innovation to the Base of the PyramidDESIGN MANAGEMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2009Aguinaldo Dos Santos In Brazil, nearly half the population earns less than $325 a month and lives in rural areas or urban shantytowns. Despite this reality, Brazilian companies tend to ignore the poor as consumers, focusing their efforts on the haves. One company, however, saw possibility in the "bottom of the pyramid (BOP)" and devised a way to serve this population and at the same time offer it a way to climb out of poverty. [source] IT for niche companies: is an ERP system the solution?INFORMATION SYSTEMS JOURNAL, Issue 1 2007Kai A Olsen Abstract., Niche companies are per definition idiosyncratic. They survive in a competitive world by mastering a small market niche, providing what their customers need. This often requires a flexible organization, and the ability to customize products. To be more efficient, many of these companies rely on extensive use of IT, often by installing general Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. These systems have grown from isolated systems that handle planning based on incoming orders and the component structure of the various products, to systems with ambitions to embrace the total functioning of the company including vendor and customer relation management. In this paper, we present four case studies. One company is a part of a large enterprise, but performs niche functions within this enterprise. The other three are small- or medium-sized enterprises. Each of these performs in small niche markets. Common to all is the fact that they encounter problems with the utilization of their ERP systems. The major problem seems to be that the ERP system has an inherent business model that may not conform to the needs of the company. Without a good understanding of the underlying models and the constraints under which the fundamental algorithms operate, it is difficult to use these systems correctly. Even excellent systems may give bad results if they are applied to situations where they are not suited. Further, the monolithic structure of an ERP system, with a rather complicated parameter setting, is often insufficient to mould the system to the needs of a niche company. We discuss these problems based on our four case studies, and offer alternative approaches that may be considered. [source] Reputation Building: Small Business Strategies for Successful Venture DevelopmentJOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2003Albert I. Goldberg A positive corporate reputation can be crucial to successful venture development. Making use of the Strategic Reference Point theory, four reputation strategies were conceptualized: 1) dynamic exploitation of existing assets; 2) development of core competencies; 3) image management; and 4) strategic alliances. In a comprehensive investigation of three software enterprises in Israel, companies were found to differ in policies that possibly could lead to a good reputation. One company emphasized the long,term establishment of core competencies and remained a fairly unknown enterprise. A second company accentuated the short,term exploitation of assets and had a middling success in reputation building. A third enterprise invested in a broad spectrum of reputation building strategies and quickly developed a reputation for excellence in the field. In conclusion, corporate success often depends on the extent to which managers develop an integrated package of policies for systematically building the intangible asset of corporate reputation. [source] Using Scanner Technology to Collect Expenditure Data,FISCAL STUDIES, Issue 3-4 2009Andrew Leicester C81; C83; C33; C41 Abstract In terms of collecting panel expenditure data, there are trade-offs between the demands imposed on respondents and the detail and coverage of data collected. Comprehensive spending data tend to be cross-sectional whilst panel studies include only limited, aggregated expenditure questions. Recently, economists have begun to use detailed, bar-code-level spending data from household panels collected by market research companies. However, there has not been a detailed assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of this collection method or its implications for the recorded data. This paper seeks to fill this gap by providing an in-depth examination of data from one company, Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), recording grocery purchases over five years. We assess how far the ongoing demands of participation lead to ,fatigue' in respondents' recording of their spending and the implications for household attrition, and we provide a detailed comparison of the expenditure data collected by TNS and the well-established Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS). Broadly, we suggest that problems of fatigue and attrition may not be particularly severe, though there are differences in expenditures that cannot be attributed to demographic or time effects and may be suggestive of survey mode effects. [source] Corporate Travel Medicine: Benefit Analysis of On-Site ServicesJOURNAL OF TRAVEL MEDICINE, Issue 4 2001Timothy S. Prince Background: Corporations with employees who travel internationally address their travel-related medical needs in a variety of ways. Options utilized include corporate medical departments, local health departments, and local clinics, both contracted and independent. Methods: A travel clinic at a university medical center routinely provided preventive travel medicine services for many of the local companies. Two of these companies had on-site medical clinics which routinely saw patients for occupational and personal health reasons. At these companies, the university travel clinic assisted in moving employee travel medicine services to the on-site clinic. Direct and indirect costs for new, predeparture employee travel care at each company were compared before, and after, the move on-site. Results: When measured per patient, total cost savings associated with the on-site travel clinic were greater than 15% at both companies (17%, 25%), primarily due to the value of the employees' time saved with decreased travel. Utilization increased at one company by 24% over the first 8 months and lead to higher overall cost, but this cost increase was only 4%. Informal assessments of the value of the on-site service at both companies was uniformly positive. Conclusion: For certain corporate settings, on-site clinics may be effective ways of providing travel medicine services. [source] Intra- and intersectoral effects in environmental disclosures: evidence for legitimacy theory?BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, Issue 6 2003David Campbell Environmental disclosures were recorded from the annual reports of a sample of ten UK FTSE 100 companies in five sectors between 1974 and 2000. ,Environmental sensitivity' was employed as a proxy for corporate vulnerability to environmental concern, and intra- and intersectoral differences were tested for in the belief that difference in industry response will signify differing perceptions on the need to provide voluntary disclosure and hence restore or maintain legitimacy. Intrasectoral agreements at given points in time were also taken to be evidence for legitimacy theory in that more than one company in a sector perceived a need to change disclosure behaviour at the same time. Legitimacy theory as an explicator for variability in environmental disclosure is supported. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] |