Just wanted to point out a few articles I've come across lately that you might want to point out to your management.
I found them all in publications I subscribe to, but I imagine they're all avaiable online. 1. Wall Street Journal, June 18, page B2 "China Embraces Old-School Business Guru" byline; George Anders includes excerpts from Peter Drucker's writings, including: * The essential activities of business are innovation and marketing; it's a mistake to fixate on profits * Good management should make work productive and the worker effective * 'Knowledge workers' in modern organizations may manage no one, yet their decisions' impact can be comparable to what executives do 2. Wall Street Journal, July 7, page R4 "How Offshore Outsourcing Affects Customer Satisfaction" byline: Jonathan Whitaker, M.S. Krishman, and Clares Fornell reporting on results of various studies, a couple of highlights: * "companies outsourcing customer service is associated with a drop of roughly 1% to 5%, depending on what industry the company is in" * the effect of outsourcing abroad is significantly negative "but similar to the effect of outsourcing customer service domestically". 3. Time magazine, July 7 Column "The Curious Capitalist" by Justin Fox "Employees First!" Interview with founders of The Container Store and Whole Foods, some gems: * we hit upon the philosphy that... the purpose of business is not primarily to maximize shareholder value." * "The idea is that happy, empowered employees beget happy customers." I enjoyed these insights, and can see applications of them to the businesses many on this list work for. We are always being charged with "being in line" with the company business goals. Maybe it's a two-way street. No replies nor discussion on the list, please; this was just a short post of things I found useful and enlightening, and I'm happy to talk off-list about them, but I want to minimize what some call "noise" or "clutter" whenever content is non-technical. Kind regards, -Steve Comstock The Trainer's Friend, Inc. 303-393-8716 http://www.trainersfriend.com z/OS Application development made easier * Our classes include + How things work + Programming examples with realistic applications + Starter / skeleton code + Complete working programs + Useful utilities and subroutines + Tips and techniques ==> Check out the Trainer's Friend Store to purchase z/OS <== ==> application developer toolkits. Sample code in four <== ==> programming languages, JCL to Assemble or compile, <== ==> bind and test. <== ==> http://www.trainersfriend.com/TTFStore/index.html <== ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html