What‘s in the Journals, November 2006 | Econo...

What‘s in the Journals, November 2006
Nov 23rd 2006
From Economist.com
A look at noteworthy articles from business journals
 

In two minds
Academy of Management Journal
October 2006 (Volume 49, No. 5)
“The effects of emotional ambivalence on creativity”
By Christina Ting Fong
 
“Emotional ambivalence” is defined by a professor at the University of Washington as the state of simultaneously feeling two contradictory emotions. For example, an employee might be happy and relieved at a product launch, while disappointed or frustrated that the end product was not what was originally envisioned. A pair of experiments, which first manipulated subjects (by showing them a film clip in which characters spoke of being both happy and sad) and then tested their word-association skills, suggested that people in a state of greater emotional ambivalence show greater creativity. Managers tend to prefer their employees simply happy; but perhaps moody workers are useful human resources too.
 
 
 
Innovation crosses over
strategy+business
Autumn 2006
“Innovators without borders”
By Kevin Dehoff and Vikas Sehgal
 
China and India’s growing armies of tech-savvy workers and graduates are the subject of this article, by two authors from Booz Allen Hamilton, a consultancy. If China is producing 650,000 such workers a year, and India 95,000 graduates in electrical, computer-science and information-technology engineering, then there ought to be plenty of opportunities for innovation in those two countries, they suggest. They cite a study by Booz and India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies which suggested that global spending on offshore engineering could rise from $15 billion today to $225 billion by 2020. Locating research facilities in developing countries, they argue, makes it easier to customise user demands on workers (as Nokia does at its product-design facility in Beijing), to meet regulatory standards and to take advantage of emerging specialisations. To further encourage the offshoring of R&D, some countries are offering incentives to develop research facilities. A sidebar to the article, by Inder Verma, a professor at the Salk Institute in California, describes the state of the biotechnology industry in India.
Right down the line
Journal of Healthcare Management
Volume 51, No. 5 (September/October 2006)
“Managing Variation in Demand: Lessons from the UK National Health Service”
By Paul Walley, Kate Silvester and Richard Steyn
 
Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is the focus of this piece, by a Midlands-based group of authors. First explaining how people waiting for health care queue up, they then describe how the NHS was able to shorten its queues. Using as a case study 200 24-hour emergency-treatment facilities between 2001 and 2004, they conclude that queues owed more to poor co-ordination than lack of capacity. One coping mechanism—categorising patients and splitting them into multiple queues—exacerbated the problem; one hospital had 72 different queues for computerised topography (CT) scans. The hospitals reduced queues by matching staff with times of peak demand, by streamlining similar queues and by improving discharge procedures.
 
Globalisation’s goods
Capital Ideas
September 2006
“Buying Strawberries in Winter: Globalisation and the Gains from Variety”
By Christian Broda
 
This article summarises an earlier piece by Mr Broda, from the University of Chicago and David Weinstein of Columbia University, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (seeabstract) considering the benefits of globalisation on the variety of traded goods. Between 1972 and 2001, the number of products imported by America doubled, but the total number of varieties, as counted by the authors, tripled. The authors argue that since some products may not be perfect substitutes for others (just try substituting American for Czech beer), having access to more varieties benefits American consumers—a benefit for which they are willing to pay $260 billion a year. Mr Broda argues: “Even if you don’t think trade can lower prices for consumers, you should still consider the gains from globalisation that come through new access to goods.”
 
Sleep on it
Harvard Business Review
October 2006 (Volume 84, No. 10)
“Sleep Deficit: The Performance Killer”
By Bronwyn Fryer
The macho business executive who rises in the small hours and toils late into the night gets short shrift from Charles Czeisler, a specialist in sleep and sleep deprivation at Harvard Medical School. Dr Czeisler forcefully argues that going without sleep can impair judgment: four hours of sleep for four or five days in a row, or staying awake for 24 hours straight, creates a state akin to drunkenness. Moreover, like drunks, the sleep-deprived do not realise that their decisions are being made at below-optimum mental strength. “With too little sleep,” Dr Czeisler says, “people do things that no CEO in his or her right mind would allow.” A sidebar to the interview with Dr Czeisler highlights new advances in sleep technology, including car alarms that sound when the driver becomes drowsy.
 
Be prepared
Harvard Business Review
November 2006 (Volume 84, No. 11)
“Disaster Relief, Inc.”
By Anisya Thomas and Lynn Fritz
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This article looks at how companies respond to natural and humanitarian disasters such as those wrought by Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami of December 2004. The authors, who are directors of a San Francisco-based non-profit organisation, advise on how companies can partner with relief agencies and non-governmental organisations to ensure that their contributions are used efficiently. During the tsunami relief operation, for example, Coca-Cola, drawing on a years-old relationship with the Red Cross, already had a system in place to allow its bottling operations to be used to provide drinking water. Setting up partnerships with relief organisations can also avoid inadvertent damage to the brands of both the non-profit and its private partner—Oxfam, a British-based NGO, has refused some offers of help because it feared that planes bringing emergency supplies had previously been used to carry arms, and their involvement would anger donors.