According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

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The Theory of Industrial Organization

Resource-based theories of competitive advantage: A ten-year retrospective on the resource-based view

Typologies are an important way of organizing the complex cause-effect relationships that are key building blocks of the strategy and organization literatures. Here, I develop a novel theoretical perspective on causal core and periphery, which is based on how elements of a configuration are connected to outcomes. Using data on hightechnology firms, I empirically investigate configurations based on the Miles and Snow typology using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). My findings show how the theoretical perspective developed here allows for a detailed analysis of causal core, periphery, and asymmetry, shifting the focus to midrange theories of causal processes.

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Building Better Causal Theories: A Fuzzy Set Approach to Typologies in Organization Research

Mixed methods research offers powerful tools for investigating complex processes and systems in health and health care. This article describes integration principles and practices at three levels in mixed methods research and provides illustrative examples. Integration at the study design level occurs through three basic mixed method designs—exploratory sequential, explanatory sequential, and convergent—and through four advanced frameworks—multistage, intervention, case study, and participatory. Integration at the methods level occurs through four approaches. In connecting, one database links to the other through sampling. With building, one database informs the data collection approach of the other. When merging, the two databases are brought together for analysis. With embedding, data collection and analysis link at multiple points. Integration at the interpretation and reporting level occurs through narrative, data transformation, and joint display. The fit of integration describes the extent the qualitative and quantitative findings cohere. Understanding these principles and practices of integration can help health services researchers leverage the strengths of mixed methods.

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Achieving Integration in Mixed Methods Designs—Principles and Practices

Elzinga/Hogarty inflow/outflow analysis is a mainstay of geographic market definition in antitrust analysis. For example, U.S. antitrust agencies lost several hospital merger challenges when evidence showed that a nontrivial fraction of local patients traveled outside the local community for care. We show that the existence of traveling consumers may not limit seller market power with respect to non-traveling consumers--a phenomenon we label the silent majority fallacy. We estimate a random coefficients logit model of hospital demand and use the estimates to predict the increase in price that various mergers would generate. Two distinct methods of predicting the price increase are implemented and both indicate that even in suburban areas with high outflows of consumers, some hospital mergers could lead to significant price increases.

The Silent Majority Fallacy of the Elzinga-Hogarty Criteria: A Critique and New Approach to Analyzing Hospital Mergers

The Five W's of Utilization Review

The willingness of individuals to engage in a harmful act may be influenced by direct personal experiences and the experiences of others, which can inform individuals about the likely consequences of their actions. In this paper, we examine how obstetricians respond to litigation. It is contended that obstetricians respond to increases in litigiousness by performing more cesarean sections. Using micro data, we examine whether physicians perform more cesareans after they or their colleagues have been contacted about a lawsuit. We observe very small, short-lived increases in cesarean section rates. It does not appear that the recent sharp rise in cesarean section rates is in direct response to litigation.

Influence and Deterrence: How Obstetricians Respond to Litigation Against Themselves and Their Colleagues

Claims both published and anecdotal are regularly made for audibly superior sound quality for two-channel audio encoded with longer word lengths and/or at higher sampling rates than the 16-bit/44.1-kHz CD standard. The authors report on a series of double-blind tests comparing the analog output of high-resolution players playing high-resolution recordings with the same signal passed through a 16-bit/44.1-kHz “bottleneck.” The tests were conducted for over a year using different systems and a variety of subjects. The systems included expensive professional monitors and one high-end system with electrostatic loudspeakers and expensive components and cables. The subjects included professional recording engineers, students in a university recording program, and dedicated audiophiles. The test results show that the CD-quality A/D/A loop was undetectable at normal-to-loud listening levels, by any of the subjects, on any of the playback systems. The noise of the CD-quality loop was audible only at very elevated levels.

Letters to the editor: Comments on "Audibility of A CD-standard A/D/A loop inserted into high-resolution audio playback"

In April 1997, a consortium of hardware manufacturers and movie studios launched the DVD format. By that fall, electronics retailing giant Circuit City announced its intentions to launch a partially incompatible format known as DIVX. This Paper assesses Circuit City’s strategy to establish the dominant standard for digital video technology. We identify several key principles that any firm must consider when deciding how to compete in a market with evolving standards. We argue that virtually all of these factors weighed in against Circuit City, so that its effort was destined to fail.

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David Dranove

Papers

The Silent Majority Fallacy of the Elzinga-Hogarty Criteria: A Critique and New Approach to Analyzing Hospital Mergers

The Five W's of Utilization Review

Influence and Deterrence: How Obstetricians Respond to Litigation Against Themselves and Their Colleagues

Letters to the editor: Comments on "Audibility of A CD-standard A/D/A loop inserted into high-resolution audio playback"

Surviving a Standards War: Lessons Learned from the Life and Death of DIVX