Showing papers on "Restructuring published in 1997"

Competing by Design: The Power of Organizational Architecture

Abstract: If the defining goal of modern-day business can be isolated to just one item, it would be the search for competitive advantage. And, as everyone in business knows, it's a lot harder than it used to be. On the one hand, competition is more intense than ever-technological innovation, consumer expectations, government deregulation, all combine to create more opportunities for new competitors to change the basic rules of the game. On the other hand, most of the old reliable sources of competitive advantage are drying up: the hallowed strategies employed by GM, IBM, and AT&T to maintain their seemingly unassailable positions of dominance in the 1960s and 70s are as obsolete as the calvary charge. So in this volatile, unstable environment, where can competitive advantage be found? As David Nadler and Michael Tushman show, the last remaining source of truly sustainable competitive advantage lies in 'organizational capabilities': the unique ways each organization structures its work and motivates its people to achieve clearly articulated strategic objectives. For too long, too many managers have thought about "organization" merely in terms of rearranging the boxes and lines on an organizational chart-but as Competing by Design clearly illustrates, organizational strength is found far beyond one-dimensional diagrams. Managers must, argue Nadler and Tushman, understand the concepts and learn the skills involved in designing their organization to exploit their inherent strengths. All the reengineering, restructuring, and downsizing in the world will merely destabilize a company if the change doesn't address the fundamental patterns of performance-and if the change doesn't recognize the unique core competencies of that company. In this landmark volume, the authors draw upon specific cases to illustrate the design process in practice as they provide a set of powerful, yet simple tools, for using strategic organization design to gain competitive advantage. They present a design process, explore key decisions managers face, and list the guiding principles for incorporating the design function as a continuing and integral process in organizations that are looking to the future. In 1918, Henry Ford's Dearborn assembly plant was the model of the new assembly-line technology. Today, the assembly plant is an aging relic, but, incredibly, the organizational architecture it spawned lives on in steep hierarchies, centralized bureaucracies, and narrowly defined jobs. As companies are coming to realize they can't compete successfully in the 21st century with organizations based on 19th century ideas, Competing by Design shows clearly and persuasively why-and, most importantly how-to harness the power of organizational architecture to unleash the competitive strengths embedded in each organization.

Change at Work

Abstract: This book illuminates what is really happening in the American workplace. The contributors explain how the widespread restructuring of American firms-usually resulting in a reduction of the workforce to cut costs-has had a profound impact on the lives of workers. The book explains how the new relationship requires high skill levels, but does not provide training for them. Workers themselves now must take charge of their personal development instead of relying on their employers. Their alienation from their firms is compounded by the large disparity between the pay of top managers and that of workers. The future is uncertain, but the authors argue that the traditional relationship between employer and employees will continue to erode.

Transactions Costs and Capital Structure Choice: Evidence from Financially Distressed Firms

Abstract: This study provides evidence that transactions costs discourage debt reductions by financially distressed firms when they restructure their debt out of court. As a result, these firms remain highly leveraged and one-in-three subsequently experience financial distress. Transactions costs are significantly smaller, hence leverage falls by more and there is less recurrence of financial distress, when firms recontract in Chapter 11. Chapter 11 therefore gives financially distressed firms more flexibility to choose optimal capital structures. THIS STUDY INVESTIGATES the impact of transactions costs on leverage choices by financially distressed firms. The "transaction" that I examine is the reduction in corporate debt pursuant to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization or out of court restructuring. Analysis of sample firms shows that transactions costs are much higher when debt is restructured out of court. When firms recontract this way, financial distress can be chronic: less debt is extinguished, leverage remains higher, and relatively more firms have to go back to their creditors to restructure their debt again in the future. Transactions costs are much smaller, hence debt falls significantly more, when firms recontract in Chapter 11. Chapter 11 therefore gives financially distressed firms more flexibility to choose optimal capital structures. Transactions costs are central in the ongoing academic debate about whether firms have optimal leverage ratios. Those who believe in target

The Changing Face of Job Loss in the United States, 1981-1995

Abstract: IN THE FIRST WEEK of January 1996, AT&T announced it was restructuring its operations and reducing its managerial work force by 40,000. This was only the latest in a string of widely publicized large labor force reductions announced by major American corporations. The public perceives that corporations are responding to increased competitive pressure by restructuring and downsizing their work forces, particularly their white-collar work forces, to an unprecedented degree and that the workers so displaced are suffering substantial economic hardship. I In this study I examine evidence from Displaced Workers Surveys (DWSs) from 1984 to 1996 to provide a comprehensive picture of the incidence and consequences of job loss between 1981 and 1995 to determine the extent to which labor force data support these perceptions. Data limitations make it difficult to know what groups of workers lost jobs before the 1980s. The DWSs, which have been regular supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS) at two-year intervals since 1984, have useful information on job loss, however.2 Specifically, these surveys ask workers if "in the past five years" (past three years in the 1994 and 1996 DWSs) they have "lost or left a job because of a

Inclusion and School Reform: Transforming America's Classrooms

Abstract: From the distinguished authors of Beyond Separate Education comes this panoramic view of inclusive education -- past, present, and future. Grounded in historical perspective and fueled by contemporary accomplishments, the insightful discussions in this volume cover a wide range of issues, from program implementation to court decisions. Emphasizing the need for the concurrent development of inclusion and school restructuring, the authors share with policy makers, administrators, school board members, teachers, and parents their solid understanding of school reform, as well as a vision for the 21st century.

Accountability and School Performance: Implications from Restructuring Schools

Abstract: Many politicians and policymakers today link school accountability and school performance. Drawing on evidence from the corporate world, they assume that strong external accountability will impel schools to improve student achievement. In this article, however, Fred Newmann, M. Bruce King, and Mark Rigdon argue that three issues keep this popular theory from working in practice: a) implementation controversies around standards, incentives, and constituencies; b) insufficient efforts to organize the human, technical, and social resources of a school into an effective collective enterprise — what the authors term "organizational capacity" — and c) failure to recognize the importance of internal school accountability. In a study of twenty-four restructuring schools, the authors found that strong accountability was rare; that organizational capacity was not related to accountability; that schools with strong external accountability tended to have low organizational capacity; and the strong internal accountabi...

The Invention of Regions: Political Restructuring and Territorial Government in Western Europe

Abstract: Regionalism has come back to prominence, as the political, economic, cultural, and social meaning of space is changing in contemporary Europe. In some ways, politics, economics, and public policies are deterritorializing; but at the same time and in other ways, there is a reterritorialization of economic, political, and governmental activity. The ‘new regionalism’ is the product of this decomposition and recomposition of the territorial framework of public life, consequent on changes in the state, the market, and the international context. Functional needs, institutional restructuring, and political mobilization all play a role. Regionalism must now be placed in the context of the international market and the European Union, as well as the nation-state.

Restructuring of Social and Political Theory in Education: Foucault and a Social Epistemology of School Practices.

Abstract: Our concern in this essay is with how Michel Foucault’s methodologies for the study of power are related to a more general reexamining and re-visioning of the “foundations” of critical traditions inherited from nineteenth century European forebears. Through his wide-ranging studies of knowledge, madness, prisons, sexuality, and governmentality, Foucault’s historical philosophy interrogates the conditions under which modern societies operate. His concern with how the subject is constituted in power relations forms an important contribution to recent social theory, providing both methodological and substantive challenges to the social sciences. These have been taken up in various projects across multiple settings, with particular implications for interdisciplinary work. The politics of “identity,” as witnessed in the theoretical and historical work within the feminist movement, is one such example, crossing nation-state barriers of European and Anglo-American intellectual work. Our essay moves between the particular contribution of Foucault and the more general intellectual movements to which he has contributed. The attention given to Foucault in the English-speaking world is part of a larger sea-migration of critical traditions of social science since the World War I1 period. By sea-migration, we mean the post-World War I1 mixing of European continental social theories that integrate historical and philosophical discourses with the more pragmatic (and philosophical/ analytic) traditions in the United States, Britain, and Australia.’ The translation and incorporation of European Marxist social philosophy such as that of the Frankfurt School of critical theory from Germany, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, and more recently, French “postmodern” and French and Italian feminist theories are important to the production of a “critical” space in the education arena. Social theories since World War I1 have been important grounds on which educational debates, policies, and scholarship have focused. Our use of the term

Determinants of Privatization Prices

Abstract: Generating government revenue is a common objective in privatization. This paper asks what determines privatization prices using firm-level data for all 236 Mexican companies privatized between 1983 and 1992. There are three main reasons why net prices—auction prices net of the cost of prior restructuring measures—are low, averaging 54 cents per dollar of assets. First, privatization prices are very sensitive to the level of competition in the auction and restrictions often limited participation. Second, the privatization process took too long, and lengthier privatizations are associated with lower premiums. Third, firm prior restructuring measures absorbed an average of 33 percent of the auction price. Most restructuring measures do not increase price and delay privatization further. Net prices would have increased by 71 cents per dollar of assets if the government had emphasized speed, succeeding in divesting assets in one year less than the average, and firing the CEO were the only restructuring step taken.

[History and dilemmas in the development of the worker's health field]

Abstract: This article reflects on the theoretical and practical foundations impacting and shaping the field of workers' health in Brazil, as part of the overall field of collective health. By analyzing the various forms of approaching the relationship between work and health, the paper emphasizes its complex and conflicting nature as a central reference for the work process, in keeping with the premises of social medicine in Latin America. This focus underscores the need for interdisciplinary approaches contemplating and even extrapolating the links between areas of knowledge generally ascribed to the field of health. Finally, the paper gives a brief diagnosis of the current situation in this field, where pending questions join those resulting from globalization of the economy and particularly industrial restructuring, in light of which the challenge is raised to broaden the objects of study and intervention to include the implications of outsourcing, increasingly precarious labor conditions, informal labor, and unemployment on the population's health and living conditions.

The post-Fordist world: labour relations, international hierarchy and global ecology

Abstract: This article was first presented as the RIPE annual lecture at Durham University on 7 November 1995. It seeks to explore the transformation of the capital-labour relation in the aftermath of the postwar crisis of Fordism. It examines how various solutions to this crisis, in the developed world, the newly industrialized world and, latterly, the former socialist bloc, have brought about a radical restructuring of the world's economic hierarchy. One consequence has been the emergence of continental blocs characterized by the heterogeneity of the economic systems within their sphere. The coexistence of countries with differing labour regimes within integrated continental blocs is the primary focus, with each bloc analysed in turn for its particular aspects. This leads to consideration of the possibility of a third international division of labour. The article concludes with an examination of an unexpected consequence of this restructuring, namely the relation between systems of labour-capital relations and at...

Analogical Reasoning and Conceptual Change: A Case Study of Johannes Kepler

Abstract: The work of Johannes Kepler offers clear examples of conceptual change. In this article, using Kepler's work as a case study, we argue that analogical reasoning facilitates change of knowledge in four ways: (a) highlighting, (b) projection, (c) rerepresentation, and (d) restructuring. We present these four mechanisms within the context of structure-mapping theory and its computational implementation, the structure-mapping engine. We exemplify these mechanisms using the extended analogies Kepler used in developing a causal theory of planetary motion.

Privatization and Restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe: Evidence and Policy Options

Abstract: This paper analyzes the financial and operating data (1992 to 1995) for more than 6,300 industrial firms in seven countries in Central and Eastern Europe--Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia. The authors compare the extent of restructuring across firms in these countries to determine which country's policies are most effective in encouraging restructuring. The analysis examined the following measures of restructuring: a) profitability; b) proportion of firms with a positive operating cash flow; c) average operating cash flow as a percent of revenue; d) growth in labor productivity; e) growth in total factor productivity; and f) growth in exports. The authors next used econometric analysis to identify government policies that most encouraged firms to restructure. The study also found that privatization had a large impact on restructuring, but there was little difference in productivity between private firms in countries that used mass privatization methods and in the other countries which have used standard methods. The authors also examined the role of banks in the restructuring of firms. They concluded that recapitalizing banks to compensate for their bad loans and encouraging them to forgive bad loans is unlikely to help firms restructure very much. A safer course of action is to recapitalize banks only at the time of their privatization and after a large share of enterprises are privatized.

Restructuring in Context: A Case Study of Teacher Participation and the Dynamics of Ideology, Race, and Power

Abstract: Teacher participation is central to many school restructuring projects. This article challenges assumptions regarding the connection between greater teacher empowerment and school-based reform, particularly for students in marginalized groups. The article presents a case study of teacher collaboration and decision making in restructuring a junior high school and the implications for low-achieving African-American students. Using ethnographic methods, the study examines the influence of teachers’ ideologies and the social and political contexts in which the school is embedded. My analysis of the data suggests that, if restructuring is to transform the educational experiences of marginalized students, it will require both personal and social change—challenging educators’ beliefs and assumptions as well as relations of power in schools and communities.

Knowledge restructuring in the life sciences: A longitudinal study of conceptual change in biology

Abstract: This study examined successive and progressive changes in the structural complexity of knowledge held by introductory, college-level biology students and how those changes are affected by the students' primary learning mode and gender. To examine the way learners restructure knowledge over the course of a semester, subjects constructed concept maps at 4-week intervals throughout the term. The maps were then evaluated for structural complexity and change based on the works of other investigators. Results suggest that a substantial amount of knowledge restructuring takes place and that much of it is incremental in nature; “accretion” and “tuning” accounting for 75% of the observed structural changes. Of potential importance, however, is that “radical” changes involving higher order, superordinate concepts are concentrated in the first 4 weeks of the semester. The observed relationships between knowledge restructuring and predominant learning mode and gender of students are potentially significant. The evidence suggests that students who use “active,” “deep” information processing strategies construct more elaborate, well-differentiated knowledge structures. Furthermore, it appears that gender may be an important mediator of meaningful learning. It is particularly notable that where gender differences were found, they tended to favor females. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 81:193–215, 1997.

European Party Systems: Continuity and Change

Abstract: The debate about the stability or change in contemporary Western European party systems is characterised by a cacophony of contradictory voices. On one side are those who see still the same old blocs of parties on the left and the right, large and small party machines, and dominance of parties’ parliamentary and government leaders over the party membership. On the other side, some see a dramatic process of restructuring in European party systems with new parties, profound shifts of power and strategy within established parties, and novel forms of party organisation. Many of the seemingly contradictory views can be explained by distinguishing different types of party system change. I will first provide a simplified sketch of conventional post-Second World War European party systems and then turn to the changes in European polities since the 1960s or 1970s.

Gender, Careers and Organisations: Current Developments in Banking, Nursing and Local Government

Abstract: Is the position of women in the workplace changing? In addressing the broad range of issues raised by this question, Gender, Careers and Organisations engages in diverse contemporary debates about economic and organisational restructuring, human agency and strategy, embodiment and sexuality. Drawing on original empirical research into contemporary British banking, nursing and local government, the book both contributes to a reformulation of current debates and to the development of theoretical perspectives on gender, careers and organisations.

National Competition Policy

Abstract: National competition policy is having a major effect on Australian industry. The Hilmer committee recommendations on infrastructure access, competitive neutrality, restructuring of public enterprises and legislative review have been accepted by all Australian governments. The underlying economic principles, however, are not necessarily reflected in the reforms. The process of negotiated infrastructure access established under national competition policy may lead to monopoly rather than competitive pricing. Structural reforms of government business enterprises have ignored the benefits of integration and the relevant market characteristics. Legislative review has resulted in considerable political controversy. In some cases, competition policy can be improved by simple amendments to legislation while in other cases a clearer understanding of the relevant trade-offs may improve the reform process.

The Market Meets Its Match: Restructuring the Economies of Eastern Europe

Abstract: Preface From Pseudo-Socialism to Pseudo-Capitalism Transition Macroeconomics The Black Box of State-Owned Enterprises Overloading the Market Mechanism Pseudo-Privatization and the World Bank Enterprise and the State Challenges Facing the State Reconstructing the State Economy, Society, and the State Notes References Index

Exit, the firm and sunk costs: reconceptualizing the corporate geography of disinvestment and plant closure

Abstract: The objective of this article is to reconceptualize understanding of the economic and spatial processes of corporate restructuring and market exit. We ask what economic logic explains plant closure and firms’ exit from industries, and develop a comprehensive perspective on the nature of the exit process focused on firms in which there is a separation of ownership and control, which are rich in capital assets and that are held hostage by their history and geography. Exit is treated as a sequence of related strategic decisions made by the firm regarding the use of its inherited configuration of capital, and we argue that there is an intimate connection between sunk costs and the logic of those decisions. The broader theoretical challenge addressed by the article concerns the provision of a coherent account of the spatial configuration of the firm in the context of the evolving world of corporate finance, corporate governance and capital specificity. These are important matters for economic geography.

Managing sustainable development in South Africa

Abstract: Part A Introduction: sustainable development - vision and realities. Part B Challenges: search for a development strategy - the RDP and beyond development management in Africa - issues for South Africa The problem of bureaucratic administration into the future - restructuring the public service ethics of public management civil service reforms in Africa - problems and prospects local governance in transition the RDP, governance, and rural development negotiation, conflict resolution, and human needs managing sustainable economic development development and the environment. Part C Mechanisms: empowering people for sustainable development new training approaches - exploring the paradigm shift affirmative action interventions transforming public sector institutions transforming the public service labour environment donors and development prospects for sustainable local government parastatals and development finance managing information technology. Part D Explorations: governance, administrative transformation, and development in South Africa - a normative approach exploring the dynamics of educational change health - a district-level perspective management of the water cycle in a metropolitan area defence and development - dangerous liaisons? managing local development - the Tamboville case-study developing information - an NGO case-study.

Restructuring, head movement, and locality

Abstract: This article presents a novel account of the well-known restructuring phenomenon of the Romance languages, concentrating on Italian. I argue that it is possible to retain the benefits of an incorporation analysis while avoiding the associated difficulties by positing that infinitives in fact incorporate with restructuring verbs but that the resulting complex verb cannot be spelled out as such, owing to a constraint banning the realization of more than one morphological word under a single X 0 . I show how this analysis accounts for the Italian data discussed in Rizzi 1982 and Burzio 1986, as well as many facts from Old French, Dutch, and English

The contest over employer status in the postwar United States : The case of temporary help firms

Abstract: This study examines the sociolegal underpinnings of the temporary help relationship as one kind of contingent work arrangement and explores how it became institutionalized in the post-World War II United States. While the American literature on contingent work suggests its tremendous growth has been merely a result of changing human resource strategies on the part of business managers, the focus here is on the specific role played by courts, state legislatures, and government administrative bodies in ratifying the temporary help arrangement as legal and legitimate. The article details the obscure history of the campaign waged by temporary help firms to win their claim as the legal employers of workers they send out to client firms, a central premise of the arrangement. It shows that statutory and policy changes supporting the increased use of temporary work were in place by the early 1970s, in time for its expanded use to play a key role in the restructuring of U.S. employment relations since that time

Restructuring health and rural communities in New Zealand

Abstract: The recent restructuring of health-care provision has particularly a•ected rural communities in New Zealand, a nation characterized by an emerging biculturalism in its policies and outlook. In this article we develop a framework linking health care, the rural experience of place and the national cultural fabric. After presenting the stories of two North Island communities undergoing transition, we consider the role of health care in influencing the broader health of rural settlements as communities. We conclude that for communities as well as their residents, health and place are mutually constituted through the activities of health-care provision.

Lessons from the economic transition : Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s

Abstract: Preface. Abbreviations. Introduction. Part I: Main Successes and Failures in the Transition Strategy. 1. Transition Approaches in Retrospect S. Zecchini. 2. The Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Some Strategic Lessons from the Experience of 25 Countries over Six Years N. Stern. 3. Transition to Date: A Comparative Overview M. de Melo, A. Gelb. 4. From Transition to Market: Evidence and Growth Prospects S. Fischer, et al. 5. Lessons to be Drawn from Main Mistakes in the Transition Strategy K. Laski, A. Bhaduri. 6. Adjustment Without Recession: A Case Study of Hungarian Stabilization J. Kornai. 7. The Interplay Between Economic and Political Transition L. Balcerowicz. 8. Political Constraints and the Transition Experience G. Roland. 9. Comments. 10. General Discussion. 11. Policy Conclusions. Part II: Enterprise Restructuring and Private Sector Development. 1. Comparing Two Great Depressions: 1929-33 to 1989-93 J. Rostowski. 2. Restructuring Outcomes and the Evolution of Ownership Patterns in Central and Eastern Europe P. Aghion, W. Carlin. 3. Corporate Governance and the Political Effects of Privatisation R. Frydman, A. Rapaczynski. 4. Large Privatisation, Restructuring and Foreign Direct Investment G. Hunya. 5. The Evolution of Bank Credit Quality in Romania Since 1991 O.V. Carare, E. Perotti. 6. Comments. 7. General Discussion. 8. Policy Conclusions. Part III:Unemployment and the Reform of Social Policies. 1. Unemployment, Restructuring and the Pace of Transition S. Commander, A. Tolstopiatenko. 2. Transformation as a Demographic Crisis M. Ellman. 3. Labour Market Policy and the Reallocation of Labour Across Sectors R. Jackman, C. Pauna. 4. Central and Eastern European Labour Markets in Transition M. Gora. 5. Reforming Tax and Benefit Systems in Central Europe: Lessons from Hungary D.M. Newbery. 6. Comments. 7. General Discussion. 8. Policy Conclusions. Part IV: External Policies. 1. Currency Convertibility in Transforming Economies: Was it a Mistake? R.N. Cooper. 2. Exchange Rate Policies in Post-Communist Economies D. Rostai. 3. Access to Western Markets, and Eastern Effort Levels E.E. Leamer. 4. Interrelations Between Subregional Co-Operation and EU Enlargement A. Inotai. 5. Foreign Direct Investment in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Results from a Survey of Investors H.-P. Lankes, A.J. Venables. 6. Comments. 7. General Discussion. 8. Policy Conclusions.