OBJECTIVE To explore the link between companies investing in the health and well-being programs of their employees and stock market performance. METHODS Stock performance of C. Everett Koop National Health Award winners (n = 26) was measured over time and compared with the average performance of companies comprising the Standard and Poor's (S&P) 500 Index. RESULTS The Koop Award portfolio o...

The rise in private share ownership over the last decade is an interesting but relatively poorly researched issue in Australia. In the expectation that relations between large companies and their shareholders are already important and will become increasingly so, we report exploratory longitudinal studies of two aspects of the interaction. Regression analysis of shareholders’ demographic and at...

For many small software companies, full-scale software process improvement (SPI) initiatives are often out of reach due to prohibitive costs and lack of SPI knowledge. However, to compete in the global market, software developers must improve their productivity, time to market and customer satisfaction. As part of an Australian National Industry Improvement Program, Software Engineering Austral...

The potential impact that data leakage can have on a country, both on a national level as well as on an individual level, can be wide reaching and potentially catastrophic. In January 2013, several South African companies became the target of a hack attack, resulting in the breach of security measures and the leaking of a claimed 700000 records. The affected companies are spread across a number...

Current m-commerce business models show that m-commerce depends on complex networks of business relationships, which often comprise telecommunications service providers, mobile device makers, banking industry, Internet search engine providers, and various third-party value-adding companies. Due to the nature of m-commerce, the key to success in m-commerce lies predominantly in managing a networ...

In spite of China’s continued authoritarian political system, there is growing recognition that business lobbying is an integral part of the country’s policy process at both the local and national levels. As thousands of economic regulations and laws have become key determinants of the fate of industry, all types of companies—state-owned and private, Chinese and foreign—have become active in ev...

OBJECTIVE To identify parental leave policies and availability of support systems for new parents employed by children's hospitals and compare these benefits with those offered by Fortune 500 companies. DESIGN Telephone or facsimile survey of all (n=118) children's hospitals and pediatric medical centers in the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions 1995 Directo...

BACKGROUND The present study aimed to describe exposure and attitudes of French medical residents towards pharmaceutical industry. The study was performed shortly after the Mediator affair which revealed several serious conflicts of interest inside the French health system. METHODS AND FINDINGS A cross-sectional study was implemented among residents from 6 French medical faculties. Independen...

This paper explores which factors contribute to a strong, IT Outsourcing (ITO) relationship. Therefore, a conceptual model has been developed and tested in four Major National Companies (MNCs), who have outsourced their IT and additionally, their IT service providers have been studied. All the involved contracts have multibillion SEK (the Swedish currency krona) turnovers and belong to top 100 ...