John Sterling is a partner and co-founder of Smock Sterling – Strategic Management Consultants, located in Lake Forest, Illinois ([email protected])). The Žrm specializes in strategic planning and management. Sterling’s previous Strategy & Leadership case study (Vol. 30 No. 6, November/December 2002) explained how Rubicon Technology, a high tech start-up, successfully practices strate...

OBJECTIVES To describe and discuss key findings from a recent research project that challenge an increasingly prevalent theme, apparent in both family-centred care research and practice, of conceptualizing family-centred care as shifting care, care management, and advocacy responsibilities to families. The purpose of the research, from which these findings emerged, was to develop a conceptualiz...

Strategic Operations Planning has been well defined but rarely carried out in practise. A suitable planning process for busy, operationally-focused managers is considered likely to improve the extent of implementation.. A process should incorporate logistics of the whole supply chain as well as internal operations. The present process uses action research, in which an external facilitator stimu...

This white paper discusses risk and risk management from a nontraditional viewpoint. It argues that the most critical aspect of risk management is an organization’s ability to understand and identify various kinds of risk that it faces. Further, the paper posits that this understanding of types of risk is even more important than the organization’s formal financial or operational plans, or trad...

This paper attempts to address the question of what might constitute sustainable development within the context of planning for a project that involves nonrenewable resource extraction, and hence is likely to have irreversible environmental impacts. The study will explore the ways in which the mineral sector is attempting to redefine itself through consultative initiatives. What are the key ele...

In the current practice of industrial research and development (R&D) management tools are playing an increasing important role. The growing need for alignment of R&D with business objectives, market-driven strategies and investment risk reduction are the drivers for employing portfolio management techniques. This paper proposes use of a financial portfolio management approach as a tool enabling...

The paper presents an analysis of the impact of pension plan funding on workers’ saving and portfolio behaviour. It shows that the impact of pension plan funding and asset allocation on the economy’s technology choices depends upon the constraints facing worker’s in the capital market. The failure of equivalence propositions between defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans derives...

Work is described which supports multi agent mixed initiative interaction between a task assignment or command agent and a planning agent Each agent maintains an agenda of outstanding tasks it is engaged in and uses a common representation of tasks plans processes and activities based on the notion that these are all constraints on behaviour Interaction be tween the agents uses an exchange of e...

Open-data has created an unprecedented opportunity with new challenges for ecosystem scientists. Skills in data management are essential to acquire, manage, publish, access and re-use data. These skills span many disciplines and require trans-disciplinary collaboration. Science synthesis centres support analysis and synthesis through collaborative 'Working Groups' where domain specialists work ...