|
 |
Friday, September 14, 2007 |
There are some really good articles at Knowledge@Emory this month:
Who's to Blame for the Subprime Debacle?
Dissecting the reasons for the subprime mortgage debacle in America is like sleuthing through a good whodunit. The latest chapter in the complicated tale is the role of the credit rating agencies, in particular, whether their fee structure contributed to faulty information for investors. Pressure on these agencies has been intense. For example, McGraw-Hill, owner of Standard & Poor's, has lost 26% off its stock this year. And there have been personnel changes: one of the latest was the president of the Standard & Poor's division, who resigned Aug. 30. Faculty at Emory University and its Goizueta Business School explore the role of rating agencies and discuss other possible culprits in this ongoing drama.
Finance and Investment
As the Demand for Audit Committees has Increased, So Too has Their Pay
The implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act continue to mount. Many studies have looked at the increased costs to companies to comply with the legislation, but what about the effects on members of the audit committee whose job it is to oversee the company financials? In a new paper by Xue Wang, assistant professor of accounting at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, and colleagues entitled, "Audit Committee Compensation and Demand for Monitoring of the Financial Reporting Process," the authors explore the reasons for their increase in pay. They find that as the demand for monitoring of the financial reporting process increases, the compensation for audit committees increases, too.
Managing Technology
The Silver Bullet Market: Academia's Role
Decision Support Systems (or DSS) have the potential for providing managers with powerful tools for compiling useful information from raw data, facilitating the comparison of results and solutions and ultimately solving complex business problems. However, for those seeking quick answers or the so-called "silver bullet," these technologies can be easily misappropriated and misused, almost in an addictive sense. The problem, warns Elliot Bendoly, associate professor of decision and information analysis at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, is that DSS are designed to complement the decision process, not overtake it - yet that distinction is too often underemphasized. In the soon-to-be published paper "Silver Bullet Junkies and the Codifiers that Love Them," Bendoly and a coauthor examine the vulnerability of a support system design that fails to account for real-world issues such as human behavior. The pair also discuss the ethics surrounding academia's role in this arena.
Human Resources
Is Your Image Hindering Your Career Growth?
Wondering what's holding you back from getting a senior position in your company? Take a look in a full-length mirror: The problem may be the image reflecting back at you. From lack of communication skills to a bad haircut, style and other nuances in the workplace matter when it comes to promotion and the executive suite, contend faculty at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. Business communicators at Goizueta along with industry insiders explore grooming, social cues, and the importance of emotional intelligence when getting ahead matters.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
For UPS, Delivering Solutions Is Key to Its Growth and Success
UPS is supposed to be celebrating 100 years of success. Instead, the company is doing what it is famous for: reexamining its past and contemplating its future to see what can be fixed. "That's typical for UPS, because for that company it is about the journey not the destination," says Sundar Bharadwaj, a professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. Faculty at Goizueta explore the company's strategy, culture, and challenges.
Leadership and Change
Why Purpose and Tenacity Make the Great, Great
Persistence, dedication and a driving passion mark the successful, noted best-selling author Dennis P. Kimbro during a recent lecture at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. With energy and vigor, Kimbro rallied students by describing the mindset and determination of African-Americans who have triumphed over obstacles and become mega-achievers. "Get a big dream," Kimbro urged the Goizueta students. "These individuals were inner-directed versus outer-directed. They weren't so quick to believe well-meaning friends or family members who said, 'You can't do this' or 'You can't do that.' And they flat out refused to fail."
Strategic Management
Rivals Set Their Sights on Microsoft Office: Can They Topple the Giant?
It's open season on Microsoft Office. Google is distributing Sun Microsystems' StarOffice and also has its own web-based productivity suite. Apple has a new spreadsheet called Numbers to compete with Microsoft's Excel. Open source suite OpenOffice, along with several web-based products, are attacking as well. All these challengers emerge at a time when Microsoft's dominance in productivity software -- Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel -- remains strong. So why try to overthrow the leader? And how vulnerable is Microsoft to this assault?
8:24:17 AM 
|
|
Last week Jack Bolick, president of Honeywell Process Solutions, stunned the industry with an open letter to various publications urging the Hart Communications Foundation Board to vote down the latest standard that included a wireless specification. Honeywell lost the vote (unofficial sources tell me it was 4-1). Honeywell's Jeff Becker wrote an open letter to the ISA SP100 committee that is also developing a wireless standard explaining Honeywell's position. He gave me permission to report it.
By the way, if all this sounds familiar, it should. I was at the press conference in, I believe, 1999 when Dick Caro resigned from standards committees for fieldbus when the decision was made that instead of seeking the nirvana of a single, universal fieldbus, the IEC committee recognized market pressures and acknowledged that such networks as Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus and DeviceNet could all be standards. Sounds like a similar thing going on here. Oh, and by the way, I see that Caro is now active in SP100.
Here's Honeywell's letter:
Gentlemen -
Over the past week, there has been a flurry of activity surrounding Honeywell's position on the WirelessHART specification and the ISA100.11a standard. On behalf of Jack Bolick, President of Honeywell Process Solutions, I would like to clarify Honeywell's position on this topic.
Based on customer feedback and the experience gained from over 500 wireless installations in industrial environments, we believe that the best interests of the industry are served by a single, universal wireless network standard designed to efficiently, effectively and uniformly support all application protocols. This vision is made possible with the powerful ISA100.11a protocol stack and its flexibility to accommodate any fieldbus protocol at the application level.
It is important to stay true to this goal, maintaining both functionality and design simplicity. In order to be universally adopted, we believe that all fieldbus application protocols should communicate over the ISA100 network in a uniform way without special treatment or complicated sub-options. This eliminates the issues that have plagued past fieldbus standards.
Honeywell fully supports the current direction of the SP100.11a standard as exemplified in the Principles of Operation. We encourage the ISA to continue on their present course, and look forward to the October draft specification.
Universal wireless technology represents a strategic inflection point for our industry, and we are delighted that the ISA is leading the charge. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Jeff Becker
Global Wireless Business Leader
Honeywell Process Solutions
8:17:42 AM
|
|
Another friend, Amit over at Moblize, and someone who sees the bigger picture beyond the hype of M2M, has unveiled a Web portal that looks interesting. Hopefully he'll be at the Automation World booth on Tuesday evening of ISA Expo during the beer and food time. Stop by and join the automation conversations.
8:01:02 AM
|
|
My friend Dave Harrold asks a good question on his blog, how much knowledge from retiring engineers and operators do we really want to capture? This generation made the leap from pneumatic to electronic. The new generation knows only electronic--and will build on the work done by their predecessors. What do you think?
7:56:53 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2007 Gary Mintchell.
|
|
|
