廣告

2011年2月27日 星期日

神戸地裁支部: Mazda 社員自殺付6千万円

這是最近日本"過勞死"的一案件之判決:


社員自殺、マツダに6千万円支払い命令 神戸地裁支部

2011年2月28日11時18分


写真:判決を受け会見する自殺した男性の父親。マツダの対応を強く非難した=28日午前10時56分、兵庫県姫路市、新井義顕撮影拡大判決を受け会見する自殺した男性の父親。マツダの対応を強く非難した=28日午前10時56分、兵庫県姫路市、新井義顕撮影

 自動車メーカー・マツダの本社(広島県府中町)の男性社員(当時25)が自殺したのは、長時間労働が続いていた男性に対して会社側が適切にサポートしな かったのが原因だとして、両親が慰謝料など約1億1千万円の支払いを求めた訴訟の判決が28日、神戸地裁姫路支部であった。中村隆次裁判長はマツダ側の過 失を認め、約6400万円の支払いを命じた。

 判決によると、男性は2004年4月にマツダに入り、06年11月からエンジン用部品の輸入業務を担当。07年3月にうつ病を発症し、翌4月に社宅で首つり自殺した。広島中央労働基準監督署は09年1月、自殺と仕事の因果関係を認め、労災認定した。

 両親は訴訟で「部品に不具合が多く、トラブル処理などに長時間の時間外労働を強いられた」とし、男性が会社で使っていたパソコンの起動時間などから、自 殺直前の3カ月間は厚生労働省の過労死認定基準にあたる月平均80時間以上の時間外労働をしていたと指摘。「男性の前任者で入社約20年の社員も体調を崩 したのに、会社は男性を孤立無援の状態で働かせた」とし、社員の健康面に配慮する義務を怠ったと主張していた。

 判決は、男性が時間外労働などの影響で心身ともに健康を損なっていたと認定。マツダ側が男性の負担を軽減させるなどの適切な支援を上司らにさせなかったとし、両親側の訴えをほぼ認めた。

 判決後、男性の父親は「マツダが判決を真摯(しんし)に受け止めて社員の安全と安心して働ける職場環境を整備するよう、強く要望します」との談話を出した。(川田惇史、平賀正弘)

台北捷運局之虛偽:"自賣自誇"

公務機關最喜歡"自賣自誇"
前幾年台北捷運局自己猛吹他們的服務可靠度等冠前球
我就到他們吹噓的倫敦聯盟的網站去看
結果根本找不到其吹噓的數據 甚至於很難找到台北捷運局的資訊
然後就是文湖線的半年鬧劇
台北捷運局就說這還是"測試期間".....

反正 多拿些洋機關來唬"國人"就是啦!

-----


"台北捷運南港東延段今天(27號)通車,台北捷運公司董事長蔡輝昇說,台北捷運年運量可以超過五億人次,倫敦軌道技術策略研究中心也正式來函北 市府,希望台北捷運今年9月可以加入CoMET大聯盟,大聯盟會在4月開會討論,一旦通過,台北捷運將加入大聯盟,等同將與莫斯科、巴黎、紐約等城市地 鐵,並駕齊驅。

台北捷運從去年蘆洲線通車之後,捷運每天的運量都超過150萬人次,年總運量超過5億人次,今年再度加入東延段,台北捷運的年運量更高,台 北捷運公司董事長蔡輝昇說,最近英國倫敦帝國學院軌道技術策略研究中心,已經正式來函邀台北捷運在今年九月,加入國際軌道運輸CoMET大聯盟,也就是 說,台北捷運今年9月,將成為大聯盟一份子,可以與莫斯科、倫敦、巴黎、紐約、北京、香港地鐵等並駕齊驅,可以彼此交換營運心得,這是台北捷運相當重要的 一步。捷運公司董事長蔡輝昇說,除了台北捷運將從Nova小聯盟,躍升到CoMET大聯盟,台北捷運去年營運穩定度,也創下紀錄,五分鐘以上延誤的車廂公 里數,達到200萬車廂公里數,這是85年通車以來最好的成績。"

獎獎獎: 天下多少獎 假汝之名.....

獎獎獎: 天下多少獎 假汝之名.....



這故事告訴我們教育部少設什麼孔子獎之類的獎: "親乳頭、摸私處...師鐸獎狼師送辦"

----

Quote:

"But seriously, I think overall in the scheme of things winning an Emmy is not important. Let's get our priorities straight. I think we all know what's really important in life — winning an Oscar." Ellen DeGeneres



The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the C.../The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value
探討過去百年在文藝領域的各種獎項之"文化價值觀"的傳播/影響力

---
 大獎章:一頭野獸
阿波利奈爾論藝術 Apollinaire Chroniques Sur l'art

----

2011年2月26日 星期六

跨國大藥廠的表現

"......過去廿年,生物醫學以改善人類健康為口號,取得空前的資源、生產了數量龐大的實驗結果與論文,教人驚艷的應用成果卻不多。跨國大藥廠的表現,就是證據。

這十年來,跨國大藥廠研發新藥一直不順利,以合併維持利潤,早已不是新聞。最新的招數是請科學家走路:一月底,營收、研發經費都世界第一的輝瑞大藥廠宣布 削減明年的研發預算,幅度達四分之一,約廿億美元。首當其衝的是當年開發過威而鋼的單位(位於英格蘭):兩千四百名員工只有幾百個能留下、調差。美國也有 一個單位要縮編,受影響的有一千多人。......" (王道還)

cell productions in Canon

全世界的數位相機,每五台就有一台Canon。如果只算單眼相機,Canon勢力更大,每兩到三台就有一台是Canon。佳能世界第一的祕密,全藏在十四人一組的細胞生產法裡,平均生產一台相機不到一分鐘。

2011年2月24日 星期四

台灣政府代算200萬戶報稅 寄到家

200萬戶報稅 政府代算寄到家

試算通知4月25日前寄發

〔記 者鄭琪芳/台北報導〕今年五月申報綜所稅,報稅內容較單純的二百萬戶民眾有福了!國稅局將首度主動幫納稅人試算稅額,並於四月二十五日前寄發通知書,民眾 一旦接受這份試算表,只要於申報期限(五月三十一日)前繳納稅款即可;至於退稅與不補不退案件更簡單,可直接透過網路或書面回覆確認,就算完成報稅。

如果民眾不想讓國稅局計算稅額,可以拒絕這項服務,在三月一日至三月十五日,透過網路(http://tax.nat.gov.tw)或以書面方式提出申請,表明自行申報綜所稅。

網路或書面回覆完成報稅

財 政部長李述德昨日現身說法,解釋這項便民措施;他說,現行綜所稅申報戶都是由五百三十多萬戶納稅人自行申報,每年稅額三千多億元,扣繳憑單有七千多萬張; 如果改由國稅局試算稅額,可有二百萬戶適用這套服務,以每戶節省一.五小時、每小時工資一百零一元計算,可節省社會成本三億元,加上節省稽徵成本七千六百 六十五萬元,合計可節省有形及無形成本三.七億元。

誰才能享受到這項試算服務呢?財政部賦稅署說明,綜所稅稅額試算服務適用條件,包括僅列報本人、配偶及直系親屬的免稅額;均為扣免繳憑單及股利憑單的所得資料;採用「標準扣除額」;無任何抵減稅額;不須報繳最低稅負;及夫妻未分居申報案件等。

賦稅署指出,符合試算稅額服務的申報戶,國稅局將於四月二十五日前以掛號寄發通知書及相關表單,民眾收到書表後,如果接受國稅局的試算結果必須繳稅,只要於申報期限(五月三十一日)前繳納稅款即可。

若有錯誤 另行申報即可

賦稅署說明,綜所稅試算稅額服務屬於便民措施,並非直接核定稅額,民眾接到試算稅額通知書後,如果內容不正確,或是要增減免稅額人數、改採列舉扣除額等,只要另行申報綜所稅即可,不必依通知書金額繳稅或回覆確認。

李述德強調,國稅局提供綜所稅試算稅額服務,個人資料保護非常嚴密,不會有個資外洩的問題,但民眾若不同意由國稅局計算稅額,可於三月一日至三月十五日,向國稅局提出申報,一經申請就不可撤銷,必須自行申報綜所稅。

2011年2月22日 星期二

哈佛大學商學院的一些老師談新世紀重要管理趨勢

哈佛大學商學院的一些老師談新世紀重要趨勢


Research & Ideas

The Most Important Management Trends of the (Still Young) Twenty-First Century

Executive Summary:

HBS Dean Nitin Nohria and faculty look backward and forward at the most important business trends of the young twenty-first century.


About Faculty in this Article:

HBS Faculty Member Nitin Nohria

Nitin Nohria is the Dean of Harvard Business School.

About Faculty in this Article:

HBS Faculty Member Teresa M. Amabile

Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

About Faculty in this Article:

HBS Faculty Member Carliss Y. Baldwin

Carliss Y. Baldwin is the William L. White Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

About Faculty in this Article:

HBS Faculty Member Francesca Gino

Francesca Gino is an associate professor in the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School

About Faculty in this Article:

HBS Faculty Member Linda A. Hill

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

About Faculty in this Article:

HBS Faculty Member Michael I. Norton

Michael I. Norton is an associate professor in the Marketing unit at Harvard Business School.

About Faculty in this Article:

HBS Faculty Member Richard H.K. Vietor

Richard Vietor is the Paul Whiton Cherington Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

HBS Working Knowledge recently celebrated its tenth birthday, and we mark the occasion by looking back and looking forward. We've asked HBS Dean Nitin Nohria and a number of faculty to both remark on what they view as the most significant business management ideas of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and then to tell us what they hope will be the most fertile areas of business research between now and 2020.

But we didn't leave it there. Professor Jim Heskett is moderating a similar discussion with HBS Working Knowledge readers, and we encourage you to participate. As of this writing some 75 comments have been submitted.

Finally, I thought you would be interested in learning the most popular WK articles since we set up shop. You can see the results here.

Thank you to our more than 2 million annual visitors who have supported and contributed to this publication over its first decade, and our growing list of followers on Facebook. We promise to keep you at the cutting edge of emerging business research and trends over the next 10 years.

—Sean

HBS Dean Nitin Nohria

Globalization, enabled and accelerated by technology, has had a greater impact on business (and, indeed, on society) than any other development in the past decade. The western dominated economy and society of the past century has yielded way to a new global century, in which no one country or region enjoys an undisputed advantage.

Instead, we are seeing multiple players competing on a world stage, including emerging economies like China, India, and Brazil. This list will continue to grow. A by-product of the intertwining of globalization and technology enabled networks is that events are no longer isolated, the impact of which was on vivid display during the global economic crisis and the recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

Going forward, we are entering into a time of limitless possibilities when it comes to the role of business in the world. Yet we also face serious societal challenges that, if not addressed, will limit the extent to which we can realize those opportunities.

In the coming decade I believe the research agenda at business schools will be driven by the desire to apply management principles to addressing complex social problems (like balancing energy security with environmental sustainability), whose solutions lie at the intersection of academic disciplines. Disciplinary expertise will continue to be the bedrock of the academy but the boundaries that separate schools and faculties will melt away. This trend has already taken hold at Harvard, where faculty from across the University are building formal and informal networks around issues like health care and the environment.

Teresa Amabile

Over the past decade, nothing has had a more profound impact on business management than information technology. Ten years ago, many of us in business, academia, and government were wondering where it was all going. The tech bubble had burst and, although there were several survivors, the future of e-commerce and other info tech industries seemed perilous.

BusinessWeek.com recently ranked Amazon #6 in its annual list of most innovative companies; four of the other five are internet or computer businesses. In all its forms, info tech now reaches every aspect of business strategy and organizational management. Products are being developed through open innovation, with input from people connected to each other and the company only through a common interest—and electronic media. Virtually every company on the globe, including the tiniest startup, has a website. Internet-based companies like Google record every click and keystroke of every customer, analyzing the data to continuously improve their products and marketing. Customers are courted and supply chains are managed via websites, social media, and email; marketing, manufacturing, and distribution processes are managed by sophisticated real-time information systems; colleagues working 12 time zones apart can see and hear each other as they work at their desks—or in airport lounges on opposite sides of the planet. Publications, like this one, have abandoned paper. Cell phones serve up information and entertainment more often than phone conversations. News on innovations and revolutions in far-flung regions is available instantaneously.

These changes, and hundreds more resulting from an explosion of info tech, have changed the nature of business by dramatically shifting markets; enabling massive global competition and cooperation; and altering the attitudes, values, motivations, aspirations, and fears of customers and employees. Perhaps most importantly, these changes have altered human societies, promising a coming decade of unpredictable and unprecedented change.

In my view, psychology is the most fertile area for business research in the next decade. By more deeply understanding human cognition, emotion, motivation, and behavior, managers could tailor products and services to unmet and previously unrecognized needs with exquisite accuracy. They could customize their marketing of those products and services to match the specific interests and desires of individual people in diverse societies around the world. They could create solutions enabling people to cope with and leverage the exploding volume of information available 24/7. They could attract, retain, develop, and motivate employees much more effectively—creating high-performance teams reliably, matching people to projects that fit both their skills and their interests, and dramatically increasing the probability that work will be productively creative.

We psychological researchers have new tools at our disposal that we could only dream of just a few years ago, ranging from unobtrusive physiological and neurological measures to massive databases on billions of individuals' decisions about consuming, saving, investing, and living their lives. As psychological theories and methods become ever more integrated into economics research, business academics and managers will have the power to substantially improve both the practice of business and the welfare of society. My hope is that we will use that power responsibly.

Carliss Y. Baldwin

The two trends with greatest impact on business management in the last decade have been (1) the rise of business ecosystems caused by falling transaction costs; and (2) the empowerment of users caused by the global spread of communication technologies.

A business ecosystem is a group of firms that together provide complex products and related services to end users. Examples include the computer and telecommunication ecosystem, the health care ecosystem, and the global financial ecosystem.

In the last ten years, ecosystems have emerged as an important form of economic organization, replacing the large vertically integrated firms that dominated the era of mass production. Importantly, firms are not the only entities to participate in the new ecosystems. The Internet and other social media have dramatically lowered the cost of communication and collective action, and thus users are increasingly taking an active role as co-designers and stewards of the products and services they consume. In many cases, collaborative user innovators are vying with producers for intellectual property rights and the control of standards and innovation trajectories.

In light of these developments, it is time to abandon the dated myths of heroic inventors and farsighted corporations as the main sources of innovation in our economy. Innovation proceeds differently in business ecosystems than in pre-industrial markets or ring-fenced corporations. Innovation in ecosystems requires collective action to both invent and appraise, efficient, cross-organization knowledge flows, modular architectures, and good stewardship of legacy systems. It rests on multiple, complementary platforms. It requires intellectual property rights to be present, but not too strong. Finally, it requires participants—both users and producers—to be aware of the whole, and not just their local piece of the action. When participants do not "see" or feel responsible for the whole, a dynamic ecosystem can easily evolve into a state of dangerous instability, as in the financial crisis of 2008-09, or even collapse, as in the Internet bust of 1999-2000. Thus investigating the structure and dynamics of innovative ecosystems holds great promise for significant scholarly work over the next decade.

Francesca Gino

The last decade has documented several ethical failures which have caused remarkable harm, including those of individuals like Bernie Madoff and of corporations like Enron, Worldcom and many others. In fact, a recent estimate from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners indicates that U.S. businesses lose approximately 7 percent of their annual revenues to various forms of unethical behavior, an amount equal to a trillion dollars in losses across the economy.

Why do seemingly ethical people consistently engage in unethical behavior? Over the last ten years researchers have started to explore this question. An emerging and very promising literature has begun to identify the importance of psychological factors that influence, consciously and unconsciously, people's decisions to cross ethical boundaries. What this research suggests is that everyone, regardless of their ethical foundations, has the capacity to behave dishonestly. In fact, most individuals start with good intentions, but ultimately engage in unethical behavior because of subtle situational influences - including the behavior of peers and co-workers, the goals set for employees, or even the amount of lighting in a room.

This research is already having an important impact on business management. Many leading scholars in the management field are teaching about these findings in the classroom so as to influence what will eventually happen in the boardroom. However, many open questions remain about the factors that enable even people with good intentions to commit unethical acts. What are the tools organizations and their managers can effectively use to remind employees of their moral compass? How can we assure ethical principles are salient when employees and managers are at greatest ethics risk in the course of their work? What are effective fixes to our moral bugs?

I hope that both leading researchers and young scholars will continue their search for answers to these important questions in the next decade. And I hope that through their research they'll uncover ways in which we can equip ourselves with tools that can help us navigate through complex ethical choices.

Linda A. Hill

The most important trend of the 21st century for business management—the increasing importance of the emerging markets. Companies are now taking seriously the need to be truly global. How do we develop leadership able to work in diverse markets with ever more demanding stakeholders (employees, customers, communities) around the world? How do will build the meritocracies that talented people will demand if companies want to retain and engage them?

Many have yet to figure out how to effectively harness the diverse talents within their own countries. And of course in the emerging economies the demographics are such that it is the young we must attract and nurture—the young are eager to rewrite the psychological contract between themselves and employers. They work to make a living, but also they aspire to find purpose and meaning in what they do.

We in the academy have much intellectual capital to develop to help organizations address the challenges and opportunities associated with globalization. Our work has not been as global as it should be. Too much of the research is based on organizational life in the West. In addition, I suspect we need to reframe our understanding of what makes for effective leadership. How can a single leader set direction and inspire people to follow him or her given the dynamism and complexity of the global economy? Take the CEO of IBM who now heads a company of 400,000 full time employees and I suspect as many contract employees all around the world. How can we expect him to set direction and inspire them to follow; instead of vision-based leadership, he has pursed what he refers to as values-based leadership. To quote Nelson Mandela, "a leader is like a shepherd … he stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go on ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind."

The leadership task is changing. It will become more about shaping the context in which communities of practice willing and able to innovate are nurtured and encouraged to respond to the exciting opportunities that will emerge in the coming decade.

Michael I. Norton

In my mind, the biggest single development for business in the last decade is the dramatic increase in the number of companies concerned with corporate social responsibility, and the resultant rise in the range and variety that such efforts have taken. From "old" models in which companies either donated money directly to charity or encouraged consumers to buy their products by donating a fixed percentage to charitable causes (think Newman's Own), newer models have amped up customer engagement.

Take the recent Pepsi Refresh Project: Rather than donate, say, $.05 from every bottle purchased to some charitable cause, Pepsi encouraged users to submit projects with social impact—from cleaning up a river to saving animals—and allowed other users to vote on which projects Pepsi should fund. Or consider DonorsChoose.org, which allows donors to contribute funds directly to low income classrooms, buying books for kids and teachers who need them; corporate partners such as Crate and Barrel have sent DonorsChoose.org "gift certificates" to their customers, empowering their customers to donate to whichever school they choose.

In the next decade, my hope is that corporations will continue to pursue CSR-related activities, and most importantly continue to encourage direct customer participation in such activities—as with Pepsi and DonorsChoose.org. Customer involvement is key for two reasons: First, it increases the "bang" for every chartable buck, as consumers truly interact with the brand in order to support the causes they care about.

Second and perhaps even more importantly, engaging in CSR-activities on a customer-by-customer basis allows firms to calculate a return-on-investment for such activities: Do customers who we involve in our charitable causes "pay us back" with increased brand loyalty and repurchase rates? Simple experiments - sending some customers charity vouchers and others more standard product discounts (15% off your next purchase)—will allow companies to compare directly the ROI on charitable actions versus more traditional marketing actions - and hopefully make the case for increased focus on the former than the latter.

Richard Vietor

In the first decade of the 21st century, two macroeconomic trends have dominated the global economy.

First, a huge asymmetry in current account balances evolved, and continues to remain unresolved. The US runs massive deficits on its current account (balance of trade in goods, services, income, and transfers); Italy, the UK, Spain and Australia also run significant deficits. These countries now import far more than they export, and have savings that are far less than their needed investment. Surpluses, on the other hand, are run by China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Russia. This results in a financial flow, where the debt of deficit countries is bought by surplus countries, who now own several trillion dollars of foreign assets.

A related problem are the fiscal (government budget) deficits run by the United States, Japan, and most European countries. These worsened significant in the 2000s, due to slow growth in Japan, massive tax cuts in the USA, and expensive social programs in Europe. This now adds to the financing problem.

By 2011, these deficits have become almost overwhelming, leading to debt crises in Greece, Ireland, Spain and perhaps Portugal, further stagnation in Japan, and an overwhelming deficit problem to be faced by the Obama administration.

天主教 輔仁中學 :教育人行道

我看到Peter在線上 就將此信 傳給大家
或許該寫一本教育人行道

天主教 輔仁中學 的 張日亮神父給我一封回信 並附它該校(國中和高中)的10年來各年度師生職員人員統計表
----

鍾教授:平安!
很高興能與您連絡,清楚感受到你的熱情與支持,來日北上當面照訪再詳談。
祝快樂!

張日亮 敬上 2/19
------------------------

Woolworth's or Woolworth

1977年( 許多年前) 我在英國時 以為這家Woolworth's 是英國超商
後來 零售商史知道多了
十幾年前 我還加入某英國商業史討論小組
知識更多....
然後換email 都失聯了
多可惜

Woolworth's

Vintage Ad #947: Hallowe'en Costumes at Woolworth's

This image was originally uploaded to Flickr by jbcurio on 31 October, 2009.

F. W. Woolworth Company
Industry Retail
Fate Name changed in 1997 to Venator Group, and in 2001 to Foot Locker, Inc.[1]
Founded 1879
Defunct 1997
Headquarters New York, NY, USA
Products Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, consumer electronics and housewares
Subsidiaries Woolco (defunct 1982 in the U.S., Canadian stores sold to Wal-Mart in 1994)
Woolworths Group plc (separate 1982)
Woolworth GmbH (separate 1998)
Kinney Shoe Company (acquired 1963), now Foot Locker (successor)

The F. W. Woolworth Company (often referred to as Woolworth's or Woolworth or even Woolsworth) was a retail company that was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. The first Woolworth store was founded in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., with a loan of $300, in 1879 by Frank Winfield Woolworth. Despite growing to be one of the largest retail chains in the world through most of the 20th century, increased competition led to its decline beginning in the 1980s. The chain went out of business in July 1997, when the company decided to focus on the Foot Locker division and renamed itself Venator Group. By 2001, the company focused exclusively on the sporting goods market, changing its name to the present Foot Locker Inc (NYSE: FL).

Retail chains using the Woolworth name survive in Germany, Austria, Mexico, and South Africa, and, until the start of 2009, in the United Kingdom. The similarly-named Woolworth's supermarkets in Australia and New Zealand are operated by Australia's largest retail company Woolworths Limited, a separate company with no historical links to the F.W. Woolworth Company or Foot Locker, Inc. However, Woolworth's Limited did use the name from the original company, as it had not been registered or trademarked in Australia at the time.

Contents

History

Door handle of a mid-20th century Woolworth store.

Origin

The F.W. Woolworth Co. was among the first five-and-dime stores, which sold discounted general merchandise at fixed prices, usually five or ten cents, undercutting the prices of other local merchants. Woolworth, as the stores popularly became known, was one of the first American retailers to put merchandise out for the shopping public to handle and select without the assistance of a sales clerk. Earlier retailers had kept all merchandise behind a counter, and customers presented the clerk with a list of items they wished to buy. After working in a dry goods store in Watertown, New York, Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his first Woolworth’s store in Utica, New York, in 1878, but the store failed within a year. However, a second store he opened on June 21, 1879 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, became a success. Frank Woolworth brought his brother Charles Sumner Woolworth into the business, and together they opened more stores, often in partnership with other business associates. The Woolworth brothers also entered into partnerships with “friendly rivals” to maximize inventory purchasing power for both parties. Woolsworth had a flagship store in Philadelphia

Rise and expansion

The Woolworth Building, New York, New York, c. 1913

In 1910, Frank Woolworth commissioned the construction of the Woolworth Building in New York City. This building was entirely paid for in cash. It was completed in 1913 and was the tallest building in the world until 1930. It also served as the company’s headquarters until it was sold by the F.W. Woolworth Company’s successor, the Venator Group (now Foot Locker), in 1998.

By 1924, there were six chains of affiliated stores operating in the United States and Canada. That year, Frank and Charles incorporated the F. W. Woolworth Company and through a merger brought all 596 stores together under one corporate entity. One of the "friendly rival" predecessor chains included several stores initially opened as Woolworth & Knox stores starting as early as September 20, 1884 as well as S. H. Knox & Co. 5 & 10 Cent Stores opened after an 1889 buyout by his cousin, Seymour H. Knox I. Knox's chain grew to 98 U.S. and 13 Canada stores by the time of the corporate consolidation in 1924. Fred M. Kirby added 96 stores, Earle Charlton added 35, Charles Sumner Woolworth added 15, and William Moore added 2.[2]


The stores eventually incorporated lunch counters after the success of the counters in the first store in the UK in Liverpool and served as general gathering places, a precursor to the modern shopping mall food court. A Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina became the setting for a significant event during the civil rights movement (see below).

The Woolworth's concept was widely copied, and five-and-ten-cent stores (also known as five-and-dime stores or dimestores) became a 20th century fixture in American downtowns. They would serve as anchors for suburban strip centers and shopping malls in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Criticisms that five-and-dime stores drove local merchants out of business would repeat themselves in the early 21st century, when big box discount stores became popular. However, many five-and-dime stores were locally owned or franchised, as are many dollar stores today.

Diversification

In the 1960s, the five-and-dime concept evolved into the larger discount store format. In 1962, Woolworth's founded a discount chain called Woolco. This was the same year as its competitors opened similar retail chains that sold merchandise at a discount: the S.S. Kresge Company opened Kmart; Dayton's opened Target; and Sam Walton opened his first Wal-Mart store.

By Woolworth’s 100th anniversary in 1979, it had become the largest department store chain in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Older Woolworth logo

Decline

The growth and expansion of the company contributed to its downfall. The Woolworth company moved away from its five-and-dime roots and placed less emphasis on its department store chain as it focused on its specialty stores. But the company was unable to compete with other chains that had eroded its market share. While it was a success in Canada, the Woolco chain closed in the United States in 1983. On October 15, 1993, Woolworths embarked on a restructuring plan that included closing half of its 800-plus general merchandise stores in the United States and converting its Canadian stores to a closeout division named The Bargain! Shop. Woolco and Woolworth survived in Canada until 1994, when the majority of its stores there were sold to Wal-Mart. Stores that were not purchased by Wal-Mart (primarily smaller locations) were converted to The Bargain! Shop stores, or sold to Zellers.

Focus

Still with the decline of the signature stores, Woolworth marched on with a new focus toward athletic goods on January 30, 1997, acquiring the mail-order catalogue athletic retailer Eastbay.

On May 6, 1991, Wal-Mart replaced Woolworths as a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Analysts at the time cited the lower prices of the large discount stores and the expansion of supermarket grocery stores – which had begun to stock merchandise also sold by five-and-dime stores – as contributors to Woolworth's decline in the late 20th century. On July 17, 1997, Woolworths closed its remaining department stores in the U.S. and changed its corporate name to Venator.

In 1999, Venator moved out of the Woolworth building in New York City to offices on 34th Street. On October 20, 2001, the company changed names again; this time, it took the name of its top retail performer and became Foot Locker, Inc. Foot Locker stores chiefly sell athletic clothing and footwear.

Greensboro sit-in

On February 1, 1960, four black students sat down at a segregated lunch counter in a Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth's store. They were refused service, touching off six months of sit-ins and economic boycotts that became a landmark event in the U.S. civil-rights movement. In 1993, an eight-foot section of the lunch counter was moved to the Smithsonian Institution and the store site now contains a civil rights museum, which had its grand opening on Monday, February 1, 2010, the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the sit-ins.

Non-American retail users of the Woolworth name

A Woolworths store in the UK

Presidents

  • Frank Winfield Woolworth
  • C.C. Griswald (?-1916)[9]
  • Hubert Templeton Parson (1919–1932)[9]
  • Byron D. Miller (1932–1935) [10]
  • Charles Deyo (1935–1946)
  • Alfred Cornwell (1946–1954)
  • James T. Leftwich (1954–1958)
  • Robert C. Kirkwood (1958–1965)
  • Lester A. Burcham (1965–1970)
  • John S. Roberts (1970–1975)
  • Edward F. Gibbons (1975–1978)
  • W. Robert Harris (1978 - ?)
  • Frederick E. Hennig (1987–1995)[11]
  • Roger N. Farah (1994 - ?)

See also

References

  1. ^ "Foot Locker, Inc". Foot Locker, Inc.. http://www.footlocker-inc.com. Retrieved 2010-07-11.
  2. ^ Gaffney, Paul (2002-01-29). "Dime Stores/Woolworth's | St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture | Find Articles at BNET.com". Findarticles.com. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419100342. Retrieved 2010-07-11.
  3. ^ "Woolworths stores to shut by early January.". Associated Press. "Administrators for Woolworths announced plans Wednesday to close all the retailer's stores by the early new year, signaling the end of the road for the venerable British company and the loss of almost 30,000 jobs. Recently, however the brand has reappeared as an internet store at www.woolworths.co.uk, owned by the Group's Directing firm Kingfisher Holdings ..."
  4. ^ "Woolworths the fresh food people". Woolworths.com.au. 1924-09-22. http://www.woolworths.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/website/woolworths/about-us/our-story/september+-+1924/september+1924. Retrieved 2010-07-11.
  5. ^ "Woolworths". Woolworths. 2007-03-20. http://www.woolworths.co.za/caissa/caissa.asp?Page=ITB4_RHContext&Post=WW_OurStores_Franchise#east. Retrieved 2010-07-11.
  6. ^ "Control Dinamico SA acquires Woolworth Mexicana SA de CV from Foot Locker Inc (1997/12/08) - Thomson Financial Mergers & Acquisitions". AlacraStore.com. 1997-12-08. http://www.alacrastore.com/storecontent/Thomson_M&A/Control_Dinamico_SA_acquires_Woolworth_Mexicana_SA_de_CV_from_Foot_Locker_Inc-778366040. Retrieved 2010-07-11.
  7. ^ "Localización/Woolworth". Woolworth.com.mx. Archived from the original on March 2, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080302233450/http%3A//www.woolworth.com.mx/loc-wool.htm%23. Retrieved 2010-07-11.
  8. ^ CBC.bb - Woolworths strong[dead link]
  9. ^ a b "To succeed C.C. Griswald. The Woolworth Company Announces the Selection of H.T. Parsons.". New York Times. January 29, 1916. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9401E1DB103FE233A2575AC2A9679C946796D6CF. Retrieved 2008-06-27. "Announcement was made yesterday by the F.W. Woolworth Company that Hubert T. Parsons, present Secretary and Treasurer of the company, was to be appointed ..."
  10. ^ This and subsequent presidents through 1978 from http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Foot-Locker-Inc-Company-History.html
  11. ^ http://www.thefreelibrary.com/FREDERICK+E.+HENNIG+RETIRES+FROM+WOOLWORTH+CORPORATION-a016648541 accessed 2010-12-31

External links


2011年2月21日 星期一

這"i" 玩藝多年前日本的一些異業產業玩過 真是各顯神通BMW...

這"i" 玩藝多年前日本的一些異業產業玩過 真是各顯神通

BMW Unveils 'i' Sub-Brand
BMW plans to launch its megacity vehicle under the new sub-brand "i" and is setting up a venture-capital business to ramp up mobility services such as car sharing or smart navigation systems.

南韓Domino’s Pizza 全面取消「保證30分鐘內送貨到府」的制度

達美樂限時外送玩命?南韓全面取消服務 【2/21 16:02】

〔本報訊〕全球知名的達美樂披薩連鎖店(Domino’s Pizza),以30分鐘限時外送服務聞名,但據南韓《韓聯社》報導,該項限時服務已經讓多位外送員因趕時間,發生多起交通事故,因此南韓的達美樂公司今 表示,將全面取消「保證30分鐘內送貨到府」的制度。

達美樂披薩於1960年成立,目前在全球50個國家設有超過8000家分店,而達美樂也自1973年起推出30分鐘保證外送到府的服務,以迎合消費者能即時吃到熱騰騰披薩的需求,若外送員超過30分鐘才送達,消費者將能免費享用,但這樣的服務卻引來極大爭議。

報導指出,南韓的達美樂外送員因為這項外送服務而頻繁發生交通事故,在前年一整年共計發生事故1395起,日前還曾有名員工在外送時死於交通事故。因此, 南韓的達美樂比薩表示,為全力保障外送員的人身安全,將全面取消「保證30分鐘內送貨到府」的制度,但仍會堅持迅速送達比薩的不二原則。

2011年2月18日 星期五

陳光標公司已經三個月沒有生意做

聯合報╱特派記者胡明揚/上海報導】 2011.02.19

春節前剛從台灣行善捐款返回大陸的「中國首善」陳光標,昨天在重慶表示,由於這幾年來參加社會慈善活動過多,疏於公司業務,公司已經三個月沒有生意做;未來他將改變思路,減少社會活動,加強與有業務往來的老闆交流,但這絕不會影響他對社會的捐助,高調之路也永遠不會改變。

陳光標昨天在重慶接受記者電話採訪時強調,他對台灣行善捐款的承諾一定會兌現,近日將再捐出新台幣六千萬元,委託台灣有關基金會,捐給台灣南部幾個上次來不及去的縣市低收入戶,用「真捐」回應部份人士批評他「偽善」的說法。五月間來台的計畫也不會改變。

陳光標昨天在重慶敲鑼打鼓發紅包,總計發出十三萬元人民幣給一百六十位孤獨老人。

陳光標在面對重慶媒體訪問時,針對重慶媒體質疑他行善捐款是否獲得政府官員的業務支持時,他表示,他從一九九八年投身環保事業成立黃埔再生資源公司以來, 從沒有送過一分錢給官員,也沒有任何縣市官員支持他的生意。如有人查到檢舉屬實,他願意捐出一百萬元人民幣給指定的慈善單位。

陳光標說,或許他過於高調,得罪許多人,從一九九八年以來,政府稅務單位每年對他查稅,除了二○○八、○九年因為他在汶川大地震的抗震表現沒被查稅,去年他又被查稅。

儘管陳光標擁有的黃埔再生資源公司,目前是中國大陸規模最大的專業拆除公司,但他指出,去年光是他的公司所在地江蘇省全年拆除民房、廠房達六千萬平方公尺,結果他的公司只承包不到十三萬平方公尺,證明政府官員沒有因為他捐款而給他生意支持。

陳光標表示,他所從事的拆除工程百分之九十五都是二、三手的生意,而非政府背景的一手生意;他分析,如果做一手生意一百元的業務可賺十元,但二、三手利潤就只有五元甚至三元。他形容「賺錢比吃大便還難」。

陳光標承認,近年來由於他百分之七十心力都放在社會公益,疏於與從事拆除業務的公司老闆交流,導致業務萎縮公司出現困境,從去年十一月底至今,公司已有三 個月沒接到生意,以致公司四千六百名員工沒事幹,所幸公司沒有貸款,即使吃老本還能維繫三年。至於有媒體報導公司員工開始被減半薪,他說那是聽錯了他的 話,他是指如果三年還沒接到生意,到時可能就要減員工的薪水。

陳光標說,最近他將調整思路,減少社會活動,未來即使業績減少,他仍會依照承諾,每年捐出淨利潤的百分之五十行善。

2011年2月17日 星期四

Edgar H. Schein interviewed

A Corporate Climate of Mutual Help

Edgar Schein, MIT’s sage of organizational culture, explains why the quest for accountability should start with interdependence.

Culture is back on the corporate agenda. As leaders deal with the demands of increased complexity — whether managing financial and environmental risk, navigating new markets, assimilating new types of technologies, or building a strategy for organic growth — many recognize the momentum that comes with a responsive, energized culture. That has led to a renewed appreciation for the work of Edgar H. Schein. Since the 1950s, when he studied the effects of Chinese brainwashing on American servicemen returning from the Korean War, he has been one of the world’s leading authorities on the link between culture and behavior. For most of that time, he has been on the faculty of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, where he is now a professor emeritus.

Schein’s perspective, tempered by intensive work with groups, corporations, and governments, is one of deep respect for the power and legitimacy of ingrained assumptions and attitudes that people develop together gradually. (Among the organizations he has studied over time are Digital Equipment Corporation and the government of Singapore.) The Schein approach to changing a culture — and to developing better ways of helping others within organizations — is one of observation, inquiry, and leverage. This means observing the ways in which an organization’s employees act; deducing (or inquiring about) the ways they think; and putting in place small behavioral changes that lead them, bit by bit, to think about things differently.

We met with Schein in his apartment in Cambridge, Mass., to talk about his two recent books for managers and corporate practitioners on this theme: The Corporate Culture Survival Guide (Jossey-Bass, 2009), an updated version of an earlier book, and Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (Berrett-Koehler, 2009). Given Booz & Company’s work on culture through the Katzenbach Center (see “Stop Blaming Your Culture,” by Jon Katzenbach and Ashley Harshak, s+b, Spring 2011), we also thought it was timely to check in on the broadening impact of Schein’s ideas as more and more companies seek to teach their old cultures new tricks.

S+B: Even the best-intentioned companies can get tripped up when trying to alter their organizational culture. Why?
SCHEIN:
Because they think that to change culture, you simply introduce a new culture and tell people to follow it. That will never work. Instead, you have to conduct a business analysis around whatever is triggering your perceived need to change the culture. You solve that business problem by introducing new behaviors. Once you’ve solved your business problems this way, people will say to themselves, “Hey, this new way of doing things, which originally we were coerced to do, seems to be working better, so it must be right.”

S+B: Issuing a new array of cultural tenets — like quality, agility, and accountability — will not work?
SCHEIN:
Precisely. All you’ve done is stated the obvious, like “We’re for motherhood.” Who wouldn’t be for those things? They’re obvious. But what does it mean in that environment to be more agile or accountable? Someone has to say what these really mean: The next time you put a bad product out there, you get fired. It has to be concretized for real change to occur.

One electric utility company I studied, Alpha Power — I can’t reveal its real name — was under pressure from regulators to improve its environmental record. Management told employees, “Every oil spill on every sidewalk must be reported immediately and cleaned up.” A lot of electrical workers said, “That’s not me. I’m not a janitor. I splice big, heavy cables.” Alpha responded that this was an order, not an option, and that workers would be trained in cleaning up spills safely.

Some electrical workers quit, but most were retrained. After about five years, the workers were asked, “How do you feel about Alpha’s environmental policies?” They answered, “It’s the right thing to do. We should be cleaning up the environment.” That wasn’t what they’d said five years earlier. But once they embraced the behavior, the values caught up.

S+B: Cultural change can’t be as easy as just demanding that people change their behaviors. What if people only pretend to comply?
SCHEIN:
That’s why the role of management is so critical. Culture is multifaceted, and every company has many subcultures. At the top, there might be an executive subculture, trained in finance, which wants good numbers above all else. There’s also probably an engineering subculture, which assumes that crises can be prevented only with fail-safe, redundant systems that kick in automatically. There are other subcultures for middle management, supervisors, the union, and marketing. Every company combines those subcultures in very different ways that have become ingrained over decades. In any change program, when you encounter resistance, you have to then ask, “Is this just an individual resisting, or are group norms at play, based in a particular subculture?”

For example, when a transformer exploded at Alpha, tests showed high levels of airborne PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls], a dangerous chemical to which firefighters, health workers, and others in the community were exposed. Alpha was criticized for not revealing these high PCB levels upon first discovering them.

But an engineer had tested that transformer every year for 20 years and never found PCBs. When the explosion occurred, he didn’t immediately believe the data. As an engineer, he wanted to be certain that the data was accurate, since it ran counter to his decades of testing. So he waited for the samples to come back from the lab before he said anything. It turned out that there were PCBs in the transformer’s sealed sound protection struts. The PCBs were released during the explosion but would have been undetectable otherwise.

Alpha may have looked malfeasant — failing to rapidly report an environmentally dangerous situation that the company clearly knew about — but in reality the delay was a consequence of a strong engineering subculture. It could have punished the engineer, but that wouldn’t have changed the culture. If Alpha wanted to be safe and environmentally responsible, it had to demand behavioral change. So the company sent out a strong, coercive message that spoke to the heart of the engineering subculture: “You are required to report any observed environmental event or unsafe situation immediately, before analyzing it. Sound the alarm the minute you think there is a dangerous situation. Don’t wait until you’ve figured it out.” Alpha’s leaders got very specific about what environmental responsibility and safety meant in terms of the behavior they expected from their employees.

Resistance might also come from other cultures, including that of the top executives. In some crises, like the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986, I’ve heard people argue that the engineers weren’t competent. In fact, they raised concerns in advance about the O-ring at least twice, but they were overruled, and stopped squawking. Should they have held their ground? Marc Gerstein, who wrote Flirting with Disaster: Why Accidents Are Rarely Accidental [with Michael Ellsberg; Union Square Press, 2008], argues that the fault was not with the engineers, but with the NASA culture. People need to be able to raise concerns, and persist in raising them, in a way that cultures like NASA, aimed at results, can accept.

S+B: Are most managers capable of this?
SCHEIN:
Probably not. They would need a culture that rewards them for raising concerns, and in most organizations the norms are to punish it. It’s the very nature of authority to say, “Don’t be a squeaky wheel. You made your point, but we’re going to go ahead anyway. I don’t want to hear any more.”

So let’s say you want a company to be genuinely safe. It’s not enough to have an empowering process. The supervisors, middle managers, and senior executives all have to actively work to create behaviors that encourage a climate of safety. Alpha, for example, now has a “time-out program.” An employee is obligated, if he or she sees something unsafe, to pull out and display a time-out card located near each station. That stops the job until somebody with expertise comes in and looks it over.

But some employees say, “If I pull the card too often, my supervisor will give me lousier jobs.” To make a company genuinely safe, behavior needs to change at all levels. The entire hierarchy has to feel good about the card being pulled, instead of regarding it as a nuisance triggered by a few employees.

Meanwhile — and this is important — work in many companies is getting more complex, and subordinates have more relative power by virtue of their specialized expertise. If they choose to not tell the boss about problems, the company will never know that there’s an issue until it’s too late. The answer is to create a climate in which superiors and subordinates have a mutual helping relationship.

S+B: In your book Helping, you talk about learning to give and receive assistance more effectively. Why does this matter?
SCHEIN:
It’s pivotal to the future of organizations. The types of teams that we need in organizations today are like cardiac surgical units. The surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the perfusionist, and the nurse are in immediate, here-and-now interdependence. In that kind of team, subordinates have to help superiors regularly; everyone has to act as if they all have a stake in the outcome.

In most team cultures, bosses tend to act as authority figures who are there only to help subordinates, not to listen to and be helped by others. So what happens, for example, if a nurse sees a doctor picking up the wrong instrument? You might expect her to say, “Stop, doctor” and offer help and advice. But in many organizational cultures, the nurse won’t say anything. She’s going to take a chance on the operation failing, because she once tried to help a doctor that way and got blasted.

Better teamwork requires perpetual mutual helping, within and across hierarchical boundaries. I don’t see how we’re going to get there unless we create cultural “islands” — situations in which people can go outside the organization’s norms and practices and explicitly create this mutual helping relationship. In the cardiac unit, this means the surgeon saying to the nurse, “First of all, let’s get on a first-name basis, and then I’m going to try very hard to listen to you.” The people with the most authority and established knowledge must make the others feel psychologically safe, so that when they’re back in the heat of operations, everyone will speak up freely when something is wrong. The surgeon must know what questions to ask in order to be more helpful. In any helping situation, “humble inquiry” is a key intervention to equilibrate the relationship between the vulnerable person asking for help and the powerful helper.

All this will demand that companies train their teams in the helping process. Most team training that I’ve seen is focused on making people feel good about one another. But what I’m talking about is something much more profound and essential: knowing how to work with one another as equal partners in an operational setting.

Reprint No. 11102

Author Profiles:

  • Art Kleiner is the editor-in-chief of strategy+business and the author of The Age of Heretics (2nd ed., Jossey-Bass, 2008).
  • Rutger von Post is a principal with Booz & Company based in New York. He specializes in organizational change and leadership for the financial-services and healthcare industries, and is a fellow of the Katzenbach Center.

網誌存檔