Financial Bottom Line Research Articles

Tailoring your benefits strategy for an aging workforce and why it’s good for business

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to help human resources professionals tailor their benefits strategies to accommodate, recruit and maintain an experienced, talented, aging workforce. Design/methodology/approach Findings are based on the author’s professional experience in the employee benefits industry and recently published research from the Society for Human Resource Management and other industry and government sources. Findings By effectively tailoring benefits packages for their employees, companies can retain their older workers and capitalize on their knowledge and experience in ways that benefit their works and the business’ financial bottom line. Originality/value Individuals aged 55 and older will continue to comprise a significant portion of the workforce for the foreseeable future. This paper describes several strategies that companies can use to address the unique needs and challenges these workers face to benefit from their valuable skills and expertise.

Fueling Good: Planning Design and Program Management for Alternative Fuels

While petroleum-based fuels are expected to dominate supply in the near future, the use of alternative fuels is projected to grow rapidly over the next 30 years. Highlighted by an abundance of domestic natural gas and greater accessibility of electric drivetrains, alternative fuels are enhancing the financial bottom-line of organizations while improving the environment and public health.Alternative fuels are diverse and include ethanol, biodiesel, electricity, hydrogen, natural gas and propane. Each has a distinct business case that can be applied successfully. Social and environmental benefits vary and must be considered in context with regional and project-specific drivers. For example, natural gas and biodiesel can yield returns on investment for large fleets of heavy-duty diesel vehicles. For smaller fleets with a greater proportion of light- to medium-duty vehicles, propane improves performance. Electric vehicle technology is evolving rapidly and is now well suited for fleets of passenger vehicles.Businesses, private fleets, municipalities, transit authorities, airports, and federal agencies all benefit from alternative fuels. Strategies to harness the benefits include planning, design and program management. In this article, case studies of each approach are provided to highlight best practices and potential lessons learned. Cases include: 1) a regional planning process involving alternative fuels as a driver for regional economic development; 2) a design process for a utility electric vehicle charging program; and 3) a program management approach for capturing public-private financing for design-build delivery of compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling infrastructure.

Outlier Labeling Method for Univariate Data for Module Test and Die Sort

Qorvo is a global leader in scalable and dynamic RF solutions for mobile, infrastructure, and defense. To ensure quality and compliance to customer specifications, a large number of product devices and die on wafers are tested every day. Typical data sets will contain unusually large or small values when compared with others in that data set, which may or may not pass specification limits. Such outliers will have negative effects on data analyses such as cpk-analysis, ANOVA, and regressions. More important, outliers, particularly those passing specification limits, may indicate defective parts or pose a reliability concern. For engineering teams in development and production, it is standard practice to identify or label outliers in their data sets, so that they can be removed to improve data analyses and to protect customers against receiving defective parts. The aim for this paper is to provide product engineering teams at Qorvo with reliable outlier labeling methods particularly for skewed distributions. While the ultimate goal is to label and to remove outliers, we also need to balance this with unnecessary yield loss for the financial bottom line.

An Exploratory Study: Correlations Between Occupational Stressors, Coping Mechanisms, and Job Performance Among Chinese Aviation Maintenance Technicians

Aviation maintenance technicians play a vital role in air transportation. These workers are responsible for keeping aircraft airworthy and executing safety responsibilities. Undesirable stress levels may have a negative impact on work performance (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 2013). Poor work performance may manifest in safety violations, absenteeism, turnover, and disengagement. These outcomes may disrupt an organization’s operation and negatively impact the financial bottom line. This mixed-methods exploratory research study was aimed at examining the relationships between occupational stress, coping mechanisms, and job performance. Research questionnaires were electronically distributed to frontline aviation maintenance technicians at multiple airlines in China. Eighty-two (n 5 82) completed surveys were used for data analysis. Results indicated a statistically significant negative correlation between occupational stress and job performance. A positive correlation between occupational stress and coping skills was found, but no significant correlation between job performance and coping mechanisms. Additionally, two open-ended questions were analyzed pertaining to occupational stressors and coping mechanisms. Salary, strenuous work schedule, and limited opportunities for promotion were the top three work-related stressors identified by participants. Taking a break, talking to someone, and exercising were the top three coping mechanisms identified by participants. Along with the results, recommendations for future research to identify causal relationships are discussed.

In Health Care, It Pays to be Green

<p>Firms have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximize their financial performance however they are increasingly scrutinized for environmental practices as well. These two objectives are often thought to be in conflict; it can be costly to be a good steward of the environment however it may be more costly in the long run to ignore societal pressures and environmental impacts. While various studies provide ambiguous and sometimes contradictory results, we conduct a rigorous analysis of the health care sector using Trucost’s Environmental Impact Score and financial data. The study uses regression analysis to identify the extent to which the benefit to the firm of reducing its environmental impact is financially beneficial. In the health care sector, an increase in the environmental impact score of 1 unit is correlated with an increase of 4% of their earnings per share. Improving the environmental bottom line improves the financial bottom line.</p>

Sustainable supply chain management in emerging economies: Trade-offs between environmental and cost performance

Manufacturing firms in developing countries have recently started to adopt sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) to manage their environmental responsibility. However, achieving sustainable production within a SSCM context has been one of the most pressing challenges in emerging markets, as it may not involve securing financial benefits. Given the scarcity of empirical evidence, this study raises the proposition that SSCM practices can be both environmentally necessary and good business in the context of emerging economies. In light of this, this paper develops and empirically assesses an integrated SSCM performance framework underpinned by the resource dependence theory (RDT) lens, linking SSCM practices and their relationship with organisational performance. Using the tenants of RDT, this research develops an understanding of how firms use their partners’ resources to implement SSCM practices and manage their performance implications.Conducting an empirical study of 128 manufacturing firms (72 in China and 56 in Iran), this study examines and compares the impact of SSCM adoption on environmental and cost performance within these two emerging markets. Using a multiple regression analysis, the results show that there are more similarities than differences amongst these two emerging economies. The results also reveal that the adoption of SSCM practices results in higher levels of the environmental performance of Chinese and Iranian manufacturers, but does not necessarily lead to improved cost performance. Our findings suggest that firms operating within emerging markets need to undertake SSCM initiatives with a broader consideration of their financial bottom line in order to minimise trade-offs between the environmental and cost performance.

Corporate Health and Wellness and the Financial Bottom Line: Evidence From South Africa.

Objective:The research objective was to test the hypothesis that corporate health and wellness contributed positively to South African companies’ financial results.Methods:The past share market performance of eligible healthy companies, based on Discovery's Healthy Company Index, was tracked under three investment scenarios and compared with the market performance on the basis of the JSE FTSE All Share Index.Results:The evidence supports the hypothesis that a culture of health and wellness provides a financial advantage, in so far as the portfolio of healthy companies consistently outperformed the market over the selected simulations.Conclusions:Given the limitations of the investigation, namely small sample size, the brevity of the period of investigation, and the reliance on accessibility sampling, the research provides the first and preliminary evidence supportive of the direct financial benefits of companies’ wellness programs.

What should a board member look for in financial statements?

A board member's number‐one concern should be whether the nonprofit is operating responsibly with respect to its finances. First take a look at the financial report's bottom line. Then ask:

Ethical Analysis for Evaluating Sustainable Business Decisions: The Case of Environmental Impact Evaluation in the Inambari Hydropower Project

We propose an ethical analysis as a method to reflect on how companies’ decisions promote sustainable development. The method proceeds by first identifying the choice according to financial business interests, and by then scrutinizing this choice according to consequentialist and deontological ethics. The paper applies the method to the choice of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) that a consortium of Brazilian companies (EGASUR) delivered as part of their project proposal for the realization of the Inambari hydropower dam in the Peruvian Amazon. We show that if an EIA is chosen based on the attempt to maximize the financial bottom line, it raises ethical issues both from a consequentialist perspective by involving negative consequences for various stakeholder groups, and from a deontological perspective by not complying with relevant rules, guidelines, and principles. The two ethical perspectives hence reveal where the consortium faces impediments to a genuine commitment to sustainability. Building on stakeholder interviews, observations of the project developments, and the executive summary of the actual EIA, we provide indications that EGASUR has indeed made a choice that resembles a decision based on financial interests.

Stretching the Screen: Horizontality, the CinemaScope Film, and the Cold War

During the 1950s, widescreen cinema fundamentally changed spectatorship at the movies, a shift in visuality that speaks to more than simple aesthetic trickery or a healthy financial bottom line for...

Adaptive capacity of commercial real estate firms in New York City to urban flooding

This article examines the adaptive capacities of real estate firms in New York City in light of the increased risks of urban flooding. This exploratory research attempts to shed light on how and why firms of varying risk profiles are strategically adapting to these risks – if at all. Through the lens of a qualitative multi-criteria adaptive capacity framework, the results of six case studies are analyzed to identify what influences are shaping the actions and strategies of firms. The article examines the propositions that: (A) firms with observable strategies have undertaken ex post strategies which are principally driven by the firms’ financial bottom line; (B) firm strategies attribute little to no influence in their decisions to external or delayed costs and/or impacts relating to social and environmental influences; and, (C) firms with the comparatively most robust adaptive capacities will be those who: (i) are most aware of their vulnerabilities; and (ii) are themselves comparatively more vulnerable to the immediate risks associated with urban flooding. While the evidence largely supports the propositions, the results of this research can help shape the development of intelligence and strategic units within firms as they develop a capacity to adapt to ever changing conditions.

A Business Case Framework for Planning Clinical Nurse Specialist-Led Interventions.

The purpose of this article is to describe a business case framework that can guide clinical nurse specialists (CNS) in clinical intervention development. Increased emphasis on cost-effective interventions in healthcare requires skills in analyzing the need to make the business case, especially for resource-intensive interventions. This framework assists the CNS to anticipate resource use and then consider if the intervention makes good business sense. We describe a business case framework that can assist the CNS to fully explore the problem and determine if developing an intervention is a good investment. We describe several analyses that facilitate making the business case to include the following: problem identification and alignment with strategic priorities, needs assessment, stakeholder analysis, market analysis, intervention implementation planning, financial analysis, and outcome evaluation. The findings from these analyses can be used to develop a formal proposal to present to hospital leaders in a position to make decisions. By aligning intervention planning with organizational priorities and engaging patients in the process, interventions will be more likely to be implemented in practice and produce robust outcomes. The business case framework can be used to justify to organization decision makers the need to invest resources in new interventions that will make a difference for quality outcomes as well as the financial bottom line. This framework can be used to plan interventions that align with organizational strategic priorities, plan for associated costs and benefits, and outcome evaluation. Clinical nurse specialists are well positioned to lead clinical intervention projects that will improve the quality of patient care and be cost-effective. To do so requires skill development in making the business case.

Dispatches

Dispatches

Confronting the Corporate Expediter

Confronting the Corporate Expediter

A Review of Learner Impact on Faculty Productivity

A Review of Learner Impact on Faculty Productivity

A New Zealand and Australian overview of ethics and sustainability in SMEs

There is a dearth of research on ethics and sustainability related to SMEs in New Zealand and Australia. This paper begins by giving a definition of SMEs in New Zealand and Australia, which both differ somewhat from international definitions. The role of SMEs in New Zealand and Australian society is discussed and a description of one study in each country covering SMEs and sustainability is presented. Both studies found that owner-managers undertake a number of triple bottom line activities, without overtly identifying these actions as sustainable practice. At the same time, both studies showed that an over-riding focus on the financial bottom-line may be a significant barrier to SMEs adopting further sustainability practices. The paper concludes with a call for additional research in the area of ethical and sustainable business practice in SMEs in Australia and New Zealand, identifying some promising areas of future investigation.

An Organizational Perspective on Patenting and Open Innovation

Achange in U.S. patent law in the early 1980s increased the value of patents, particularly for firms in the electronics and semiconductors industry, yet many of the industry’s leading firms did not embrace patenting after the change. We show through an in-depth study of International Business Machines (IBM), the world’s largest patentee, that the company’s practices during much of the 1980s discouraged patenting. IBM adopted pro-patent management practices in 1989 after the installation of a new research and development head and in the face of faltering financial performance. IBM’s increased patenting and licensing activities improved its financial bottom lines but curtailed its industry-wide knowledge spillovers. These causes and consequences of pro-patent practices are visible in several other large U.S. corporations. Thus, in the context of the “patent explosion” of the 1980s, we show that intraorganizational forces such as inertia, financial pressures, and new leadership shaped established firms’ uptake of pro-patent management practices and their success. Our findings also suggest that pro-patent practices associated with “open innovation” may stem the free flow of knowledge across organizational boundaries.

Financial savvy: the value of business acumen in oncology nursing.

Have you given serious thought to your individual ability to affect the high cost of health care? If so, you may have determined that the opportunity to have any meaningful effect on cost of services for patients with cancer is limited. You may believe that budgets are the responsibility of nursing leadership. Indeed, the development of the unit or department budget is an activity that many of us have no direct (or even indirect) role in completing. Once the budget is finalized, we are frequently given directives to control our costs and improve the financial bottom line for our employers. One could argue that this is a particularly difficult missive for oncology nurses with the soaring costs of chemotherapy and biotherapy drugs, the expenses incurred to provide supportive care needed by patients with cancer, and the need to provide services to the increasing number of cancer survivors.

How neurologists can choose (even more) wisely: prioritizing waste reduction targets and identifying gaps in knowledge.

How neurologists can choose (even more) wisely: prioritizing waste reduction targets and identifying gaps in knowledge.

Telemedicine for the Care of Children in the Hospital Setting

Telemedicine is by no means a new technology, given that audio-video telecommunication links have been utilized for the provision of medical services since the 1950s. Nonetheless, telemedicine is currently in a phase of rapid growth and evolution. The combination of increasingly affordable and powerful networking, computing, and communication technology, along with the continued nationwide crisis in health care access and costs, has created a "tipping point," whereby telemedicine has progressed from a novel means of practicing medicine to practical tool to help address our nation's health care needs. Telemedicine has also evolved beyond a means of providing care to remote communities to becoming a versatile tool in the delivery of health care in a variety of non-rural settings. Although no one can be everywhere at once, telemedicine allows us to be in more places at once than we've ever been before. The problems of disparities and access to care are even more evident in pediatrics, where subspecialists are fewer in number and more regionalized than adult providers. Numerous successful telemedicine programs across the country have demonstrated the impact that these technologies can have in pediatrics, with many more programs in development. As a versatile means of delivering care, telemedicine can be used at any point during the course of a health care encounter as not only a means of expanding our reach, but also as a means of increasing efficiency. Using telemedicine to provide consultations to community hospitals has been shown to improve quality of care, strengthen the referral base for the consulting facilities, facilitate cost savings, and improve the financial bottom line for both referring and consulting facilities. This review highlights some of the ways in which telemedicine is being used to facilitate timely and effective pediatric care in a variety of hospital settings.