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10 Cars That Damaged GM's Reputation (With Video) GM's current precarious situation didn't come about overnight. There are arguments to be made that various government regulations led to the disaster and that management can't escape much of the blame, and there are plenty who contend it was a series of disastrous union labor contracts that have put the company at risk. But there's one thing everyone agrees on: Over the past few decades GM put some truly terrible products out on the market. Unreliable, uninteresting and flat ugly, these were cars that simply destroyed GM's reputation.... 1. 1971-1977 Chevrolet Vega...

The seeds of decline are sewn when great corporations are at their zenith. It is then that they become bureaucratic and wasteful, and start promoting management based on committee approval rather than creative dynamics. At their peak, corporations are dismissive of creativity. Team players are valued over inventive mavericks. Consultants and systems are revered because they absolve managers of making hard decisions. The conditions for failure are thus assured. Sometimes corporations disappear like the once dominant Pan American Airways, or they struggle on in diminished state like Western Union. Creative people leave companies when they suspect that the arteries are...

Jim Manzi has done some of the best analysis of the proposed bailout of GM, Ford and Chrysler--or, one should more properly say, bailout of the United Auto Workers, otherwise slated for extinction. Here, he addresses the theory that the Big Three are in the midst of a turnaround, and if we only keep them afloat a while longer, they'll be profitable again. This chart pretty much says it all:[go to site for chart] AutoSales713.gif Bob Cunningham, meanwhile, does some basic arithmetic: As of the close of business on Friday the market cap for General Motors was about $1.9 billion,...

It's the Catholic Church, Not Corporation Approaching the Church with a business-school mindset ignores that the priesthood is a calling and not a career, says BW reader Thomas Szyszkiewicz By Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz Catholic bishops are having a hard time finding candidates who can manage as well as they preach, but they're also finding it hard to find ones who can preach, period. The preaching is primary, and management way down on their list of priorities. After all, Jesus didn't say, "Go out to all the world and manage well." That's not to say the Catholic Church should ignore sound...

Anger management for womenWe regard irritability in men as a sign of status. But in women, we see it as a sign of incompetence Clare Longrigg guardian.co.uk, Friday July 11, 2008 Hillary Clinton's occasional irritable outbursts on the campaign trail were accompanied by a sound of tut-tutting from observers: she can't hack it; she's not in control. Had she been a man, these outbursts of anger would have been interpreted as assertiveness, intolerance of fools, a sign of status. A Yale psychologist who worked in Clinton's office has produced a report demonstrating that while people accept anger in men, in...

Here are some additional qualities that embody superior leadership. Great leaders surround themselves with greatness. They actively seek out the best possible people and hire them to fill all key positions within their organizations. Great leaders know that surrounding themselves with excellence is a direct reflection on their own character, abilities, and effectiveness as leaders. They understand that their own success and the success of their organizations depend mostly on hiring and promoting the best qualified, ethical, skilled, responsible, mature, and productive people and giving them the proper resources, authority, and freedom to do what’s needed for the long-term benefit...

We used to be the world's most skillful entrepreneurs and managers. Now we're laughingstocks. What happened? The dollar plunged to new lows against foreign currencies this week. There are plenty of reasons for its plunge, but at the most basic level, the dollar's weakness reflects the world's collective, two-thumbs-down verdict about the ability of the United States—businesses, individuals, the government, the Federal Reserve—to manage the global financial system and the world's largest economy. Countries that outsourced their monetary policy by pegging domestic currencies to the dollar are having second thoughts. Kuwait last year detached the dinar from the dollar, and...

Now, the predator powerful enough to take down a bull elk is lying helpless under a tent of fir trees while Maletzke replaces the batteries in her radio collar, checks her teeth and measures her girth. Jane is part of a healthy cougar population that lives in relative harmony with its human neighbors in the rapidly growing communities just east of Snoqualmie Pass. In the past six years, Jane has killed deer less than 50 paces from homes — yet residents don't even realize she's there. She has never harmed pets or livestock, nor have any of her offspring. The...

A reorganization of workers at the Swedish Tax Authority is partly shaped on studies of apes, according to a leaked internal report. Employees are not flattered by the comparison. The tax authority is currently undergoing its largest reorganization for many years. One of the foundations of the restructuring plan is a report which says that studies of apes show that people work best in groups of 150. The reorganization was announced earlier in the summer. Work is being moved from small towns to larger towns and cities. Around 1,350 people are affected by the move. Economies of scale are a...

The new Democratic Congress has finally found a government agency whose budget It wants to cut: an obscure Labor Department office that monitors the compliance of unions with federal law. In the past six years, the Office of Labor Management Standards, or OLMS, has helped secure the convictions of 775 corrupt union officials and court-ordered restitution to union members of over $70 million in dues. The House is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to chop 20% from the OLMS budget. Every other Labor Department enforcement agency is due for a budget increase, and overall the Congress has added...

Norwegians have the highest job loyalty in Europe, and all of the Nordic countries are happy at work. The European Employee Index (EEI) survey carried out by Danish consultancy Ennova, covered 20 European nations. The EEI showed that besides being loyal, in terms of job enjoyment Norwegians were second only to Danes. "We are part of a Nordic tradition of cooperative relations in the work place that is completely unique in an international context," said *Even Bolstad, head of HR Norway, Ennova's cooperative partner in the survey. "The five Nordic nations are all in the top ten in all categories...

...The most celebrated case involved Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary who resigned the Harvard University presidency last February after a stormy five-year tenure, which included a no-confidence vote by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the prospect of another. But top officials have also departed after no-confidence votes at a range of other campuses, large and small, public and private, including Gallaudet University, the nation’s premier institution for the deaf; Case Western Reserve, a major research university in Ohio; Baylor University, a Baptist institution in Texas; and the small University of Maine at Presque Isle. The Explanation...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans have a bias against cars made by U.S. automakers, but an AP-AOL Autos poll found flickers of loyalty that could offer hope for an industry struggling to survive. The problem for Detroit is changing perceptions that often don't match reality. hose questioned in the survey said they have more faith in Japanese-made cars than in vehicles produced by Detroit's Big Three. But General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the Chrysler Group are going back to the future in their uphill effort to again inspire consumer loyalty and regain market share. What is the American auto...

the rant the kine that tread the corn2006.09.24 As one who comes from a background of working class poverty, I know what it's like to live in fear. While the average middle-class worker gets a yearly raise (plus a Christmas bonus and plenty of paid holidays) and has a little cash put away for a rainy day, most low-skilled workers are people who live paycheck to paycheck and who do not receive regular wage increases. These workers are extremely reluctant to agitate for more money out of fear of being fired and replaced by a lower-paid foreign worker (legal or...

Like many other baseball fans, Joe Kosa, 28, is spending his Sunday glued to a TV. But relaxed he's not. Instead, the ESPN (NYSE:DIS - News) production assistant is stationed in front of dozens of flat-screen TVs tuned to global sporting events at the headquarters of the Disney-owned network. He's furiously jotting down notes to weave into a storyline that will be read in 60 seconds flat on tonight's 6 p.m. SportsCenter broadcast. With the San Diego Padres leading the Chicago Cubs 9-0, the outcome is hardly in doubt, and writing the highlights should be easy. Then, Clay Hensley, who...

STOCKHOLM -- Idiots in the office are just as hazardous to your health as cigarettes, caffeine or greasy food, an eye-opening new study reveals. In fact, those dopes can kill you! Stress is one of the top causes of heart attacks -- and working with stupid people on a daily basis is one of the deadliest forms of stress, according to researchers at Sweden's Lindbergh University Medical Center. The author of the study, Dr. Dagmar Andersson, says her team studied 500 heart attack patients, and were puzzled to find 62 percent had relatively few of the physical risk factors commonly...

Suit says state at fault in grizzly mauling... The widow of a hunter mauled by a grizzly bear while he was gutting an elk has filed an appeal with the Montana Supreme Court after a district judge here dismissed her lawsuit against the state. Mary Ann Hilston contends negligent management practices led to the death of her husband...in the fall of 2001. She filed a lawsuit in federal court in September 2004, claiming the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks knew there was an aggressive grizzly bear with two cubs prowling the...

LONDON (AP) - British police charged three suspects Wednesday in the 53-million-pound (about $105 million Cdn) robbery at a cash depot in southeastern England. The charges against the trio are the first in the investigation of the theft last week at the security warehouse in Tonbridge, 50 kilometres southeast of London. Police said car salesman John Fowler, 57, was charged with conspiracy to rob the Securitas Cash Management Ltd. warehouse and with kidnapping depot manager Colin Dixon, his wife Lynn and their nine-year-old son. Stuart Royle, 47, was charged with conspiracy to rob, while Kim Shackelton, a 39-year-old woman, was...

Here is a petition I though many would be interested in. This petition calls for Congress to pass a law that requires that all management of our ports to be conducted by either elected officials or contracted to companies located here in the United States. Top reasons to end foreign management of our ports. 1. Security: Our ports are one of the most sensitive access points to our country. Even though we manage the security do we want people from foreign countries having access to every detail about how one of our ports is run, how to access the port,...

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (AFPN) -- Five members of the Botswana Defense Force, or BDF, visited Ramstein last week to learn about the Air Force’s warehouse management procedures and operations. The 435th Logistics Readiness Squadron hosted the visit, touring the group through the base’s inbound cargo sections, receiving section, storage and issue element, hazardous materials section, aircraft parts store, storage and issue area, flight service center, and outbound cargo element. During the team’s visit to the hazardous materials section, Tech. Sgt. Kirk Vore, assistant noncommissioned officer in charge of HAZMAT, briefed the team on everything from procedures and initiatives to...

CHICAGO, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- Training and education of experienced IT professionals already established in the workforce is becoming a major concern, one certain to be on the consciousness of senior management at corporations all over the United States in the coming year, experts tell United Press International's Networking. A survey, released last week by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a trade association for the IT industry, based in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., in suburban Chicago, indicates that workers are taking the initiative to get the new training and skills they need for their careers, and that employers, thus far,...

Message From United Management: Let Them Eat Cake Now That Your Pension's Gone... United Airlines senior management just announced another part of its grand Chapter-11 exit plan. It seems that when the company emerges, 400 select members of United Airlines' executive and senior management team will be awarded 15% ownership of the carrier, worth a tidy $285 million - or more. From The Marie Antoinette School of Management... Nice compensation. Royalty does have its privileges and perks, you know. And, why not? Now that United's employee rank-and-file saved their airline via double-digit pay and benefit cuts, not to mention having...

China river contamination illustrates paralysis in crisis By CHING CHING NI Los Angeles Times 12/5/2005 BEIJING - The long-term environmental impact of last month's chemical explosion in northern China that left millions of people without safe drinking water remains to be seen. But the political fallout has begun. Beijing sacked its top environmental official Friday in an effort to show accountability for the mishandling of the crisis. More heads are likely to roll, possibly including local party leaders in Jilin province where an accident at a petrochemical plant spilled 100 tons of benzene and other cancer-causing chemicals into the Songhua...

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has declared it "plain wrong" to think of achieving victory in Iraq, prompting President Bush, and some fellow Democrats, to flatly disagree. "The idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Mr. Dean said Monday on WOAI Radio in San Antonio...

Hi, all, I'm posting here because I know that this place is the one place to get good advice in a hurry. I called on you all recently when my Chrysler Minivan wouldn't start. Long story--but once again, Freepers came through. So now.. My husband is totally stressed. He has a MAJOR job interview tomorrow. He doesn't expect to get the job (there's already someone there and in the Cdn. government sometimes you have to re-apply for your job). However, tomorrow is part one of the interview. There will be actors bringing him problems and he has to basically demonstrate...

Large populations of deer are edging out forest birds in North America, report scientists in this month's issue of the journal Biological Conservation. The study is the first to evaluate the impact deer grazing can have on nest quality and food resources in areas unaffected by human activities such as forestry or hunting. It also offers general rules for predicting the influence these animals could have on bird ecosystems in the future. The decline of forest birds has been blamed mostly on such factors as disease, loss of habitat and an increase in the number of animals that prey on...

A relative of mine, immediately after graduating from college, went to work for a bank. Even though he had a university degree, he was assigned the job of repossessing cars. We kidded him a lot about that. He eventually ended up a vice president, but his entry into the banking industry was about as low as you can get, and we never let him forget it. In similar fashion, the Enterprise car-rental firm goes to college campuses to recruit management trainees, but among the first jobs these trainees handle is washing and cleaning cars coming off rental. When I moved...

The word "reinvent" is a dumb term, having an overtone of redundancy. After all, when you have invented something, it exists. You can revise it or change it, but you can't "reinvent" it after you have already invented it. I never heard the term when I first entered the workforce. But somewhere in the 1970s or so, corporate executives-began using the word, and using it a lot. Then as now, the nation had its usual economic ups and downs, but suddenly after one downturn, our nation was heavily laden with companies that had reinvented themselves. What happened is that after...

US president George Bush's promise to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf coast "higher and better" has triggered a wave of anxiety among conservatives in his own party, who are shocked at the expansion of the federal role in disaster relief. Yesterday Mr Bush led the country in a day of prayer for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in Washington's national cathedral, declaring: "The destruction of this hurricane was beyond any human power to control, but the restoration of broken communities and disrupted lives now rests in our hands." But his ambitious pledge the night before to lead "one of...

There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today - something that Katrina highlighted and that people who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really noticed. It has rattled them - like watching a parent melt down. ...snip...Singapore pays its prime minister a salary of $1.1 million a year. It pays its cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices just under $1 million a year, and pays judges and senior civil servants handsomely down the line....snip...Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives," he...

U.N. reform agenda watered-down General Assembly adopts wording stripped of details UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a watered-down draft document on poverty, human rights and reform for this week's summit of world leaders to consider, shedding many of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's ambitious goals after weeks of bitter debate. The compromise 35-page document is supposed to launch a major reform of the United Nations itself and galvanize efforts to ease global poverty. But to reach a consensus, most of the text's details were gutted in favor of abstract language. A definition of terrorism and details...

BENTONVILLE, Ark. (AP) -- The chief financial officer of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has completed half of a 24-hour jail sentence for speeding and is to return this weekend to complete the other half. Thomas M. Schoewe, 52, pleaded guilty Aug. 5 in Rogers District Court for reportedly driving 110 mph on Interstate 540. A state trooper stopped Schoewe in his red Corvette at 1:30 a.m. Jan. 1. District Judge Doug Schrantz sentenced Schoewe to a day in jail.

Give Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger credit for not rushing to follow his counterparts in Arizona and New Mexico by declaring a state of emergency over illegal immigration. No doubt the anti-immigration zealots would be encouraging such a move. Schwarzenegger surely knows, as all Californians do, that illegal immigration has an enormous impact on the state. There are an estimated 2.4 million undocumented workers working on the state's many farms, in restaurants, on street corners and in homes. This shadowy and unknown subculture - the largest of any state in the union - causes uncountable impacts on the state in terms of...

Anyone who's ever temporarily "lost" a car in a parking garage - and that's most people - would surely be understanding if the state government "misplaced" one of its thousands of fleet cars occasionally. But 30,000? A recent audit of the state fleet of 70,000 vehicles, as part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's push to aggressively manage the government's assets, found that as many as 30,000 can't be accounted for. Five or 10 missing would be simple mismanagement. Losing track of 30,000 cars would require a remarkable feat of negligence, ineptitude or corruption - or some combination thereof. Not only does...

Your company's chief executive might be a pretender, and that may be a good thing, according to Stanford University Professor of Management Science and Engineering Robert Sutton. Sutton, the author of a 2001 study of corporate innovation, "Weird Ideas that Work," says that a close look at the evidence shows that chief executive officers (CEOs) probably deserve less credit for their company's fortunes than they receive, and that the best of them manage a tough balancing act: secretly aware of their own fallibility, while also realizing that any sign of indecisiveness could be fatal to their careers. "In just about...

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2005 – The European Union lifting its arms embargo against China would bring "serious and numerous" consequences, according to a Defense Department report released this week. The European Union has embargoed arms sales to China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. In the past year China has run an intense lobbying effort to have the ban lifted, a move strongly opposed by U.S. officials. "We think the Chinese would be able to obtain in Europe a lot of military or dual-use technologies that would be of great qualitative benefit to them," a senior DoD official said July...

Despite new law, banks lose data on 2 million customers07/02/2005 The Asahi Shimbun Banks have lost information on more than 2 million customers in the three months since a law went into effect calling for stricter protection of personal data. The figure was compiled from reports of financial institutions submitted to the Financial Services Agency by Thursday. Many of the companies announced the results of their internal investigations. The agency will make a formal announcement of the results of the reports in the near future. The agency may also issue recommendations for revisions or orders to improve business operations at...

Odds are you've run across one of these characters in your career. They're glib, charming, manipulative, deceitful, ruthless -- and very, very destructive. And there may be lots of them in America's corner offices. ...The standard clinical test for psychopathy, Robert Hare's PCL-R, evaluates 20 personality traits overall, but a subset of eight traits defines what he calls the "corporate psychopath" -- the nonviolent person prone to the "selfish, callous, and remorseless use of others." Does your boss fit the profile?

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Suppose you could eliminate the factors often blamed for the shortage of women in high-paying jobs. Suppose that promotions and raises did not depend on pleasing sexist male bosses or putting in long nights and weekends away from home. Would women make as much as men? Economists recently tried to find out in an experiment in Pittsburgh by paying men and women to add up five numbers in their heads. At first they worked individually, doing as many sums as they could in five minutes and receiving 50 cents for each correct answer. Then they competed in four-person tournaments, with...

BOSTON -- NStar has canceled the health benefits of more than 1,900 striking workers -- a tactic one labor expert called unusually aggressive and an indication that the electric and gas utility is digging in for a long strike. NStar linemen, engineers and other workers walked off the job Monday after a five-year contract expired and negotiations toward a new agreement collapsed. That same day, the company canceled union members' medical, dental and vision benefits through Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts, NStar spokeswoman Caroline Allen said Wednesday. SNIP "When employees do not report for duty and instead strike the company,...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations chose a State Department finance expert as its new management chief Tuesday and announced a series of reforms in response to the oil-for-food and sexual exploitation scandals and staff concerns about the organization's leadership. The package announced Tuesday includes protection for whistleblowers, an anti-fraud and corruption policy, a unified standard of conduct for peacekeepers to prevent sexual abuse, and expanded financial disclosure requirements for senior officials. Christopher Bancroft Burnham, currently acting undersecretary of state for management, was hired as the world body's management chief and charged with strengthening "accountability, ethical conduct and management...

The American public recognizes that the United Nations has major ethical and leadership problems. This same American public is growing more frustrated with the United States membership in the UN each day. To help this floundering world body, the President of the United States has nominated a man with the two missing elements that the United Nations sorely needs. The Secretary of State on the United States has said that he is the best man for the job. The former Prime Minister of Great Britain has said that he is an extremely good choice for America. On the other hand,...

Finally, more than four years after its hideous birth, the Clinton "Roadless Rule" is dead. The Bush administration and the Forest Service just announced a final rule that effectively undoes Clinton's reckless decree. Dying with the "Roadless Rule" are the following: - threats of catastrophic wildfire - threats of forest infestation and disease - lack of public access to public lands - improper resource management - unhealthy forests - top-down federal overreach Recall that Bill Clinton, just eight days before he left office, in the dark of night, penned his infamous, unilateral, executive order that locked up over 58 million...

The intellectual force behind President Bush's plan to overhaul Social Security, the man the president calls his favorite "Democrat economist," is not an economist. He is Robert C. Pozen, a lawyer and mutual fund executive who serves as chairman of MFS Investment Management in Boston. A registered Democrat, Mr. Pozen donated money to the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry last year and voted for him on Nov. 2. He was a classmate of Hillary Rodham Clinton at Yale Law School. But all that has not stopped President Bush from embracing Mr. Pozen's main idea to bring the nation's public...

Forty-three of John Bolton's former colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute want to set the record straight: They've sent a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defending Bolton's conduct and management style. "We were colleagues of John Bolton during his tenure as senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute from January 1997 through May 2001. We are writing to tell you and your colleagues that the various allegations that have been raised before your Committee, concerning Mr. Bolton's management style and conduct in other organizations and circumstances, are radically at odds with our experiences in more than four...

The average salary offered to Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad students saw a steep jump this year, with the highest being HSBC's $152,000 for a position at its London office. Also, around 250 students graduated this year, up 47 per cent from last year. The placement season, which began on March 14 and closed on Monday, saw a total of 477 jobs being offered to 247 students (three students opted out of the placements sessions). GECIS, an arm of GE Capital International Services, offered the highest salary -- Rs 14.50 lakh (Rs 1.45 million) -- for placement in the country. The...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Nearly four years have elapsed since the Oslo process (1993-2000) between Israelis and Palestinians foundered in bloodshed. Over that period, two U.S. administrations have tried to forge policies that would reduce the violence and point toward a solution to the conflict.It has not been a single-minded pursuit. Since September 11, 2001, the prime focus of Washington has been the management of unprecedented U.S. military interventions in the region, which removed regimes from power in Afghanistan and Iraq. The notion of Israeli-Palestinian peace as the key to regional stability has been replaced by the war on terror and the insistence on...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday he wants a plan on his desk in 90 days on how the state can better manage state waters and seashore. California, with 1,100 miles of coastline, is among the most economically dependent on the tourists drawn to its beaches and on ports that serve as gateways to Mexico, Canada and Pacific Rim nations. The state's shore, ports and oceans account for an estimated $60 billion in direct spending and $15 billion in annual tax revenues. "The health of our ocean resources and the economy they support benefits not only California, but...