As more and more individuals express themselves with tattoos and body piercings and push the envelope on what is deemed appropriate in the workplace, employers have an increased need for creation and enforcement of reasonable dress codes and appearance policies. As with any employment policy or practice, an appearance policy must be implemented and enforced without regard to an individual's race, color, gender, national origin, religion, disability, age, or other protected status. A policy governing dress and appearance based on the business needs of an employer that is applied fairly and consistently and does not have a disproportionate effect on any protected class will generally be upheld if challenged in court. By examining some of the more common legal challenges to dress codes and how courts have resolved the disputes, health care managers can avoid many potential problems. This article, the second part of a 3-part examination of dress codes and appearance policies, focuses on the issue of gender under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Pertinent court cases that provide guidance for employers are addressed.

Escalation of commitment in new product development has been studied extensively for the last four decades but the impact of culture on the escalation phenomenon remains largely unexplored. This study investigates how culture impacts the decision to escalate or deescalate commitment to new products. Americans are analytic thinkers whereas Chinese tend to be holistic thinkers. When it comes to decision making, analytic thinkers focus on field independent and abstract factors and believe that future is linear and static, whereas holistic thinkers focus more on contextual factors and believe that future is dynamic and nonlinear. Hence, Chinese are more likely to escalate their commitment relative to Americans on receiving a negative performance report in the new product development process. A lab experiment using weekend MBA students and managers was used to test this underlying hypothesis. The findings confirmed that analytical thinkers use fewer factors than holistic thinkers in making new product decisions, and that Chinese managers are more likely to escalate their commitment relative to American managers. The decision to escalate or de-escalate was moderated by perceived product innovativeness.

This study uses information gleaned from a sample of 102 public sector project managers to assess the interrelationships among project manager roles, responsibilities, and competencies in the planning and implementation stages of the project life cycle. The results of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling revealed that project managers use different subsets of their skills to influence outcomes at these two stages of the project. For example, while the project manager's organizational and technical skills tend to have some influence during the project planning stage, managerial, leadership and people skills appear to have more influence during the project implementation stage. Implications of these and our other findings for the practice of project management in public sector organizations are discussed.

This study examines the role of service worker customer orientation (CO) as a buffer against the detrimental effects of job burnout on job performance and turnover intentions. Data collected from frontline bank employees serve as the study setting. The tenets of the attribution theory are used in developing the study hypotheses. Results show that CO moderates the detrimental effects of job burnout on both job performance and turnover intentions, where the effects of job burnout on both outcomes are weaker for frontline employees with higher CO. Hiring employees high on CO for frontline positions should pay dividends in managing burnout and its negative consequences on job performance and turnover intentions.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to gain a better conceptualization and measurement of smart shopping. The specific objectives are to: investigate consumers' perceptions of the term smart shopping; develop a measure of smart shopping; and validate the measure of smart shopping. Design/methodology/approach: The research includes a comprehensive literature review, focus group interviews, and in-depth interviews for initial item generation and instrument development. Scale development consists of a pilot test (n=100), a pretest (n=237), and main study (n=1,474). Findings: The findings indicate that smart shopping includes consumers seeking to minimize the expenditure of time, money, or energy to gain hedonic or utilitarian value from the experience. Research limitations/implications: In-store shopping was examined based on shopping for clothing, grocery, or electronics; therefore caution must be used when applying the smart shopping scale to other shopping contexts or product categories. Practical implications: Gaining a better understanding of the smart shopper will enable retailers to more accurately target this consumer group. Focus could be placed on saving time or saving energy in addition to the traditional emphasis on saving money. Retailers could also provide a combination of utilitarian and hedonic experiences for consumers. Originality/value: This study conceptualizes and tests the term smart shopping from a broader perspective than previous studies that primarily focused on monetary savings in the grocery shopping context. Smart shopping includes the desire for efficient shopping but emphases on the components of an efficient trip may differ from traditional theories.

Purpose – This paper aims to present an applied research effort aimed at reengineering the utilization practices of operating rooms for a public Portuguese hospital. This reengineering effort is motivated by the desire to enhance the patientorientation of the hospital. The role of information systems in facilitating such organizational change is also to be examined. Design/methodology/approach – Actual data are used to simulate outcomes of three different operational scenarios related to the utilization of operating rooms and surgical teams. As such, the critical constraint related to surgical capacity is relaxed under different utilization scenarios. Findings – Based on the findings of the study, it appears that there is no conflict between operational efficiency and patient satisfaction. Welldesigned operational changes can lead to both efficiency and patient satisfaction benefits. This, in turn, can translate into competitive strategic advantage for the hospital. Research limitations/implications – The simulation results derived from this applied research are positive. In general, they tend to point to potential operational and strategic benefits to the hospital and its patients. Although the simulation model used in this study was validated using actual data, more research is needed to test its general applicability. Such research should shed more light on the interrelationships which exist within the hospital operating system. Practical implications – The approach advocated in this research has operational and strategic relevance to healthcare policy makers and hospitals' administrators. In this context, the role of the information systems in providing information relevant to tracking and improving a hospital's performance is emphasized. Originality/value – The paper presents a practical, applied, systematic approach toward enhancing operational effectiveness in healthcare organizations. It draws on bodies of knowledge pretending to system theory, simulation and operations management in order to improve the shortterm performance of hospitals.

The dynamic relationships relevant to the competitive environment and competitive business methods utilised are examined for a sample of 107 hospitals with different operational characteristics. The data collected was analysed utilising a structural equation modeling approach. The results of the analysis clearly show that the effective implementation of quality improvement initiatives is associated with operational benefits. These operational benefits, in turn, were found to be associated with strategic organisational benefits. The path to these benefits appears to be motivated by environmental changes.

This research examines the rate of implementation and the level of effectiveness of six process management initiatives in four manufacturing industries. The results of this survey-based research indicate that there has not been a mad rush to adopt all available initiatives. Rather, individual industries appear to favour different mixes of these initiatives. Moreover, most of the respondents indicated that the initiatives that they had chosen were effective in meeting their operational and strategic needs. This study concludes by presenting specific conclusions relevant to manufacturing systems in the studied industries.

The relationship between international commerce and sustainable development is the subject of much controversy that is exacerbated by geographic boundaries that are co-jointly developed, shaped, and sustained by regional trade agreements. The outcomes of three Americas trade agreements - NAFTA, CAFTA, and USPTPA - are analyzed across three dimensions: economic, ecological, and labor. The three dimensions collectively form for each trade region a specific ECOL niche that is concurrently subject to national variation. We propose and find that low-ECOL niches in the Americas appear to attract more foreign trade with investment. Nevertheless, this tentative finding seems not to hold for those corporations that seek out strong ECOL niche countries like Costa Rica.

The objective of this study is to investigate the strategic factors that influence the overall performance of manufacturing organisations in different industries. Strategic groups were identified using cluster analysis and their overall performance was evaluated. Structural equation modelling was used to verify the existence of significant linkages between competitive factors and firms' overall performance within the identified strategic groups. The results of this study pointed out to the existence of a relationship between strategic group membership and firm's overall performance. Overall, the results tend to emphasise the importance of viewing manufacturing performance from a system-wide perspective.