Optimal strategies of IT consulting firms

Author(s):  
Yung-Ming Li ◽  
Jhih-Hua Jhang-Li ◽  
Yen-Chun Liu
Author(s):  
Laura Empson

This book analyses the complex power dynamics and interpersonal politics that lie at the heart of leadership in professional organizations, such as accounting, law, and consulting firms, investment banks, hospitals, and universities. It is based on scholarly research into many of the world’s leading professional organizations across a range of sectors, including interviews with over 500 senior professionals in sixteen countries. Drawing on the latest academic theory to analyse exactly how professionals in organizations come together to create ‘leadership’, it provides new insights into how leaders lead when there is no traditional hierarchy to support them, their own authority is contingent, and they must constantly renegotiate relationships with relatively autonomous professional peers. It explores how leaders persuade highly intelligent, educated, and opinionated professionals to work together; how change happens within professional organizations; and why leaders so often fail. Part I introduces the concept of plural leadership, analysing how leaders establish and maintain their positions within leadership constellations, and the implications for governance in the context of collective or distributed leadership. Part II examines the complex, challenging relationships between professionals as they seek to influence their organizations, including the phenomena of leadership dyads, insecure overachievers, social control, and the rise of the management professional. Part III examines the shifts in the locus of power as professional organizations grow, adapt, and react to external stimuli such as mergers and acquisitions and economic crises. The conclusion identifies the paradoxes inherent in professional organizations and examines the role of leaders in attempting to reconcile them.


Author(s):  
Jens Beckert ◽  
Richard Bronk

This chapter provides a theoretical framework for considering how imaginaries and narratives interact with calculative devices to structure expectations and beliefs in the economy. It analyses the nature of uncertainty in innovative market economies and examines how economic actors use imaginaries, narratives, models, and calculative practices to coordinate and legitimize action, determine value, and establish sufficient conviction to act despite the uncertainty they face. Placing the themes of the volume in the context of broader trends in economics and sociology, the chapter argues that, in conditions of widespread radical uncertainty, there is no uniquely rational set of expectations, and there are no optimal strategies or objective probability functions; instead, expectations are often structured by contingent narratives or socially constructed imaginaries. Moreover, since expectations are not anchored in a pre-existing future reality but have an important role in creating the future, they become legitimate objects of political debate and crucial instruments of power in markets and societies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (01) ◽  
pp. e88-e94
Author(s):  
Alyssa M. Kretz ◽  
Jennifer E. deSante-Bertkau ◽  
Michael V. Boland ◽  
Xinxing Guo ◽  
Megan E. Collins

Abstract Background While ethics and professionalism are important components of graduate medical education, there is limited data about how ethics and professionalism curricula are taught or assessed in ophthalmology residency programs. Objective This study aimed to determine how U.S. ophthalmology residency programs teach and assess ethics and professionalism and explore trainee preparedness in these areas. Methods Directors from accredited U.S. ophthalmology residency programs completed an online survey about components of programs' ethics and professionalism teaching curricula, strategies for assessing competence, and trainee preparedness in these areas. Results Directors from 55 of 116 programs (46%) responded. The most common ethics and professionalism topics taught were informed consent (38/49, 78%) and risk management and litigation (38/49, 78%), respectively; most programs assessed trainee competence via 360-degree global evaluation (36/48, 75%). While most (46/48, 95%) respondents reported that their trainees were well or very well prepared at the time of graduation, 15 of 48 (31%) had prohibited a trainee from graduating or required remediation prior to graduation due to unethical or unprofessional conduct. Nearly every program (37/48, 98%) thought that it was very important to dedicate curricular time to teaching ethics and professionalism. Overall, 16 of 48 respondents (33%) felt that the time spent teaching these topics was too little. Conclusion Ophthalmology residency program directors recognized the importance of an ethics and professionalism curriculum. However, there was marked variation in teaching and assessment methods. Additional work is necessary to identify optimal strategies for teaching and assessing competence in these areas. In addition, a substantial number of trainees were prohibited from graduating or required remediation due to ethics and professionalism issues, suggesting an impact of unethical and unprofessional behavior on resident attrition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan H. Morris ◽  
Fernando W. Rossine ◽  
Joshua B. Plotkin ◽  
Simon A. Levin

AbstractIn the absence of drugs and vaccines, policymakers use non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing to decrease rates of disease-causing contact, with the aim of reducing or delaying the epidemic peak. These measures carry social and economic costs, so societies may be unable to maintain them for more than a short period of time. Intervention policy design often relies on numerical simulations of epidemic models, but comparing policies and assessing their robustness demands clear principles that apply across strategies. Here we derive the theoretically optimal strategy for using a time-limited intervention to reduce the peak prevalence of a novel disease in the classic Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered epidemic model. We show that broad classes of easier-to-implement strategies can perform nearly as well as the theoretically optimal strategy. But neither the optimal strategy nor any of these near-optimal strategies is robust to implementation error: small errors in timing the intervention produce large increases in peak prevalence. Our results reveal fundamental principles of non-pharmaceutical disease control and expose their potential fragility. For robust control, an intervention must be strong, early, and ideally sustained.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document