O’Reilly, C., & Pfeffer, C. (1995). Southwest Airlines: Using Human Resources for Competitive Advantage. Stanford, CA: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. This posting is about the Stanford University, Graduate School of Business Case study focusing on Southwest Airlines as an example of leveraging human resources into a distinct competitive advantage. Certainly, we’ve all hear […]
Steel Moment Frame Code Overview
Following is a brief overview of the governing code documents for seismic design of steel moment frames, intended to provide a brief, hierarchical, at-a-glance directory. 2006 International Building Code (IBC) Chapter 16—Structural Design Chapter 22—Steel 2005 American Society of Civil Engineers/Structural Engineers Institute (ASCE/SEI) 7: Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures including Supplement […]
Attitudes and Emotions–Two Wall Street Journal Articles
Here is a run-down and commentary of two recent WSJ articles that deal with employee attitudes and the bottom line. Certainly, in the not-too-distant past, workplace quality and employee’s attitudes and emotions were not on the radar of business executives but studies are increasingly establishing a positive correlation between workplace quality and the bottom line. […]
Haiti Earthquake: January 12, 2010
I’ve had a lot of non-engineer co-workers in the construction field as well as laypeople ask me about the Haiti earthquake and whether we could learn a lot about construction from studying the collapses and structural failures there. First, a quick overview of the geophysical aspects of the earthquake: here’s an informative link USGS Haiti […]
Personality, Perception and Attribution—Articles by Bob Sutton & Carol Dweck
From Bob Sutton’s Blog “Work Matters” There have been many studies done on the power of beliefs and how they can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bob Sutton, in a recent blog article, has tied it into intelligence, skills and performance (on-the-job or otherwise) and raised implications for low-cost, modest interventions in helping to improve peoples’ […]
“Brainwashed”
“Social media is either a time-wasting, wool-gathering, yak-shaving waste of effort or, perhaps, just maybe, it’s a crack in the wall between you and the rest of the world. It’s a choice… up to you.”—Seth Godin A great read with more where this came from: Brainwashed
“Flirting to Success or Flirting with Disaster?”
Does a woman who uses her femininity and physical attractiveness in the workplace create advantage or disadvantage for herself? Certainly, there have been compelling arguments on both sides of this issue but the general consensus has been that a woman could indeed use physical attraction and femininity to gain advantage in the workplace. However, a […]
The Importance of “Soft Skills” in the Marketplace
There have been many articles written recently lamenting a prevalent weakness in “soft skills” among college graduates and, in particular, business students. Many articles are directly from interviews with recruiters and other interviewers. People such as these who hire and place recent business school and MBA graduates indicate that there is a lot of strength […]
For Continuous Improvement, It’s Important to Understand that the Inner Affects the Outer and the Outer Affects the Inner
We, as human beings, are undoubtedly affected by both our cognition (the inner) and our behavior (the outer). As with most experiences in business, as in life, this can be good or bad depending on the way we use it. In the Harvard Business Review article “Teaching Smart People How to Learn” (Argyris, 1991), this […]
The Efficacy of the Case Method
The case method is one of the most ubiquitous forms of learning found in MBA programs around the globe. Many business schools use this tool to put their students into the perspective of managers and to set their thought processes on a path of engagement and (to use the physical metaphor) exercise. We’ve all heard […]