Samuelson & Nordhaus Economía, 17ª ed. Mexico: McGraw, 2002 Entorno Económico
1ª Silvia - Hernández Solís. 5º
III.- Los mercados de factores productivos Capítulos 12, 13, 14,
1 Titulo: Banco de México - funciones – liquidez, interés, moneda. Economía: Keynes vs. Friedman
2.º Luis Marcelo Javier - Machain Piñuelas. 6º
IV.- El papel del estado en la Economía Capítulos 15, 16,17,
8 Titulo: Productividad en México vs. China.
3.º Antonio - Sánchez Villegas. 11º...
IX.- Pagos y comercio internacional Capítulos 29, 30,
5 Titulo: Empresa Modelo vs. FEMSA vs. Anhaeuser Bush.
4.ª Laura Estela- Sevilla García. 9º
VII.- Dinero, banca y política monetaria Capítulos 25, 26
7 Titulo: Carlos Slim – el hombre más rico del mundo vs. Bill Gates vs. Buffet.
5º. Gerardo - Vélez Lozano. 2º
I.- Introducción a la Economía Capítulos 1, 2 y 3
9 Titulo: Protección de la propiedad intelectual en México – su Costo vs. Beneficio.
6.ª Edna Lizeth - Villa Razo. 7º
V.- Macroeconomía Capítulos 20, 21, 22,
3 Titulo: Transporte procedente del Pacifico vía México con destino a Estados Unidos
7ª Martha Paola Zaya Valdez. 3º
II.-La microeconomía, la oferta, la demanda Capítulos 4, 5, 6
4 Titulo: Comisión Federal de Electricidad y política eléctrica Unión Europea.
8.º Macario - Zúñiga Barragán. 4º
II b.- los mercados de productos Capítulos 7, 8, 9, 10
6 Titulo: PEMEX vs. Statoil vs. Petrobras.
miércoles, 20 de febrero de 2008
miércoles, 30 de enero de 2008
Entorno Economico. Miercoles de 20:00 a 22:00 hrs
Economics, 18/e
Paul A. Samuelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
William D. Nordhaus, Yale University
ISBN: 0072872055
Copyright year: 2005
Table of Contents
Part One: Basic Concepts
1 The Fundamentals of Economics
Appendix 1 How to Read Graphs
2 Markets and Government in a Modern Economy
3 Basic Elements of Supply and Demand
Part Two: Microeconomics: Supply, Demand, and Product Markets
4 Applications of Supply and Demand
5 Demand and Consumer Behavior
Appendix 5 Geometrical Analysis of Consumer Equilibrium
6 Production and Business Organization
7 Analysis of Costs
Appendix 7 Production, Cost Theory, and Decision of the Firm
8 Analysis of Perfectly Competitive Markets
9 Competition and Its Polar Case of Monopoly
10 Oligopoly and Monopolistic Competition
11 Uncertainty and Game Theory
Part Three: Factor Markets: Labor, Land, and Capital
12 How Markets Determine Incomes
13 The Labor Market
14 Land and Capital
Appendix 14 Markets and Economic Efficiency
Part Four: Applied Microeconomics: International Trade, Government, and the Environment
15 Comparative Advantage and Protectionism
16 Government Taxation and Expenditure
17 Promoting More Efficient Markets
18 Protecting the Environment
19 Efficiency vs. Equality: The Big Tradeoff
Part Five: Macroeconomics: Economic Growth and Business Cycles
20 Overview of Macroeconomics
Appendix 20 Macroeconomic Data
21 Measuring Economic Activity
22 Consumption and Investment
23 Business Fluctuations and the Theory of Aggregate Demand
24 The Multiplier Model
25 Money, Banking, and Financial Markets
26 Central Banking and Monetary Policy
Part Six: Economic Growth and Macroeconomic Policy
27 The Process of Economic Growth
28 The Challenge of Economic Development
29 Exchange Rates and the International Financial System
30 Open-Economy Macroeconomics
Part Seven: Unemployment, Inflation, and Economic Policy
31 Unemployment and the Foundations of Aggregate Supply
32 Ensuring Price Stability
33 The Warring Schools of Macroeconomics
34 Policies for Growth and Stability
Paul A. Samuelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
William D. Nordhaus, Yale University
ISBN: 0072872055
Copyright year: 2005
Table of Contents
Part One: Basic Concepts
1 The Fundamentals of Economics
Appendix 1 How to Read Graphs
2 Markets and Government in a Modern Economy
3 Basic Elements of Supply and Demand
Part Two: Microeconomics: Supply, Demand, and Product Markets
4 Applications of Supply and Demand
5 Demand and Consumer Behavior
Appendix 5 Geometrical Analysis of Consumer Equilibrium
6 Production and Business Organization
7 Analysis of Costs
Appendix 7 Production, Cost Theory, and Decision of the Firm
8 Analysis of Perfectly Competitive Markets
9 Competition and Its Polar Case of Monopoly
10 Oligopoly and Monopolistic Competition
11 Uncertainty and Game Theory
Part Three: Factor Markets: Labor, Land, and Capital
12 How Markets Determine Incomes
13 The Labor Market
14 Land and Capital
Appendix 14 Markets and Economic Efficiency
Part Four: Applied Microeconomics: International Trade, Government, and the Environment
15 Comparative Advantage and Protectionism
16 Government Taxation and Expenditure
17 Promoting More Efficient Markets
18 Protecting the Environment
19 Efficiency vs. Equality: The Big Tradeoff
Part Five: Macroeconomics: Economic Growth and Business Cycles
20 Overview of Macroeconomics
Appendix 20 Macroeconomic Data
21 Measuring Economic Activity
22 Consumption and Investment
23 Business Fluctuations and the Theory of Aggregate Demand
24 The Multiplier Model
25 Money, Banking, and Financial Markets
26 Central Banking and Monetary Policy
Part Six: Economic Growth and Macroeconomic Policy
27 The Process of Economic Growth
28 The Challenge of Economic Development
29 Exchange Rates and the International Financial System
30 Open-Economy Macroeconomics
Part Seven: Unemployment, Inflation, and Economic Policy
31 Unemployment and the Foundations of Aggregate Supply
32 Ensuring Price Stability
33 The Warring Schools of Macroeconomics
34 Policies for Growth and Stability
domingo, 13 de enero de 2008
El negocio de la educacion.
Applying Services Marketing Concepts to the Administration of A Business School
Abstract
This paper applies the services marketing concepts presented in the Zeithaml and Bitner Services Marketing book to the administration of a business school. The paper focuses on seven topics:
• The Tangibility Spectrum.
• Basic Characteristics of Services.
• The Expanded Marketing Mix.
• Gap Theory.
• Positioning the Offering.
• The Importance of Faculty.
• The "Servicescape" Concept.
Introduction
The publication of Zeithaml and Bitner's Services Marketing in 1996 has brought together in a highly accessible form much of what we know about the marketing of services. As a result, it is now easy to apply services marketing concepts to any service of interest. This paper shows how these concepts would apply to a business school.
The paper follows the Zeithaml book and page references are given throughout. The sections that the author considered to be especially relevant to a business school are touched upon.
The Tangibility Spectrum
Products and services may be ranked according to their tangibility (page 7, Zeithaml book). Salt is shown as being highly tangible, while teaching is shown to be least tangible. The point of this classification is that the concepts presented in the services marketing literature are especially significant to the services that are least tangible, such as teaching.
Basic Characteristics of Services
Services differ from products in four important ways: intangibility, heterogeneity, simultaneous production and consumption and perishability (page 18 in Zeithaml). All of these ways affect marketing strategy.
Services are intangible and teaching is among the least tangible services. Intangibility leads to two problems. It is difficult to describe teaching and it is difficult to evaluate its quality. Regarding the first difficulty, it is very important to be careful in describing teaching fully and accurately in order to avoid building up unrealistic expectations in the minds of students. Regarding the second difficulty (evaluation), schools have to anticipate that students will use a variety of sources of information in evaluating the quality of the teaching, including people (administrators, faculty, staff and other students), physical evidence (classrooms, lounges, labs, libraries) and processes (instructional and administrative).
Services are heterogeneous. Even within one institution, teaching is produced by different people, in different places, at different times, with different students. Therefore, the quality of the service delivered depends on the capabilities, demeanor and motivation of service providers (teachers), the adequacy of the physical surroundings and the interest and behavior of the students. The challenge of maintaining the quality of teaching in an institution requires measures that affect positively the behavior of many people in different places, in the absence of close supervision. Indirect methods, such as marketing to the service providers (teachers) need to be used. See the Service Marketing Triangle (page 23) (Exhibit 11.1)
Services are produced and consumed simultaneously. All service providers, administrators, teachers and staff are producers and simultaneously marketers of the educational service. At the same time, the behavior of students may affect the quality of the education received by all students. These factors lead to two conclusions. To achieve best results, all service providers should have a basic understanding of marketing and possess marketing skills. In addition, students must be selected and oriented and if need be trained, in ways that will enhance the learning experience of all students.
Services are perishable. Teaching cannot be stored. It cannot be returned or replaced. To achieve satisfactory financial results proper scheduling becomes an important issue. On the other hand, in order to enable students to get a good education, it may appear necessary, at times to schedule small classes. Conflicting goals may require creative problem-solving.
The Expanded Marketing Mix
For all services marketing, including teaching, three elements have to be added (26) to the usual four part marketing mix consisting of product, price, promotion and distribution. The following three elements also have to be considered in formulating marketing strategy because all of them play a role in student pre-purchase and post-purchase evaluation:
1. People: administrators, teachers and students.
2. Physical evidence: buildings, classrooms, computer labs, libraries, student lounges.
3. Process: teaching methods, technology, level of student involvement.
Gap Theory
The first gap of concern to us is the customer gap (37) which is defined as the difference between customer expectations and perceived service delivery. In the instance of business education, two sets of customers that are important: students and employers.
Student expectations are formed by school-controlled factors such as pricing, advertising and other promises and external factors such as student needs and competitive offerings. Student needs include: to obtain a broad business background, a strong specialization in a business discipline, career advancement and to make personal connections.
Employers want students who possess a broad business background, a strong specialization in a business discipline and who communicate effectively orally and in writing, have excellent interpersonal skills, are good team workers, have a strong work ethic and are enthusiastic about their jobs.
The marketing objective of the school is to eliminate or greatly reduce the customer gap. It does this by addressing the four provider (school) gaps (38).
Gap 1. Not knowing what students and employers expect. Difficulties occur because students' expectations are not uniform and expectations of students differ from expectations of employers. While they are attending school, some students want easy courses and generous grading while others want to learn a lot and expect a lot of homework and high grading standards. As they approach completion of their studies, most students want offers of good jobs.
Another difficulty is that while many students are content with interesting lectures that prepare them well for exams, many employers want people who posses skills that are not developed through note taking and answering questions on examinations.
In order to close the first provider gap, the school needs to define reliably the wants of employers and of students, in the short run and at graduation time.
Gap 2. Not designing the curricula that meet students' and employers' expectations. A problem occurs if students' and employers' expectations differ. Another problem may occur if AACSB curriculum requirements differ substantially from employers' and students' expectations. A third problem may be faculty resistance to change. A fourth problem may come from a faculty teaching evaluation system that relies entirely, or almost entirely on end-of-term student evaluations because then teachers are driven to "teach-to-the-test," a practice that does little to develop the skills that employers need.
Gap 3. Not offering the planned courses or not teaching them properly. Need to limit actual course offerings to those that attract a certain minimum enrollment may reduce the number of courses offered. Also strong emphasis on research and publication limits the time that teachers have for developing new teaching materials that would lead to satisfaction of employer needs. This in turn, makes it difficult for students to satisfy their needs at the time that they apply for jobs or seek other forms of career advancement.
Gap 4. Not matching performance to promises. The school promises a good education which students interpret as being an education that leads to attractive job offers from good employers. In reality, students may not get any job offers because of the school's inability to resolve conflicts among the expectations of students, employers and the AACSB and because the school uses inappropriate faculty performance evaluations and rewards.
Positioning The Offering
A school's position is the way it is perceived by students and employers, particularly in relation to other schools offering similar services (286). The service position is what is in the customer's mind whether or not it is the image planned or desired by the organization. The goal of the school should be to achieve and maintain a position that is different and better than that of competitors. Effective positioning requires that the difference and superiority be based on something that . . .
• Is important to students and employers,
• Differentiates the school significantly from competitors
• And that the school can deliver consistently.
Positioning may be based on one of the five dimensions of service quality (288) or one of the three elements of the service evidence (291). There is some overlap between the two categories.
On the Five Dimensions of Service Quality
1. Reliability is the ability to deliver important promised results, such as career advancement, consistently. Alumni testimonials and placement and career progress data would have to be offered to support this type of positioning. In addition, some form of guarantees might have to be offered.
2. Responsiveness is the willingness to help students. Substantial advisory and tutoring services would have be offered to support such positioning.
3. Assurance positioning would have to be backed up by evidence of the knowledge and thoughtfulness of administrators, faculty and staff and their ability to inspire trust and confidence.
4. Empathy positioning would have to be supported by evidence that caring, individualized attention is given to students by administrators, faculty and staff.
5. Tangibles positioning would have to be supported by the appearance, usefulness and comfort of physical facilities and the quality and availability of computers, on-line services and library, etc.
On the Three Elements of Service Evidence
1. People positioning would claim (and offer credible evidence) that the schools' administrators, faculty and staff are superior to those of competing schools in their knowledge, availability, thoughtfulness, courtesy and ability to inspire trust and confidence. Even more important, would be the claim, supported by proof, that the school admits only very highly qualified students. A graduate business school might claim that all entering students have a 600+ GMAT score and two years of significant business experience.
2. Physical Evidence positioning would have to be supported by the factors listed above under "Tangibles:" the appearance, usefulness and comfort of physical facilities and the quality and availability of computers, on-line services and library, etc.
3. Process positioning would have to demonstrate the superiority of the curriculum and instructional methods used and support services provided.
The Importance of Faculty
In the marketing and delivery of services, the good performance of employees is essential to success (303). Which employees? All employees who come into contact with the students: administrators, faculty and staff. A relevant concept is that employee satisfaction is a prerequisite for achieving student satisfaction (304). Furthermore, employee satisfaction and student satisfaction are mutually reinforcing.
The following section focuses on faculty because it is the performance of this group that has the greatest effect on ultimate satisfaction of students. Administrators need to consider two factors if their aim to maximize student satisfaction: role ambiguity and conflict and the evaluation and reward system.
Role ambiguity and conflict occur when it is not clear to the employee which objectives to pursue and the objectives being considered are in conflict with each other. In business schools, faculty are confronted with two sets of teaching objectives:
1. Students' short term objectives of achieving good grades with moderate effort and anxiety. To satisfy these objectives, teachers present detailed (and sometimes interesting) lectures geared to the mid-term and final exams. In elementary schools, this practice is derisively called "teaching to the test." In AACSB accredited business schools this is called excellent teaching and receives the highest evaluations, especially if the lectures are accompanied by multimedia computer-generated entertainment.
2. Students' end-of-the-program objectives of getting a good job or a promotion or a raise in pay. To satisfy these objectives, teachers have to impart marketable and transferable skills, as well as career marketing skills in addition to covering the required content of their courses. This increases students' workload substantially and also provokes anxiety because many students discover that they are deficient in important skills and that these skills are difficult to learn. Some students are frustrated by this extra work and anxiety and vent their frustration by giving their teachers low scores on evaluations.
The problematical situation described above calls for clear definition of objectives and proper orientation of students so that they obtain a clear understanding of what they need in order to achieve their objectives.
The faculty evaluation and reward system has to recognize that students may have to work hard to achieve their objectives and that they may experience anxiety and frustration on the way and that faculty members should not be penalized for trying to prepare students for the challenges of the real world.
The Servicescape Concept
The "servicescape" is the totality of the physical environment of the learning experience. It includes all aspects of the classroom (size, shape, seating arrangement, ventilation, acoustics, lighting, blackboards, audiovisual equipment, availability of computers), library, computer labs, lounges. The nature of the servicescape affects the success of the education marketing effort in two important ways.
First, because education is intangible, students rely on tangible cues, or physical evidence, to evaluate the learning experience before its purchase and to assess their satisfaction during and after consumption (519). Consequently, the servicescape should provide students with positive cues regarding the quality of the education.
Secondly, as noted previously, education is a service that requires the presence of both service provider (faculty) and customer (student). Also, as noted previously, to achieve student satisfaction, it is necessary to obtain faculty satisfaction. The "servicescape" is the teacher's working environment and represents the sum total of the physical tools available to the teacher. Therefore, satisfying the needs of the teacher must be a primary consideration in designing, constructing and maintaining the servicescape (521).
Summary and Conclusions
First, there is the basic assumption that the school wants to satisfy its students because the students are the people who select the school. To help students to satisfy their ultimate desire for good jobs, or other forms of career advancement, the business school must provide an education that satisfies employers' needs for productive workers. Students may lack a full understanding of employers' needs and the skills the students will need for long-term career advancement. It is an important part of the business school's job to enlighten students regarding these important issues and to provide the skill-training they need.
In accomplishing these tasks, the school has to define through proper research the exact needs of relevant employers and skills students need to land desirable jobs and to move up on corporate career ladders or to succeed in their own businesses.
Then the school has to inform the faculty about these research findings, to set appropriate objectives and motivators and to encourage the faculty to develop required curricula, courses and instructional materials.
The next step is to provide faculty training and to install evaluation and reward processes to assist and motivate the faculty.
In positioning, the school has a multitude of choices. However only two stand out as being worthy of serious consideration. If the school happens to be one of the top schools in the country, with high entrance requirements (SATs and/or GMATs) and high percentage of rejections of applicants, the positioning is in place and no changes should be made. If the school is one of the multitude that cannot afford to be highly selective, its positioning should focus on reliability: "We promise to give you the most effective education for lifelong career progress." To support this claim, the school must close all four provider gaps.
Because of the intangibility of teaching, the school must provide state-of-the art physical facilities and processes. It will also have to use appropriate training, evaluation and reward methods to assist and motivate the faculty in delivering on the promise of reliability.
REFERENCE
Zeithaml, V.A. and Bitner, M.J., Services Marketing, New York: McGraw-Hill,1996.
Abstract
This paper applies the services marketing concepts presented in the Zeithaml and Bitner Services Marketing book to the administration of a business school. The paper focuses on seven topics:
• The Tangibility Spectrum.
• Basic Characteristics of Services.
• The Expanded Marketing Mix.
• Gap Theory.
• Positioning the Offering.
• The Importance of Faculty.
• The "Servicescape" Concept.
Introduction
The publication of Zeithaml and Bitner's Services Marketing in 1996 has brought together in a highly accessible form much of what we know about the marketing of services. As a result, it is now easy to apply services marketing concepts to any service of interest. This paper shows how these concepts would apply to a business school.
The paper follows the Zeithaml book and page references are given throughout. The sections that the author considered to be especially relevant to a business school are touched upon.
The Tangibility Spectrum
Products and services may be ranked according to their tangibility (page 7, Zeithaml book). Salt is shown as being highly tangible, while teaching is shown to be least tangible. The point of this classification is that the concepts presented in the services marketing literature are especially significant to the services that are least tangible, such as teaching.
Basic Characteristics of Services
Services differ from products in four important ways: intangibility, heterogeneity, simultaneous production and consumption and perishability (page 18 in Zeithaml). All of these ways affect marketing strategy.
Services are intangible and teaching is among the least tangible services. Intangibility leads to two problems. It is difficult to describe teaching and it is difficult to evaluate its quality. Regarding the first difficulty, it is very important to be careful in describing teaching fully and accurately in order to avoid building up unrealistic expectations in the minds of students. Regarding the second difficulty (evaluation), schools have to anticipate that students will use a variety of sources of information in evaluating the quality of the teaching, including people (administrators, faculty, staff and other students), physical evidence (classrooms, lounges, labs, libraries) and processes (instructional and administrative).
Services are heterogeneous. Even within one institution, teaching is produced by different people, in different places, at different times, with different students. Therefore, the quality of the service delivered depends on the capabilities, demeanor and motivation of service providers (teachers), the adequacy of the physical surroundings and the interest and behavior of the students. The challenge of maintaining the quality of teaching in an institution requires measures that affect positively the behavior of many people in different places, in the absence of close supervision. Indirect methods, such as marketing to the service providers (teachers) need to be used. See the Service Marketing Triangle (page 23) (Exhibit 11.1)
Services are produced and consumed simultaneously. All service providers, administrators, teachers and staff are producers and simultaneously marketers of the educational service. At the same time, the behavior of students may affect the quality of the education received by all students. These factors lead to two conclusions. To achieve best results, all service providers should have a basic understanding of marketing and possess marketing skills. In addition, students must be selected and oriented and if need be trained, in ways that will enhance the learning experience of all students.
Services are perishable. Teaching cannot be stored. It cannot be returned or replaced. To achieve satisfactory financial results proper scheduling becomes an important issue. On the other hand, in order to enable students to get a good education, it may appear necessary, at times to schedule small classes. Conflicting goals may require creative problem-solving.
The Expanded Marketing Mix
For all services marketing, including teaching, three elements have to be added (26) to the usual four part marketing mix consisting of product, price, promotion and distribution. The following three elements also have to be considered in formulating marketing strategy because all of them play a role in student pre-purchase and post-purchase evaluation:
1. People: administrators, teachers and students.
2. Physical evidence: buildings, classrooms, computer labs, libraries, student lounges.
3. Process: teaching methods, technology, level of student involvement.
Gap Theory
The first gap of concern to us is the customer gap (37) which is defined as the difference between customer expectations and perceived service delivery. In the instance of business education, two sets of customers that are important: students and employers.
Student expectations are formed by school-controlled factors such as pricing, advertising and other promises and external factors such as student needs and competitive offerings. Student needs include: to obtain a broad business background, a strong specialization in a business discipline, career advancement and to make personal connections.
Employers want students who possess a broad business background, a strong specialization in a business discipline and who communicate effectively orally and in writing, have excellent interpersonal skills, are good team workers, have a strong work ethic and are enthusiastic about their jobs.
The marketing objective of the school is to eliminate or greatly reduce the customer gap. It does this by addressing the four provider (school) gaps (38).
Gap 1. Not knowing what students and employers expect. Difficulties occur because students' expectations are not uniform and expectations of students differ from expectations of employers. While they are attending school, some students want easy courses and generous grading while others want to learn a lot and expect a lot of homework and high grading standards. As they approach completion of their studies, most students want offers of good jobs.
Another difficulty is that while many students are content with interesting lectures that prepare them well for exams, many employers want people who posses skills that are not developed through note taking and answering questions on examinations.
In order to close the first provider gap, the school needs to define reliably the wants of employers and of students, in the short run and at graduation time.
Gap 2. Not designing the curricula that meet students' and employers' expectations. A problem occurs if students' and employers' expectations differ. Another problem may occur if AACSB curriculum requirements differ substantially from employers' and students' expectations. A third problem may be faculty resistance to change. A fourth problem may come from a faculty teaching evaluation system that relies entirely, or almost entirely on end-of-term student evaluations because then teachers are driven to "teach-to-the-test," a practice that does little to develop the skills that employers need.
Gap 3. Not offering the planned courses or not teaching them properly. Need to limit actual course offerings to those that attract a certain minimum enrollment may reduce the number of courses offered. Also strong emphasis on research and publication limits the time that teachers have for developing new teaching materials that would lead to satisfaction of employer needs. This in turn, makes it difficult for students to satisfy their needs at the time that they apply for jobs or seek other forms of career advancement.
Gap 4. Not matching performance to promises. The school promises a good education which students interpret as being an education that leads to attractive job offers from good employers. In reality, students may not get any job offers because of the school's inability to resolve conflicts among the expectations of students, employers and the AACSB and because the school uses inappropriate faculty performance evaluations and rewards.
Positioning The Offering
A school's position is the way it is perceived by students and employers, particularly in relation to other schools offering similar services (286). The service position is what is in the customer's mind whether or not it is the image planned or desired by the organization. The goal of the school should be to achieve and maintain a position that is different and better than that of competitors. Effective positioning requires that the difference and superiority be based on something that . . .
• Is important to students and employers,
• Differentiates the school significantly from competitors
• And that the school can deliver consistently.
Positioning may be based on one of the five dimensions of service quality (288) or one of the three elements of the service evidence (291). There is some overlap between the two categories.
On the Five Dimensions of Service Quality
1. Reliability is the ability to deliver important promised results, such as career advancement, consistently. Alumni testimonials and placement and career progress data would have to be offered to support this type of positioning. In addition, some form of guarantees might have to be offered.
2. Responsiveness is the willingness to help students. Substantial advisory and tutoring services would have be offered to support such positioning.
3. Assurance positioning would have to be backed up by evidence of the knowledge and thoughtfulness of administrators, faculty and staff and their ability to inspire trust and confidence.
4. Empathy positioning would have to be supported by evidence that caring, individualized attention is given to students by administrators, faculty and staff.
5. Tangibles positioning would have to be supported by the appearance, usefulness and comfort of physical facilities and the quality and availability of computers, on-line services and library, etc.
On the Three Elements of Service Evidence
1. People positioning would claim (and offer credible evidence) that the schools' administrators, faculty and staff are superior to those of competing schools in their knowledge, availability, thoughtfulness, courtesy and ability to inspire trust and confidence. Even more important, would be the claim, supported by proof, that the school admits only very highly qualified students. A graduate business school might claim that all entering students have a 600+ GMAT score and two years of significant business experience.
2. Physical Evidence positioning would have to be supported by the factors listed above under "Tangibles:" the appearance, usefulness and comfort of physical facilities and the quality and availability of computers, on-line services and library, etc.
3. Process positioning would have to demonstrate the superiority of the curriculum and instructional methods used and support services provided.
The Importance of Faculty
In the marketing and delivery of services, the good performance of employees is essential to success (303). Which employees? All employees who come into contact with the students: administrators, faculty and staff. A relevant concept is that employee satisfaction is a prerequisite for achieving student satisfaction (304). Furthermore, employee satisfaction and student satisfaction are mutually reinforcing.
The following section focuses on faculty because it is the performance of this group that has the greatest effect on ultimate satisfaction of students. Administrators need to consider two factors if their aim to maximize student satisfaction: role ambiguity and conflict and the evaluation and reward system.
Role ambiguity and conflict occur when it is not clear to the employee which objectives to pursue and the objectives being considered are in conflict with each other. In business schools, faculty are confronted with two sets of teaching objectives:
1. Students' short term objectives of achieving good grades with moderate effort and anxiety. To satisfy these objectives, teachers present detailed (and sometimes interesting) lectures geared to the mid-term and final exams. In elementary schools, this practice is derisively called "teaching to the test." In AACSB accredited business schools this is called excellent teaching and receives the highest evaluations, especially if the lectures are accompanied by multimedia computer-generated entertainment.
2. Students' end-of-the-program objectives of getting a good job or a promotion or a raise in pay. To satisfy these objectives, teachers have to impart marketable and transferable skills, as well as career marketing skills in addition to covering the required content of their courses. This increases students' workload substantially and also provokes anxiety because many students discover that they are deficient in important skills and that these skills are difficult to learn. Some students are frustrated by this extra work and anxiety and vent their frustration by giving their teachers low scores on evaluations.
The problematical situation described above calls for clear definition of objectives and proper orientation of students so that they obtain a clear understanding of what they need in order to achieve their objectives.
The faculty evaluation and reward system has to recognize that students may have to work hard to achieve their objectives and that they may experience anxiety and frustration on the way and that faculty members should not be penalized for trying to prepare students for the challenges of the real world.
The Servicescape Concept
The "servicescape" is the totality of the physical environment of the learning experience. It includes all aspects of the classroom (size, shape, seating arrangement, ventilation, acoustics, lighting, blackboards, audiovisual equipment, availability of computers), library, computer labs, lounges. The nature of the servicescape affects the success of the education marketing effort in two important ways.
First, because education is intangible, students rely on tangible cues, or physical evidence, to evaluate the learning experience before its purchase and to assess their satisfaction during and after consumption (519). Consequently, the servicescape should provide students with positive cues regarding the quality of the education.
Secondly, as noted previously, education is a service that requires the presence of both service provider (faculty) and customer (student). Also, as noted previously, to achieve student satisfaction, it is necessary to obtain faculty satisfaction. The "servicescape" is the teacher's working environment and represents the sum total of the physical tools available to the teacher. Therefore, satisfying the needs of the teacher must be a primary consideration in designing, constructing and maintaining the servicescape (521).
Summary and Conclusions
First, there is the basic assumption that the school wants to satisfy its students because the students are the people who select the school. To help students to satisfy their ultimate desire for good jobs, or other forms of career advancement, the business school must provide an education that satisfies employers' needs for productive workers. Students may lack a full understanding of employers' needs and the skills the students will need for long-term career advancement. It is an important part of the business school's job to enlighten students regarding these important issues and to provide the skill-training they need.
In accomplishing these tasks, the school has to define through proper research the exact needs of relevant employers and skills students need to land desirable jobs and to move up on corporate career ladders or to succeed in their own businesses.
Then the school has to inform the faculty about these research findings, to set appropriate objectives and motivators and to encourage the faculty to develop required curricula, courses and instructional materials.
The next step is to provide faculty training and to install evaluation and reward processes to assist and motivate the faculty.
In positioning, the school has a multitude of choices. However only two stand out as being worthy of serious consideration. If the school happens to be one of the top schools in the country, with high entrance requirements (SATs and/or GMATs) and high percentage of rejections of applicants, the positioning is in place and no changes should be made. If the school is one of the multitude that cannot afford to be highly selective, its positioning should focus on reliability: "We promise to give you the most effective education for lifelong career progress." To support this claim, the school must close all four provider gaps.
Because of the intangibility of teaching, the school must provide state-of-the art physical facilities and processes. It will also have to use appropriate training, evaluation and reward methods to assist and motivate the faculty in delivering on the promise of reliability.
REFERENCE
Zeithaml, V.A. and Bitner, M.J., Services Marketing, New York: McGraw-Hill,1996.
martes, 27 de noviembre de 2007
100 años de confusion en Mexico
blog de Roger Bartra
Detalles de la entrada: Confusión y revolución
14 de Noviembre
Confusión y revolución
La idea de revolución es un mito estrechamente asociado a las izquierdas políticas. Pero en México esta idea, tan cara a los movimientos socialistas de diverso signo, ha sido el símbolo de una burocracia militar y política que gobernó en forma autoritaria durante casi todo el siglo pasado. De hecho, esta burocracia se consideró a sí misma, en muchas ocasiones, como de izquierda... Claro que "dentro de la Constitución", como dijo López Mateos.
La mitología política retrata a los revolucionarios como la encarnación de lo nuevo. Por ello, no hay peor pesadilla para la gente revolucionaria que la idea de que ha quedado rezagada y que no vive a la altura de los nuevos tiempos modernos y postmodernos. ¿Es la revolución un fenómeno que se agotó durante el siglo que se acaba de ir? Macario Schettino contesta con un enfático sí. En su excelente libro (Cien años de confusión: México en el siglo XX, Taurus, 2007) muestra cómo el siglo de la Revolución Mexicana fue un siglo perdido, dominado por un experimento fallido y por el estancamiento. La Revolución Mexicana fue –y sigue siendo– un mito tan poderoso que hasta la derecha lo adoptó. En el México del siglo XX todos éramos revolucionarios: burgueses e intelectuales, campesinos y burócratas, obreros y tecnócratas.
Esta situación ha hecho pensar que se están volatilizando los tradicionales límites entre lo revolucionario y lo conservador, entre la izquierda y la derecha, sobre todo después de la quiebra y desaparición del bloque socialista. ¿Cómo entender ahora la supervivencia del "viejo" capitalismo y la derrota del "nuevo" socialismo? La transición democrática en México, encabezada por la derecha y entorpecida por los revolucionarios, ha nublado también el panorama. Ha surgido una nueva geografía política, pero no tenemos todavía un mapa adecuado para viajar por ella. El libro de Macario Schettino es un brillante ensayo que contribuye a dibujar una nueva carta de navegación política. Para ello ha tenido que mirar hacia atrás, al siglo pasado y al antiguo régimen, para buscar las claves de la nueva época. Es una formidable recuperación del trabajo de intelectuales y académicos, mexicanos y extranjeros, que durante decenios han realizado estudios sobre el siglo XX mexicano, y nos ha aportado una visión de conjunto que no existía.
Ciertamente, el tramo final del siglo XX cambió el panorama político mundial. En primer lugar, es un hecho que el capitalismo tejió una inmensa red global, construida con la ayuda decisiva de los espectaculares avances científicos y tecnológicos en computación, genética, conductores, etc. En segundo lugar, ocurrió otro proceso: una formidable expansión de la democracia política en oleadas sucesivas fue barriendo del mapa de América Latina y de Europa las dictaduras de diverso signo. Así, las dictaduras fueron sustituidas por democracia en España, Grecia y Portugal primero, el cono sur latinoamericano después, el bloque soviético a continuación y, por último, siempre a la cola, hasta México, justo antes de terminar el siglo XX.
Quiero brevemente hacer referencia a algunos de los aspectos más relevantes de los nuevos retos postmodernos que enfrentamos. Los revolucionarios más radicales se enfrentan a una erosión brutal de la esperanza en un progreso que debía conducir el capitalismo hacia un colapso revolucionario o, al menos, a una gran renovación encabezada por las fuerzas populares; en contraste se han levantado a un primer plano las nuevas dimensiones de la política, las formas culturales de la legitimidad y las exigencias morales.
Podemos comprobar que la nueva cultura política ha erosionado la idea de revolución, y que era la bandera con que se enfrentaba a las típicas nociones derechistas que querían conservar el orden establecido y los privilegios tradicionales. Paulatinamente, la idea de revolución se está convirtiendo en parte de una cultura reaccionaria, es decir, de hábitos que reaccionan contra las nuevas tendencias democráticas. Se dirá, con razón, que las corrientes socialdemócratas ya habían hace mucho superado la tradición revolucionaria. Sin embargo, en muchas partes del mundo, especialmente en América Latina, se mantenía la ilusión de que era posible un tránsito cualitativo y revolucionario a una nueva situación, gracias al apoyo directo o indirecto del bloque socialista. Esa ilusión comenzó a derrumbarse en 1989, y hoy ya no queda mucho de ella. En México ya ni el subcomandante Marcos quiere llamarse revolucionario: prefiere ser rebelde.
El drama de la revolución que se convierte en símbolo retardatario lo hemos vivido de cerca, no sólo con nuestra revolución de 1910. El néctar de la revolución cubana se ha agriado ante un Termidor antidemocrático inaceptable. El apoyo de muchos revolucionarios de izquierda y de derecha al gobierno castrista no puede ocasionar más que sequedad y esterilidad, aunque se practique en nombre de la lucha contra un bloqueo que –como todos sabemos– no hace otra cosa que fortalecer la decrépita dictadura de Fidel Castro, además de empobrecer a la población cubana.
No sólo la izquierda extremista o "revolucionaria" entró en crisis. La socialdemocracia también envejeció y sus tradicionales tesis sobre la gestión de gobiernos fuertes y orientados hacia el bienestar, con dosis variables de estatismo más o menos keynesiano, han sufrido los embates de una expansiva "nueva derecha" durante los años finales del siglo XX. Para contrarrestar esta expansión, surgió una "tercera vía" socialdemócrata, teorizada por Anthony Giddens y encabezada por Tony Blair, que hoy en día se encuentra en dificultades.
Uno de los fenómenos que debemos, y que se conecta con el franco retroceso de las tesis revolucionarias y estatistas, es la paulatina marginación de los temas económicos en las preocupaciones de la opinión pública. Ante la imposibilidad de cambios cualitativos en la estructura económica y en la naturaleza del Estado (cambios "revolucionarios"), la gestión financiera, fiscal o laboral tiende a ramificarse y, sobretodo, a especializarse y tecnocratizarse. Las alternativas políticas encuentran relativamente pocos asideros en la dimensión económica y se desplazan cada vez más a planos simbólicos y metafóricos referidos a las consecuencias culturales y éticas de la administración gubernamental. Creo que, aunque parezca paradójico, esta tendencia es tan fuerte en los países del llamado Tercer Mundo –con sus terribles carencias económicas– como en las regiones más ricas y prósperas del globo. Ello ocurre porque las experiencias políticas del siglo XX han demostrado que las palancas fundamentales del desarrollo industrial tienen un carácter más cultural que económico. Con esto no quiero decir, por supuesto, que los graves problemas del atraso económico se van a resolver con programas culturales. Quiero decir que la sociedad civil entiende cada vez menos los programas económicos y financieros si no van acompañados de, por decirlo así, una traducción a términos y símbolos culturales y morales. Este desplazamiento de la política hacia los territorios culturales es un fenómeno estrechamente ligado a la gestación de nuevas formas de legitimidad democrática.
En este tema el libro de Macario Schettino es particularmente útil y creativo. Alguien como él, formado como ingeniero, viene a respaldar con fuerza la interpretación de la Revolución como un mito cultural. Lo hace con la razón aparentemente ingenua del niño que en el cuento señaló que el Rey iba desnudo. La Revolución Mexicana ha vivido desnuda durante el siglo XX y sus sastres intelectuales ilustraron y vistieron durante decenios la gran mentira. Macario Schettino nos vuelve a contar la historia de la revolución sin el velo que ha nublado la vista a tantos. Nos describe una historia de guerras civiles, violencia, crisis política, luchas faccionales a lo largo, no de una, sino de tres revoluciones entre 1910 y 1916. Y aún hizo falta una cuarta, la verdadera, encabezada por Lázaro Cárdenas, para evitar una nueva guerra. Esta última ya no ocurrió: quedó atrapada en la jaula institucional. La Revolución, con mayúscula, engulló a las revoluciones.
Macario Schettino explica, creo yo, algo fundamental: no es que la Revolución Mexicana no existiese, sino que existió en demasía. Hubo un exceso desproporcionado de revolución, una verdadera indigestión, una sobreabundancia de revolución, un verdadero hartazgo. La realidad quedó como un pálido reflejo de la hinchada y grandiosa Revolución, la permanente y la interrumpida, la eterna y la coyuntural, la única, la omnipresente, la inevitable.
Comentario de: Oscar Pujol [Visitante]
La Revolución, al igual que la Independencia, fue iniciada por unos y consumada por otros. Traición, venganza y defensa de intereses e ideologías muy particulares y ajenas a la (buena o mala pero real) idiosincracia nacional. Un liberalismo terriblemente conservador que creó un partido - gobierno de izquierda hacedor de grandes fortunas capitalistas, monopolios sindicales rentablemente improductivos, universidades públicas con "propietarios" muy prosperos. Funcionarios públicos ultradefensores de la educación pública, laica y revolucionaria pero que sus pollitos fueron a las mejores colegios de la ciudad y estudiaron en las mejores universidades particulares.
Mi despertar en las Historia de México fue causado por pequeño libro llamado "Historia Mínima de México" de Daniel Cosío Villegas. A partir de entonces no cesa mi curiosidad intelectual por conocer la "Otra Historia de México"
Alabo este tipo de obras como la del Sr. Schettino que nos muestra esa otra historia que nunca conocimos en los románticos y azucarados libros de texto gratuitos de nuestros gobiernos revolucionarios.
Nada más como dato curioso, este 20 de noviembre salio a flote ese México "revolucionariamente conservador". Al menos en mi ciudad el desfile (muy desangelado por cierto) fue el día 20. ¿Qué no debió celebrarse el 19?. A los escolares que desfilaron les resultó muy "útil" cultivar el amor por los héroes que nos dieron patria... y un día de azueto extra.
22 de Noviembre
SE Sugiere la lectura -o relectura, según el lector- de la compilación realizada por Gilbert Joseph y Daniel Nugent "Aspectos cotidianos de la formación del estado", un interesante esfuerzo colectivo por tratar de analizar, desentrañar y describir la dialéctica relación Estado/Hegemonía/Cultura en el México moderno dentro de un marco teórico e histórico de amplio alcance.
de: http://www.letraslibres.com/blog/blogs/index.php?blog=11&title=confusion_y_revolucion&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#comments
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Detalles de la entrada: Confusión y revolución
14 de Noviembre
Confusión y revolución
La idea de revolución es un mito estrechamente asociado a las izquierdas políticas. Pero en México esta idea, tan cara a los movimientos socialistas de diverso signo, ha sido el símbolo de una burocracia militar y política que gobernó en forma autoritaria durante casi todo el siglo pasado. De hecho, esta burocracia se consideró a sí misma, en muchas ocasiones, como de izquierda... Claro que "dentro de la Constitución", como dijo López Mateos.
La mitología política retrata a los revolucionarios como la encarnación de lo nuevo. Por ello, no hay peor pesadilla para la gente revolucionaria que la idea de que ha quedado rezagada y que no vive a la altura de los nuevos tiempos modernos y postmodernos. ¿Es la revolución un fenómeno que se agotó durante el siglo que se acaba de ir? Macario Schettino contesta con un enfático sí. En su excelente libro (Cien años de confusión: México en el siglo XX, Taurus, 2007) muestra cómo el siglo de la Revolución Mexicana fue un siglo perdido, dominado por un experimento fallido y por el estancamiento. La Revolución Mexicana fue –y sigue siendo– un mito tan poderoso que hasta la derecha lo adoptó. En el México del siglo XX todos éramos revolucionarios: burgueses e intelectuales, campesinos y burócratas, obreros y tecnócratas.
Esta situación ha hecho pensar que se están volatilizando los tradicionales límites entre lo revolucionario y lo conservador, entre la izquierda y la derecha, sobre todo después de la quiebra y desaparición del bloque socialista. ¿Cómo entender ahora la supervivencia del "viejo" capitalismo y la derrota del "nuevo" socialismo? La transición democrática en México, encabezada por la derecha y entorpecida por los revolucionarios, ha nublado también el panorama. Ha surgido una nueva geografía política, pero no tenemos todavía un mapa adecuado para viajar por ella. El libro de Macario Schettino es un brillante ensayo que contribuye a dibujar una nueva carta de navegación política. Para ello ha tenido que mirar hacia atrás, al siglo pasado y al antiguo régimen, para buscar las claves de la nueva época. Es una formidable recuperación del trabajo de intelectuales y académicos, mexicanos y extranjeros, que durante decenios han realizado estudios sobre el siglo XX mexicano, y nos ha aportado una visión de conjunto que no existía.
Ciertamente, el tramo final del siglo XX cambió el panorama político mundial. En primer lugar, es un hecho que el capitalismo tejió una inmensa red global, construida con la ayuda decisiva de los espectaculares avances científicos y tecnológicos en computación, genética, conductores, etc. En segundo lugar, ocurrió otro proceso: una formidable expansión de la democracia política en oleadas sucesivas fue barriendo del mapa de América Latina y de Europa las dictaduras de diverso signo. Así, las dictaduras fueron sustituidas por democracia en España, Grecia y Portugal primero, el cono sur latinoamericano después, el bloque soviético a continuación y, por último, siempre a la cola, hasta México, justo antes de terminar el siglo XX.
Quiero brevemente hacer referencia a algunos de los aspectos más relevantes de los nuevos retos postmodernos que enfrentamos. Los revolucionarios más radicales se enfrentan a una erosión brutal de la esperanza en un progreso que debía conducir el capitalismo hacia un colapso revolucionario o, al menos, a una gran renovación encabezada por las fuerzas populares; en contraste se han levantado a un primer plano las nuevas dimensiones de la política, las formas culturales de la legitimidad y las exigencias morales.
Podemos comprobar que la nueva cultura política ha erosionado la idea de revolución, y que era la bandera con que se enfrentaba a las típicas nociones derechistas que querían conservar el orden establecido y los privilegios tradicionales. Paulatinamente, la idea de revolución se está convirtiendo en parte de una cultura reaccionaria, es decir, de hábitos que reaccionan contra las nuevas tendencias democráticas. Se dirá, con razón, que las corrientes socialdemócratas ya habían hace mucho superado la tradición revolucionaria. Sin embargo, en muchas partes del mundo, especialmente en América Latina, se mantenía la ilusión de que era posible un tránsito cualitativo y revolucionario a una nueva situación, gracias al apoyo directo o indirecto del bloque socialista. Esa ilusión comenzó a derrumbarse en 1989, y hoy ya no queda mucho de ella. En México ya ni el subcomandante Marcos quiere llamarse revolucionario: prefiere ser rebelde.
El drama de la revolución que se convierte en símbolo retardatario lo hemos vivido de cerca, no sólo con nuestra revolución de 1910. El néctar de la revolución cubana se ha agriado ante un Termidor antidemocrático inaceptable. El apoyo de muchos revolucionarios de izquierda y de derecha al gobierno castrista no puede ocasionar más que sequedad y esterilidad, aunque se practique en nombre de la lucha contra un bloqueo que –como todos sabemos– no hace otra cosa que fortalecer la decrépita dictadura de Fidel Castro, además de empobrecer a la población cubana.
No sólo la izquierda extremista o "revolucionaria" entró en crisis. La socialdemocracia también envejeció y sus tradicionales tesis sobre la gestión de gobiernos fuertes y orientados hacia el bienestar, con dosis variables de estatismo más o menos keynesiano, han sufrido los embates de una expansiva "nueva derecha" durante los años finales del siglo XX. Para contrarrestar esta expansión, surgió una "tercera vía" socialdemócrata, teorizada por Anthony Giddens y encabezada por Tony Blair, que hoy en día se encuentra en dificultades.
Uno de los fenómenos que debemos, y que se conecta con el franco retroceso de las tesis revolucionarias y estatistas, es la paulatina marginación de los temas económicos en las preocupaciones de la opinión pública. Ante la imposibilidad de cambios cualitativos en la estructura económica y en la naturaleza del Estado (cambios "revolucionarios"), la gestión financiera, fiscal o laboral tiende a ramificarse y, sobretodo, a especializarse y tecnocratizarse. Las alternativas políticas encuentran relativamente pocos asideros en la dimensión económica y se desplazan cada vez más a planos simbólicos y metafóricos referidos a las consecuencias culturales y éticas de la administración gubernamental. Creo que, aunque parezca paradójico, esta tendencia es tan fuerte en los países del llamado Tercer Mundo –con sus terribles carencias económicas– como en las regiones más ricas y prósperas del globo. Ello ocurre porque las experiencias políticas del siglo XX han demostrado que las palancas fundamentales del desarrollo industrial tienen un carácter más cultural que económico. Con esto no quiero decir, por supuesto, que los graves problemas del atraso económico se van a resolver con programas culturales. Quiero decir que la sociedad civil entiende cada vez menos los programas económicos y financieros si no van acompañados de, por decirlo así, una traducción a términos y símbolos culturales y morales. Este desplazamiento de la política hacia los territorios culturales es un fenómeno estrechamente ligado a la gestación de nuevas formas de legitimidad democrática.
En este tema el libro de Macario Schettino es particularmente útil y creativo. Alguien como él, formado como ingeniero, viene a respaldar con fuerza la interpretación de la Revolución como un mito cultural. Lo hace con la razón aparentemente ingenua del niño que en el cuento señaló que el Rey iba desnudo. La Revolución Mexicana ha vivido desnuda durante el siglo XX y sus sastres intelectuales ilustraron y vistieron durante decenios la gran mentira. Macario Schettino nos vuelve a contar la historia de la revolución sin el velo que ha nublado la vista a tantos. Nos describe una historia de guerras civiles, violencia, crisis política, luchas faccionales a lo largo, no de una, sino de tres revoluciones entre 1910 y 1916. Y aún hizo falta una cuarta, la verdadera, encabezada por Lázaro Cárdenas, para evitar una nueva guerra. Esta última ya no ocurrió: quedó atrapada en la jaula institucional. La Revolución, con mayúscula, engulló a las revoluciones.
Macario Schettino explica, creo yo, algo fundamental: no es que la Revolución Mexicana no existiese, sino que existió en demasía. Hubo un exceso desproporcionado de revolución, una verdadera indigestión, una sobreabundancia de revolución, un verdadero hartazgo. La realidad quedó como un pálido reflejo de la hinchada y grandiosa Revolución, la permanente y la interrumpida, la eterna y la coyuntural, la única, la omnipresente, la inevitable.
Comentario de: Oscar Pujol [Visitante]
La Revolución, al igual que la Independencia, fue iniciada por unos y consumada por otros. Traición, venganza y defensa de intereses e ideologías muy particulares y ajenas a la (buena o mala pero real) idiosincracia nacional. Un liberalismo terriblemente conservador que creó un partido - gobierno de izquierda hacedor de grandes fortunas capitalistas, monopolios sindicales rentablemente improductivos, universidades públicas con "propietarios" muy prosperos. Funcionarios públicos ultradefensores de la educación pública, laica y revolucionaria pero que sus pollitos fueron a las mejores colegios de la ciudad y estudiaron en las mejores universidades particulares.
Mi despertar en las Historia de México fue causado por pequeño libro llamado "Historia Mínima de México" de Daniel Cosío Villegas. A partir de entonces no cesa mi curiosidad intelectual por conocer la "Otra Historia de México"
Alabo este tipo de obras como la del Sr. Schettino que nos muestra esa otra historia que nunca conocimos en los románticos y azucarados libros de texto gratuitos de nuestros gobiernos revolucionarios.
Nada más como dato curioso, este 20 de noviembre salio a flote ese México "revolucionariamente conservador". Al menos en mi ciudad el desfile (muy desangelado por cierto) fue el día 20. ¿Qué no debió celebrarse el 19?. A los escolares que desfilaron les resultó muy "útil" cultivar el amor por los héroes que nos dieron patria... y un día de azueto extra.
22 de Noviembre
SE Sugiere la lectura -o relectura, según el lector- de la compilación realizada por Gilbert Joseph y Daniel Nugent "Aspectos cotidianos de la formación del estado", un interesante esfuerzo colectivo por tratar de analizar, desentrañar y describir la dialéctica relación Estado/Hegemonía/Cultura en el México moderno dentro de un marco teórico e histórico de amplio alcance.
de: http://www.letraslibres.com/blog/blogs/index.php?blog=11&title=confusion_y_revolucion&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#comments
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miércoles, 31 de octubre de 2007
Para impartir buena educacion, hace falta...
no es dinero el que compra educacion....
Education
How to be top
Oct 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
What works in education: the lessons according to McKinsey
THE British government, says Sir Michael Barber, once an adviser to the former prime minister, Tony Blair, has changed pretty much every aspect of education policy in England and Wales, often more than once. "The funding of schools, the governance of schools, curriculum standards, assessment and testing, the role of local government, the role of national government, the range and nature of national agencies, schools admissions"—you name it, it's been changed and sometimes changed back. The only thing that hasn't changed has been the outcome. According to the National Foundation for Education Research, there had been (until recently) no measurable improvement in the standards of literacy and numeracy in primary schools for 50 years.
England and Wales are not alone. Australia has almost tripled education spending per student since 1970. No improvement. American spending has almost doubled since 1980 and class sizes are the lowest ever. Again, nothing. No matter what you do, it seems, standards refuse to budge (see chart). To misquote Woody Allen, those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, run the schools.
Why bother, you might wonder. Nothing seems to matter. Yet something must. There are big variations in educational standards between countries. These have been measured and re-measured by the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which has established, first, that the best performing countries do much better than the worst and, second, that the same countries head such league tables again and again: Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea.
Those findings raise what ought to be a fruitful question: what do the successful lot have in common? Yet the answer to that has proved surprisingly elusive. Not more money. Singapore spends less per student than most. Nor more study time. Finnish students begin school later, and study fewer hours, than in other rich countries.
Now, an organisation from outside the teaching fold—McKinsey, a consultancy that advises companies and governments—has boldly gone where educationalists have mostly never gone: into policy recommendations based on the PISA findings. Schools, it says*, need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind. That may not sound exactly "first-of-its-kind" (which is how Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's head of education research, describes McKinsey's approach): schools surely do all this already? Actually, they don't. If these ideas were really taken seriously, they would change education radically.
Begin with hiring the best. There is no question that, as one South Korean official put it, "the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers." Studies in Tennessee and Dallas have shown that, if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed in the top fifth of the profession, they end up in the top 10% of student performers; if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom. The quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else.
Yet most school systems do not go all out to get the best. The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a non-profit organisation, says America typically recruits teachers from the bottom third of college graduates. Washington, DC recently hired as chancellor for its public schools an alumna of an organisation called Teach for America, which seeks out top graduates and hires them to teach for two years. Both her appointment and the organisation caused a storm.
A bias against the brightest happens partly because of lack of money (governments fear they cannot afford them), and partly because other aims get in the way. Almost every rich country has sought to reduce class size lately. Yet all other things being equal, smaller classes mean more teachers for the same pot of money, producing lower salaries and lower professional status. That may explain the paradox that, after primary school, there seems little or no relationship between class size and educational achievement.
AP Asian values or good policy?
McKinsey argues that the best performing education systems nevertheless manage to attract the best. In Finland all new teachers must have a master's degree. South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates, Singapore and Hong Kong from the top 30%.
They do this in a surprising way. You might think that schools should offer as much money as possible, seek to attract a large pool of applicants into teacher training and then pick the best. Not so, says McKinsey. If money were so important, then countries with the highest teacher salaries—Germany, Spain and Switzerland—would presumably be among the best. They aren't. In practice, the top performers pay no more than average salaries.
Nor do they try to encourage a big pool of trainees and select the most successful. Almost the opposite. Singapore screens candidates with a fine mesh before teacher training and accepts only the number for which there are places. Once in, candidates are employed by the education ministry and more or less guaranteed a job. Finland also limits the supply of teacher-training places to demand. In both countries, teaching is a high-status profession (because it is fiercely competitive) and there are generous funds for each trainee teacher (because there are few of them).
South Korea shows how the two systems produce different results. Its primary-school teachers have to pass a four-year undergraduate degree from one of only a dozen universities. Getting in requires top grades; places are rationed to match vacancies. In contrast, secondary-school teachers can get a diploma from any one of 350 colleges, with laxer selection criteria. This has produced an enormous glut of newly qualified secondary-school teachers—11 for each job at last count. As a result, secondary-school teaching is the lower status job in South Korea; everyone wants to be a primary-school teacher. The lesson seems to be that teacher training needs to be hard to get into, not easy.
Teaching the teachers
Having got good people, there is a temptation to shove them into classrooms and let them get on with it. For understandable reasons, teachers rarely get much training in their own classrooms (in contrast, doctors do a lot of training in hospital wards). But successful countries can still do much to overcome the difficulty.
Singapore provides teachers with 100 hours of training a year and appoints senior teachers to oversee professional development in each school. In Japan and Finland, groups of teachers visit each others' classrooms and plan lessons together. In Finland, they get an afternoon off a week for this. In Boston, which has one of America's most improved public-school systems, schedules are arranged so that those who teach the same subject have free classes together for common planning. This helps spread good ideas around. As one educator remarked, "when a brilliant American teacher retires, almost all of the lesson plans and practices that she has developed also retire. When a Japanese teacher retires, she leaves a legacy."
Lastly, the most successful countries are distinctive not just in whom they employ so things go right but in what they do when things go wrong, as they always do. For the past few years, almost all countries have begun to focus more attention on testing, the commonest way to check if standards are falling. McKinsey's research is neutral on the usefulness of this, pointing out that while Boston tests every student every year, Finland has largely dispensed with national examinations. Similarly, schools in New Zealand and England and Wales are tested every three or four years and the results published, whereas top-of-the-class Finland has no formal review and keeps the results of informal audits confidential.
But there is a pattern in what countries do once pupils and schools start to fail. The top performers intervene early and often. Finland has more special-education teachers devoted to laggards than anyone else—as many as one teacher in seven in some schools. In any given year, a third of pupils get one-on-one remedial lessons. Singapore provides extra classes for the bottom 20% of students and teachers are expected to stay behind—often for hours—after school to help students.
None of this is rocket science. Yet it goes against some of the unspoken assumptions of education policy. Scratch a teacher or an administrator (or a parent), and you often hear that it is impossible to get the best teachers without paying big salaries; that teachers in, say, Singapore have high status because of Confucian values; or that Asian pupils are well behaved and attentive for cultural reasons. McKinsey's conclusions seem more optimistic: getting good teachers depends on how you select and train them; teaching can become a career choice for top graduates without paying a fortune; and that, with the right policies, schools and pupils are not doomed to lag behind.
*How the world's best performing schools systems come out on top. McKinsey & Co.
Education
How to be top
Oct 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition
What works in education: the lessons according to McKinsey
THE British government, says Sir Michael Barber, once an adviser to the former prime minister, Tony Blair, has changed pretty much every aspect of education policy in England and Wales, often more than once. "The funding of schools, the governance of schools, curriculum standards, assessment and testing, the role of local government, the role of national government, the range and nature of national agencies, schools admissions"—you name it, it's been changed and sometimes changed back. The only thing that hasn't changed has been the outcome. According to the National Foundation for Education Research, there had been (until recently) no measurable improvement in the standards of literacy and numeracy in primary schools for 50 years.
England and Wales are not alone. Australia has almost tripled education spending per student since 1970. No improvement. American spending has almost doubled since 1980 and class sizes are the lowest ever. Again, nothing. No matter what you do, it seems, standards refuse to budge (see chart). To misquote Woody Allen, those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, run the schools.
Why bother, you might wonder. Nothing seems to matter. Yet something must. There are big variations in educational standards between countries. These have been measured and re-measured by the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which has established, first, that the best performing countries do much better than the worst and, second, that the same countries head such league tables again and again: Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea.
Those findings raise what ought to be a fruitful question: what do the successful lot have in common? Yet the answer to that has proved surprisingly elusive. Not more money. Singapore spends less per student than most. Nor more study time. Finnish students begin school later, and study fewer hours, than in other rich countries.
Now, an organisation from outside the teaching fold—McKinsey, a consultancy that advises companies and governments—has boldly gone where educationalists have mostly never gone: into policy recommendations based on the PISA findings. Schools, it says*, need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind. That may not sound exactly "first-of-its-kind" (which is how Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's head of education research, describes McKinsey's approach): schools surely do all this already? Actually, they don't. If these ideas were really taken seriously, they would change education radically.
Begin with hiring the best. There is no question that, as one South Korean official put it, "the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers." Studies in Tennessee and Dallas have shown that, if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed in the top fifth of the profession, they end up in the top 10% of student performers; if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom. The quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else.
Yet most school systems do not go all out to get the best. The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a non-profit organisation, says America typically recruits teachers from the bottom third of college graduates. Washington, DC recently hired as chancellor for its public schools an alumna of an organisation called Teach for America, which seeks out top graduates and hires them to teach for two years. Both her appointment and the organisation caused a storm.
A bias against the brightest happens partly because of lack of money (governments fear they cannot afford them), and partly because other aims get in the way. Almost every rich country has sought to reduce class size lately. Yet all other things being equal, smaller classes mean more teachers for the same pot of money, producing lower salaries and lower professional status. That may explain the paradox that, after primary school, there seems little or no relationship between class size and educational achievement.
AP Asian values or good policy?
McKinsey argues that the best performing education systems nevertheless manage to attract the best. In Finland all new teachers must have a master's degree. South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates, Singapore and Hong Kong from the top 30%.
They do this in a surprising way. You might think that schools should offer as much money as possible, seek to attract a large pool of applicants into teacher training and then pick the best. Not so, says McKinsey. If money were so important, then countries with the highest teacher salaries—Germany, Spain and Switzerland—would presumably be among the best. They aren't. In practice, the top performers pay no more than average salaries.
Nor do they try to encourage a big pool of trainees and select the most successful. Almost the opposite. Singapore screens candidates with a fine mesh before teacher training and accepts only the number for which there are places. Once in, candidates are employed by the education ministry and more or less guaranteed a job. Finland also limits the supply of teacher-training places to demand. In both countries, teaching is a high-status profession (because it is fiercely competitive) and there are generous funds for each trainee teacher (because there are few of them).
South Korea shows how the two systems produce different results. Its primary-school teachers have to pass a four-year undergraduate degree from one of only a dozen universities. Getting in requires top grades; places are rationed to match vacancies. In contrast, secondary-school teachers can get a diploma from any one of 350 colleges, with laxer selection criteria. This has produced an enormous glut of newly qualified secondary-school teachers—11 for each job at last count. As a result, secondary-school teaching is the lower status job in South Korea; everyone wants to be a primary-school teacher. The lesson seems to be that teacher training needs to be hard to get into, not easy.
Teaching the teachers
Having got good people, there is a temptation to shove them into classrooms and let them get on with it. For understandable reasons, teachers rarely get much training in their own classrooms (in contrast, doctors do a lot of training in hospital wards). But successful countries can still do much to overcome the difficulty.
Singapore provides teachers with 100 hours of training a year and appoints senior teachers to oversee professional development in each school. In Japan and Finland, groups of teachers visit each others' classrooms and plan lessons together. In Finland, they get an afternoon off a week for this. In Boston, which has one of America's most improved public-school systems, schedules are arranged so that those who teach the same subject have free classes together for common planning. This helps spread good ideas around. As one educator remarked, "when a brilliant American teacher retires, almost all of the lesson plans and practices that she has developed also retire. When a Japanese teacher retires, she leaves a legacy."
Lastly, the most successful countries are distinctive not just in whom they employ so things go right but in what they do when things go wrong, as they always do. For the past few years, almost all countries have begun to focus more attention on testing, the commonest way to check if standards are falling. McKinsey's research is neutral on the usefulness of this, pointing out that while Boston tests every student every year, Finland has largely dispensed with national examinations. Similarly, schools in New Zealand and England and Wales are tested every three or four years and the results published, whereas top-of-the-class Finland has no formal review and keeps the results of informal audits confidential.
But there is a pattern in what countries do once pupils and schools start to fail. The top performers intervene early and often. Finland has more special-education teachers devoted to laggards than anyone else—as many as one teacher in seven in some schools. In any given year, a third of pupils get one-on-one remedial lessons. Singapore provides extra classes for the bottom 20% of students and teachers are expected to stay behind—often for hours—after school to help students.
None of this is rocket science. Yet it goes against some of the unspoken assumptions of education policy. Scratch a teacher or an administrator (or a parent), and you often hear that it is impossible to get the best teachers without paying big salaries; that teachers in, say, Singapore have high status because of Confucian values; or that Asian pupils are well behaved and attentive for cultural reasons. McKinsey's conclusions seem more optimistic: getting good teachers depends on how you select and train them; teaching can become a career choice for top graduates without paying a fortune; and that, with the right policies, schools and pupils are not doomed to lag behind.
*How the world's best performing schools systems come out on top. McKinsey & Co.
viernes, 12 de octubre de 2007
Nobel's de 2007.
Me preguntaron hoy porque le doy importancia a los premios Nobel.
Es el premio que a nivel internacional reconoce los logros de le humanidad en varias áreas como medicina, física, química, economía , literatura....
El comité que vota son los Nobel's y expertos en esa área- solo los de física votan y analizan los logros de los que merecen ese premio!
El Nobel de la paz- que dieron a Al Gore en 2007 - es !00 % político: lo vota el parlamento Noruego....y lastima que no sean un poco mas abiertos a la PAZ real ... Darfur, Congo, Somalia....
pero YO no tengo voto!
Todos los periódicos usan la mitad o mas de su papel para narrar de deportes ...y/ o cine y sus actores.... sus amores ...y sus divorcios
Vale Beckham los US $ millones que se le paga ?
Yo opino que no! Ertl vale mucho mas del $1.5 millones que le da el Nobel!
Pero pocos periódicos narran en lo que trabajo Ertl por décadas...y eso influye mas en NUESTRAS vidas que el gol de Beckham! El que se molestan en leer lo que logro Ertl me dará la razón....
Como en muchas otras cosas, los valores reales no se aprecian........pero si preocupa el gol que metió...el otro!
Es el premio que a nivel internacional reconoce los logros de le humanidad en varias áreas como medicina, física, química, economía , literatura....
El comité que vota son los Nobel's y expertos en esa área- solo los de física votan y analizan los logros de los que merecen ese premio!
El Nobel de la paz- que dieron a Al Gore en 2007 - es !00 % político: lo vota el parlamento Noruego....y lastima que no sean un poco mas abiertos a la PAZ real ... Darfur, Congo, Somalia....
pero YO no tengo voto!
Todos los periódicos usan la mitad o mas de su papel para narrar de deportes ...y/ o cine y sus actores.... sus amores ...y sus divorcios
Vale Beckham los US $ millones que se le paga ?
Yo opino que no! Ertl vale mucho mas del $1.5 millones que le da el Nobel!
Pero pocos periódicos narran en lo que trabajo Ertl por décadas...y eso influye mas en NUESTRAS vidas que el gol de Beckham! El que se molestan en leer lo que logro Ertl me dará la razón....
Como en muchas otras cosas, los valores reales no se aprecian........pero si preocupa el gol que metió...el otro!
jueves, 4 de octubre de 2007
eBay & Spyke..
The Skype hyper
Oct 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Meg Whitman's career at eBay suffers “an impairment write-down”
Reuters
AMONG the many lessons that Margaret (“Meg”) Whitman has picked up during her three decades as a businesswoman, three stand out, she told an audience at Stanford's business school last year. And those three lessons, she implied, explain why she, as boss of eBay, the world's largest online auctioneer, was right to buy an internet-telephone company called Skype for an astonishingly high price in 2005.
The first lesson, which she learned in 1979, was that attention to detail is all important. At the time, she was fresh out of Harvard Business School and just starting her first job at Procter & Gamble. She was charged with figuring out whether the nozzle on shampoo bottles should be half or three-eighths of an inch wide. Despite the tediousness of the task, “I decided I was going to do the very best job that had ever been done at the Procter & Gamble company”, on whose board she now sits. Bring that sort of “execution” to a firm with as much potential as Skype, she suggested, and the sky would be the limit.
The second lesson occurred in 2002. As boss of eBay, she had noticed that a lot of the sellers and buyers on its site were using an online-payment service called PayPal as a sort of virtual wallet, so she decided to buy it. She negotiated for a year, during which the price kept rising. She concluded that in the internet industry one bids early, boldly and pre-emptively high. That is what she did with Skype.
The third lesson was that in such a fast-moving realm “the price of inaction is far greater than the cost of a mistake.” In any case, mistakes can always be corrected. In other words, it did not matter that the “synergies” between a telephone service and an online flea-market seemed few and far between. In her view, eBay was right to buy first and look for the answers to such concerns later.
Collectively, these three lessons have led to disaster. On October 1st eBay conceded, in the language of book-keepers, that the purchase of Skype was just that. It had paid $2.6 billion up front, and agreed to cough up yet more if Skype met certain targets. It did not. This week eBay said that it would take a $1.4 billion charge in relation to the purchase. A portion of the payment is a settlement that absolves eBay of any further obligations to Skype's original owners. But the bigger part, a so-called “impairment write-down”, represents eBay's loss on its ill-fated investment.
Ms Whitman does not even seem to have remembered her own lessons. In terms of the first, eBay's “execution” in integrating Skype with its main business has been poor. Skype's service has deteriorated: it collapsed completely for two days in August. The second lesson—bid early and high—was observed to a fault. As for the third lesson, the mistake has now been admitted, but not fixed.
Ms Whitman should have known better, because Skype became and continues to be a revolutionary technology precisely because it does not extract much revenue from its customers. “We want to make as little money as possible per user,” Niklas Zennstrom, Skype's co-founder, has said. Skype's breakthrough, in his view, was to point the way towards a time when all voice communication would cost the consumer nothing at all. This week Mr Zennstrom stepped down as Skype's boss; he plans to spend more time on his next disruptive technology, called Joost, which brings television to computer screens.
The rest of Silicon Valley has greeted Ms Whitman's misfortunes with Schadenfreude. But the gloating may be short-lived. By buying Skype, the internet phenomenon of 2005, eBay started a bubble. Google, with its purchase of YouTube, the cyber-star of 2006, inflated it further. And Microsoft and Google now appear tempted to add more froth by investing a silly sum in Facebook, the latest big thing. All three—the internet telephone firm, the video site and the social network—make almost no money. EBay's disappointment with Skype is a timely reminder of where this fad might lead.
Down to earth, but with a thud
Until now, Ms Whitman has not faced serious public criticism. The press, The Economist included, has churned out many an unquestioning paean to her. In part, that is thanks to her sensible, down-to-earth demeanour, an endearing contrast to the self-aggrandising swagger of other Silicon Valley bosses. Ms Whitman loves to go fly-fishing with her sons; she also enjoys recounting how embarrassed they were when she was voted onto a list of “worst-dressed billionaires”. People want to love her, one analyst argues, which might explain why eBay's shareholders allowed her to throw a desperate “Hail Mary pass” at Skype, in the words of another.
Shareholders at eBay, at any rate, will surely now start asking what on earth Ms Whitman, a seasoned executive, was thinking. Certainly, she felt pressure from Wall Street to come up with a big idea to maintain the firm's breakneck growth. Its main business, brokering auctions, has been slowing. In the year to June, product listings on its site fell for the first time ever, by 6%. Like Yahoo!, its neighbour in Silicon Valley, eBay may be gored by Google, the ubiquitous search engine. Increasingly, people with goods to sell set up their own websites and find buyers by advertising on Google's search pages. Google has also begun offering online payment and telephone services that compete directly with PayPal and with Skype.
Ms Whitman also mentioned a fourth lesson during her talk at Stanford. Her main job as boss, she said, is to put “the right person in the right job at the right time”. She emphasised the word “time”, since a manager who was right a few years ago may no longer be today. It is a lesson her own bosses, on eBay's board, will doutbless soon be reviewing.
Oct 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Meg Whitman's career at eBay suffers “an impairment write-down”
Reuters
AMONG the many lessons that Margaret (“Meg”) Whitman has picked up during her three decades as a businesswoman, three stand out, she told an audience at Stanford's business school last year. And those three lessons, she implied, explain why she, as boss of eBay, the world's largest online auctioneer, was right to buy an internet-telephone company called Skype for an astonishingly high price in 2005.
The first lesson, which she learned in 1979, was that attention to detail is all important. At the time, she was fresh out of Harvard Business School and just starting her first job at Procter & Gamble. She was charged with figuring out whether the nozzle on shampoo bottles should be half or three-eighths of an inch wide. Despite the tediousness of the task, “I decided I was going to do the very best job that had ever been done at the Procter & Gamble company”, on whose board she now sits. Bring that sort of “execution” to a firm with as much potential as Skype, she suggested, and the sky would be the limit.
The second lesson occurred in 2002. As boss of eBay, she had noticed that a lot of the sellers and buyers on its site were using an online-payment service called PayPal as a sort of virtual wallet, so she decided to buy it. She negotiated for a year, during which the price kept rising. She concluded that in the internet industry one bids early, boldly and pre-emptively high. That is what she did with Skype.
The third lesson was that in such a fast-moving realm “the price of inaction is far greater than the cost of a mistake.” In any case, mistakes can always be corrected. In other words, it did not matter that the “synergies” between a telephone service and an online flea-market seemed few and far between. In her view, eBay was right to buy first and look for the answers to such concerns later.
Collectively, these three lessons have led to disaster. On October 1st eBay conceded, in the language of book-keepers, that the purchase of Skype was just that. It had paid $2.6 billion up front, and agreed to cough up yet more if Skype met certain targets. It did not. This week eBay said that it would take a $1.4 billion charge in relation to the purchase. A portion of the payment is a settlement that absolves eBay of any further obligations to Skype's original owners. But the bigger part, a so-called “impairment write-down”, represents eBay's loss on its ill-fated investment.
Ms Whitman does not even seem to have remembered her own lessons. In terms of the first, eBay's “execution” in integrating Skype with its main business has been poor. Skype's service has deteriorated: it collapsed completely for two days in August. The second lesson—bid early and high—was observed to a fault. As for the third lesson, the mistake has now been admitted, but not fixed.
Ms Whitman should have known better, because Skype became and continues to be a revolutionary technology precisely because it does not extract much revenue from its customers. “We want to make as little money as possible per user,” Niklas Zennstrom, Skype's co-founder, has said. Skype's breakthrough, in his view, was to point the way towards a time when all voice communication would cost the consumer nothing at all. This week Mr Zennstrom stepped down as Skype's boss; he plans to spend more time on his next disruptive technology, called Joost, which brings television to computer screens.
The rest of Silicon Valley has greeted Ms Whitman's misfortunes with Schadenfreude. But the gloating may be short-lived. By buying Skype, the internet phenomenon of 2005, eBay started a bubble. Google, with its purchase of YouTube, the cyber-star of 2006, inflated it further. And Microsoft and Google now appear tempted to add more froth by investing a silly sum in Facebook, the latest big thing. All three—the internet telephone firm, the video site and the social network—make almost no money. EBay's disappointment with Skype is a timely reminder of where this fad might lead.
Down to earth, but with a thud
Until now, Ms Whitman has not faced serious public criticism. The press, The Economist included, has churned out many an unquestioning paean to her. In part, that is thanks to her sensible, down-to-earth demeanour, an endearing contrast to the self-aggrandising swagger of other Silicon Valley bosses. Ms Whitman loves to go fly-fishing with her sons; she also enjoys recounting how embarrassed they were when she was voted onto a list of “worst-dressed billionaires”. People want to love her, one analyst argues, which might explain why eBay's shareholders allowed her to throw a desperate “Hail Mary pass” at Skype, in the words of another.
Shareholders at eBay, at any rate, will surely now start asking what on earth Ms Whitman, a seasoned executive, was thinking. Certainly, she felt pressure from Wall Street to come up with a big idea to maintain the firm's breakneck growth. Its main business, brokering auctions, has been slowing. In the year to June, product listings on its site fell for the first time ever, by 6%. Like Yahoo!, its neighbour in Silicon Valley, eBay may be gored by Google, the ubiquitous search engine. Increasingly, people with goods to sell set up their own websites and find buyers by advertising on Google's search pages. Google has also begun offering online payment and telephone services that compete directly with PayPal and with Skype.
Ms Whitman also mentioned a fourth lesson during her talk at Stanford. Her main job as boss, she said, is to put “the right person in the right job at the right time”. She emphasised the word “time”, since a manager who was right a few years ago may no longer be today. It is a lesson her own bosses, on eBay's board, will doutbless soon be reviewing.
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