Chief information officers have the difficult job of running a function that uses a lot of resources but that offers little measurable evidence of its value. To make the information systems department an asset to their companies — and to keep their jobs — CIOs should think of their work as adding value in certain key areas. This article, based on studies of information systems leaders in sixty organizations, presents a portrait of successful CIOs and the CEOs who support them.

American policymakers, during the Cold War, treated technology and economic strength as means to achieve military and political ends. The Japanese, in contrast, never subordinated economic interests to defense objectives and, indeed, rejected arguments to that effect as naive. Instead, the Japanese saw technology and territory alike as vital national interests that could and had [...]

Total quality management (TQM) has become accepted practice in services. Concepts from TQM in manufacturing, such as benchmarking, diagnostic tools (fishbone diagrams, Pareto charts, and so on), and customer-driven design (through quality function deployment), have joined with such concepts as service guarantees and service recovery planning to drive the quality philosophies of many service firms. [...]

An industrial products firm recently held a meeting for senior managers to discuss marketing strategy and implementation. An outside facilitator, who led a discussion about improving marketing effectiveness, encouraged participants to list the key issues facing the firm. The blackboard in the meeting room was soon filled with two lists:
Salespeople say:

“Marketing people do not spend [...]

The rapid proliferation of strategic alliances during the past decade has captured the interest of both the business press and the academic literature. A number of empirical studies have documented the unprecedented growth of joint ventures in a variety of industries, and much has been made of the beginning of a new era of cooperation [...]

Internal financial considerations and external market considerations are, at most companies, antagonistic forces in pricing decisions. Financial people allocate costs to determine how high prices must be to cover costs and achieve their profit objectives. Marketing and salespeople analyze buyers to determine how low prices must be to achieve their sales objectives. The pricing decisions [...]

Choosing the right strategy for negotiations with someone from another culture is a difficult task lacking few established guidelines. Whether you are a novice or experienced negotiator — you will find useful advice in this article on effectively choosing and implementing a culturally responsive strategy. Part 1 (Reprint 3524 from the Winter 1994 issue) presents eight culturally responsive strategies in a framework based on their feasibility.