感言敢言 (3)

醜陋的公司人物鬧劇之代表
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惠

普公司（Hewlett-Packard Co.）週二對其前首席執行長赫德（Mark Hurd）提起訴訟﹐而他剛剛在前一天被任命為競爭對手甲骨文公司（Oracle Corp.）的聯席總裁。

惠普在位於聖克拉拉（Santa Clara）的加州最高法院（Superior Court of California）提起訴訟﹐訴訟圍繞赫德與惠普簽訂的離職協議中的機密條款展開。

Associated Press

赫德

位於加利福尼亞州的這家電腦製造商的發言人說﹐赫德同意並簽署了旨在保護惠普的商業機密和保密信息的協議﹐惠普希望執行這些協議。

赫德的發言人和甲骨文的發言人均拒絕置評。赫德上月因其與一位營銷顧問有關的醜聞從惠普離職。週一﹐他被任命為甲骨文的聯席總裁﹐這家位於加利福尼亞州的軟件製造商由聯合創始人埃里森（Larry Ellison）領導。

訴訟圍繞的條款是赫德離開惠普時離職賠償方案中的一部分﹐根據惠普的股票價格﹐其價值可能超過3500萬美元。根據該條款﹐赫德同意24個月的保密協議﹐該協議禁止他泄露任何有關惠普的敏感信息。該協議不包括競業禁止條款﹐因為在加州該條款實際上無法執行。

芝加哥薪酬咨詢公司3C Compensation Consulting Consortium合伙人賴利（Mark Reilly）在惠普提起訴訟之前說﹐在同行業或競爭對手公司工作會違反該協議。

賴利說﹐惠普可以向法院提出禁止赫德去那裡工作。赫德的前雇主會說﹐我們已經為保密協議付給你一筆離職金﹐而且我們認為你會違反協議。該薪酬顧問說﹐惠普的起訴還可以要求比已付離職金多得多的賠償金。

該 訴訟將進一步加劇惠普和甲骨文之間的緊張關係﹐而之前這兩家公司在很多領域都是合作伙伴。2008年﹐甲骨文與惠普獨家合作推出了一款將軟件與惠普硬件緊 密結合的數據庫設備（Database Machine）。知情人士說﹐在收購Sun Microsystems之前﹐甲骨文和惠普曾討論過二者聯合收購Sun並均分其資產。

但是在甲骨文去年透露單獨收購Sun的意圖後﹐就取消了與惠普在數據庫設備方面的合作﹐轉而開始生產使用Sun硬件的類似產品。同時惠普也開始與微軟公司（Microsoft Corp.）進行一系列合作﹐生產一些軟件與甲骨文競爭。

Robert A. Guth / Ben Worthen
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東海新聞 鬼打架 程海東馬英九
新生3570人擺Love & HOPE 據說哀聲怨道

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遲來的不法道歉

前幾天是馬英久先生以總統名義參加錢穆先生逝世20週年度

他重新說起21?年前陳水扁等當議員時攻擊錢先生非法佔用公產的事件

錢先生當年的禮遇並沒有法律依據 所以兇嫌其實是當年的國民黨或蔣介石先生

馬總統這一說法是無知的

媚俗的

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南山人壽首次出售被金管會擋下，

上次AIG執行長來台灣威脅要裁員的

可以凸"險"商場老闆呼風喚雨的範圍有限

尤其該公司被美國政府接管之後

聲音大不如前

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鴻海這次股票在台港都是兩面不是人

當所有台灣資訊產品大廠都好

這家公司的表現很耐人尋味
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W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, famously laid out 14 points for management—chief among them, the notion of "constancy of purpose."

Deming argued that a company's commitment to quality had to come from the top, and it had to be reinforced over and over again. Unless a business views quality as its single, non-negotiable goal, workers will inevitably feel the need to make tradeoffs and quality will slip.

"Constancy of purpose means that quality decisions are not situational," writes the operational expert Rebecca A. Morgan. "End of month quality is the same as beginning of month. It means that the long term benefit of the organization is not sacrificed to hit quarterly targets."

So are you ready to commit? If you are, you should tell your staff—and then think about how you will handle the first conflict between your stated objective and a pressing deadline or an attractive short cut.
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Corporate psychology

How to tell when your boss is lying

It's not just that his lips are moving

Aug 19th 2010

「ASSHOLE!」 That was what Jeff Skilling, the boss of Enron, called an investor who challenged his rosy account of his firm』s financial health. Other bosses usually give less obvious clues that they are lying. Happily, a new study reveals what those clues are.

David Larcker and Anastasia Zakolyukina of Stanford』s Graduate School of Business analysed the transcripts of nearly 30,000 conference calls by American chief executives and chief financial officers between 2003 and 2007. They noted each boss』s choice of words, and how he delivered them. They drew on psychological studies that show how people speak differently when they are fibbing, testing whether these 「tells」 were more common during calls to discuss profits that were later 「materially restated」, as the euphemism goes. They published their findings in a paper called 「Detecting Deceptive Discussions in Conference Calls」.

Deceptive bosses, it transpires, tend to make more references to general knowledge (「as you know…」), and refer less to shareholder value (perhaps to minimise the risk of a lawsuit, the authors hypothesise). They also use fewer 「non-extreme positive emotion words」. That is, instead of describing something as 「good」, they call it 「fantastic」. The aim is to 「sound more persuasive」 while talking horsefeathers.

When they are lying, bosses avoid the word 「I」, opting instead for the third person. They use fewer 「hesitation words」, such as 「um」 and 「er」, suggesting that they may have been coached in their deception. As with Mr Skilling』s 「asshole」, more frequent use of swear words indicates deception. These results were significant, and arguably would have been even stronger had the authors been able to distinguish between executives who knowingly misled and those who did so unwittingly. They had to assume that every restatement was the result of deliberate deception; but the psychological traits they tested for would only appear in a person who knew he was lying.

This study should help investors glean valuable new insights from conference calls. Alas, this benefit may diminish over time. The real winners will be public-relations firms, which now know to coach the boss to hesitate more, swear less and avoid excessive expressions of positive emotion. Expect 「fantastic」 results to become a thing of the past.

32-Inch Sharp LCD-TVs Recalled Due to Risk of Injury

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.

Name of Product: Sharp 32-inch LCD-TVs

Units: About 9,000

Manufacturer: Sharp Electronics Corporation, of Mahwah, N.J.

Hazard: The TV stand's neck support can break and cause the TV to tip-over, posing a risk of injury to the consumer.

Incidents/Injuries: None reported.

Description: This recall involves Sharp 32-inch LCD-TVs with model number LC-32SB28UT. The model number, serial number and manufacture dates of March 2010 through April 2010, are printed on a label on the back of the unit. Serial numbers included in the recall are:

Serial Number Range
0028 32837 through 0028 35190
0048 57501 through 0048 59020
0048 61401 through 0048 64020
0048 72001 through 0048 78800

No other model or serial number is included in this recall.

Sold by: Major retail stores nationwide from March 2010 through August 2010 for about $550.

Manufactured in: China

Remedy: Consumers should immediately contact Sharp to arrange for a free replacement stand neck support.

Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact Sharp at (800) 291-4289 anytime, or visit the firm's website at www.sharpusa.com

The Difficulty in Improving Airline Safety Now

• By SCOTT MCCARTNEY

This year may end up being the worst of the past five years for airline crashes worldwide, and that doesn't count some high-profile military and private-plane fatal accidents that killed major political figures.

View Full Image

Associated Press

The wreckage of an Embraer E190 aircraft operated by Henan Airlines that crashed at Yichun City, in northeastern China, on Aug. 24. So far, there have been 13 fatal crashes of passenger-airline flights, according to Ascend Worldwide Ltd., a London-based aviation consulting company. That's through eight months. Last year there were only 10 fatal airline crashes of flights carrying passengers, and 13 total in 2008.

"It's an average sort of year, but the problem is we still have four months to go," said Paul Hayes, Ascend's director of safety.

The frequency of airline crashes is basically random, and they do sometimes come in bunches. In August alone, Ascend counted five airline crashes that killed passengers, including the crashes of a Boeing 737 in Colombia and an Embraer 190 in Yichun, China. In addition, the Alaska crash of a private plane claimed the lives of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and four others on Aug. 9.

An increase in accidents in 2010 doesn't mean safety is eroding, aviation safety experts say. And travelers need to remember that it is still a very small number among millions of flights every year.

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But the numbers do highlight a concern among safety officials: Rapid safety improvement that airlines have enjoyed for several decades may be bottoming out.

In 1959, as the jet age was only beginning for passenger airplanes, there were 36 fatal accidents in every one million departures, according to a recent Boeing Co. report. That quickly plunged to 2.4 fatal accidents in every million takeoffs by 1969. In the past decade, the fatal accident rate for airlines hasn't been higher than 0.6 per million flights.

Can it go lower? As the industry gets safer, it gets harder and harder to reduce the accident rate further. In addition, advances in cockpit technology and aircraft reliability can lull pilots into complacency, and even erode basic flying skills because computers do so much of the flying on commercial airliners.

"You can look at it as a plateau in the western world," said Kevin Hiatt, executive vice president of the Flight Safety Foundation, a non-profit international safety group.

To make further improvement, safety officials have focused on pilot professionalism, training and experience as key issues. One big task is getting pilots to battle complacency and better understand all the technology given to them so they can respond well to unusual events.

"The technology in the cockpit works well 99% of the time. It's the 1% of the time when you look at the other guy and say, 'Why did it do that?' " said Mr. Hiatt, a former Delta Air Lines international chief pilot.

Most crashes occur as planes take off and climb or as they approach and land at airports. This year has seen several landing accidents, such as the Embraer crash in China, the 737 crash in Colombia and the Polish military transport crash in western Russia in April.

Regional airlines—smaller carriers that typically fly planes with fewer than 100 seats—have a worse safety record when compared with the big airlines to which they feed passengers. In the U.S., regional airlines have been involved in five of the seven fatal accidents on scheduled airline flights in the past 10 years, according to National Transportation Safety Board records.

Outrage over a Continental Express accident outside Buffalo, N.Y., last year led Congress to pass requirements to raise the minimum flight experience for newly hired regional airline pilots to 1,500 hours from 250.

Private planes, categorized under general aviation, have far higher accident rates than commercial aviation, which has tighter U.S. standards for maintaining and flying planes. Airline pilots even have to get required FAA medical evaluations more frequently than private pilots.

NTSB shows accident rates based on flight hours instead of takeoffs. Over the 10-year period ended 2008, "corporate aviation," usually company-owned aircraft with professional pilots, had a fatal accident rate about roughly twice the rate for airlines, and general aviation had an average rate of 1.27 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours—65 times higher than the very low airline fatal accident rate.

Multiple Causes

Since 1997, roughly 80% of crashes involve some human error, either by pilots or ground workers, according to the NTSB's annual review of accident data. About 50% have some environmental contributing cause, such as bad weather, and 20% have something wrong with the aircraft. Multiple causes are typically cited in investigation reports, so the factors add up to more than 100%.

Continental Divide

Accident rates vary considerably by continent. African airlines have the worst safety record, with a "hull-loss" (a destroyed plane) accident rate 25-times higher than the U.S., according to a Federal Aviation Administration study of 10-year period ended with 2007. The Flight Safety Foundation notes, however, that Nigeria is making improvements.

The hull-loss rate for European airlines was slightly higher than U.S., and Chinese airlines were about the same as the U.S., based on the FAA research. But airlines based in Asia (excluding China), Latin America and the Middle East had fatal-accident rates roughly five times higher than the U.S.

Mr. Hayes of Ascend says many of the crashes around the world happen with smaller, perhaps even obscure airlines.

Some have older planes and less training for pilots and mechanics. Some have new planes with advanced avionics flown by pilots who aren't well versed in how to use them in irregular situations. Airlines with fatal accidents this year include Ethiopian Airlines, Afriqiyah Airways, Pamir Airways, Air India Express, Airblue, Henan Airlines and Filair.

"Airlines having the accidents are not the big majors, in general," Mr. Hayes said.

In terms of planes, newer is definitely better in terms of accident rates. Boeing's annual statistical summary shows that the latest versions of the venerable 737—the 737-600, 737-700, 737-800 and 737-900—combined have a fatal accident rate of 0.11 per million departures. The A320 family of Airbus jets does almost as well, with 0.21 fatal accidents per million departures. But older planes like the DC-10 and the 727 had significantly higher accident rates—1.34 fatal crashes per million departures for the DC-10 and 0.68 for the 727. The McDonnell Douglas MD-80, still widely in use, has a fatal accident rate of 0.31 per million departures.

And the safest place to sit on a plane in case of an accident? Aviation Safety Network, a unit of the Flight Safety Foundation, scoured through accident reports on air disaster survivors looking for mentions of where survivors sat, and location really didn't seem to matter.

At least some survivors were seated in the front of the jet in 26 accident reports and rear-seated survivors were mentioned in 30 accident reports. Center sections only were mentioned in only 16 reports.

—Email middleseat@wsj.com.

SoL, Reflections: The SoL Journal

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Reflections: The SoL Journal

Reflections: The SoL Journal, Volume 10, Number 2
Breakthrough conversations: Bart Hilhosrt and Peter Schütte give us "Food for Thought" reporting on scenario planning in the Nile basin; Ray Jorgensen offers tools for effective, learningful meetings; John Stultz challenges conventional wisdom about well-being at work; our book excerpt: "Stumbling" from Adam Kahane's Power and Love including a reply by Sherry Immediato. Read Reflections Volume 10, Number 2.

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