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City management in developing countries is a quickly growing area in current public administration literature. However, little research material can be found regarding the management of cities. Demonstrating the issues in this field, Challenges in City Management: A Case Study Approach brings the sometimes dry theories and concepts of urban planning and management to life. The author uses case studies to demonstrate "who," "what," "why," and "how," dramatically increasing readers’ ability to comprehend and apply the theories. Incorporating urban management and organizational management theories with actual practice, the author presents case studies based on observations made during her extensive experience. She offers multiple examples of common contemporary city topics ranging from personnel, policy-making, housing, homelessness, transportation, and budgeting. Each study describes and analyzes a scenario, identifying the economic and political factors as well as the often conflicting players and interest groups. The book provides enhanced understanding of the complex environment city administrators work in, helping readers develop improved decision-making and problem-solving skills through the study of real issues city administrators have experienced. The case study methodology used supplies information that is immediately applicable to real-world situations, making it a resource that city administrators can use to improve their public administration and governance skills.

To effectively compete in today's competitive business environment, nonprofit organizations need to operate as open systems developing strategic alliances with key actors. To help managers of nonprofit organizations develop such relationships, open systems theory is explained, the phrase “strategic alliances” is defined, and a system of alliances is presented as a tool for identifying and analyzing potential relationships.

SUMMARY The authors discuss recruitment of volunteers to serve in local nonprofit organizations. A conceptual model describing the determinants of volunteering is described. The model is useful in understanding the various influences affecting a person's volunteer behavior. Marketing tactics, which take into account prior research, are presented in order to help the volunteer program manager (VPM) more effectively recruit volunteers. While the work is academically strong, efforts are made to make this work very practical.

The authors conducted a review of prior research on hospice volunteering. The results show that, in most cases, the hospice volunteer is a white, married, middle-aged, financially comfortable, unemployed, female who has some college education, strong religious beliefs and has experienced the loss of someone close (see Tables 1 and 2). The results also show that hospice volunteers tend to share certain personality traits reflecting compassion, tolerance, empathy and sensitivity among others. Volunteers tend to fulfill four roles: direct patient support, education, clerical assistance, and professional services (Bunn 1985). Motivations for volunteering and for continuing one's work as a volunteer appear to be for both personal and altruistic reasons. Primary reasons for discontinuing volunteer service include burnout, communication problems, unrealistic expectations, and insufficient use of the volunteer staff. Gaps in this area of research are identified and topics for further research are presented.

This article develops two previous research efforts. William J. Winston (1994, 1995) has proposed a set of strategies by which health care organizations can benefit from forging strategic alliances. Raadt and Self (1997) have proposed a classification model of alliances including horizontal, vertical, internal and osmotic. In the first of two articles, this paper presents a model of horizontal alliances. The subsets include transregional, service mergers, networks, venture capital investments, trade and professional organizations, and promotional alliances. Advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed.

SUMMARY The research objective was to investigate if hospice volunteers could be differentiated from other volunteers using determinant variables from multiple conceptual domains (i.e., personality variables, social/lifestyle variables, demographic variables, and terminal values). Another purpose was to determine if higher performing hospice volunteers could be differentiated from lower performing hospice volunteers. Lifestyle, demographic, personality, social influence, and terminal value measures were obtained from a sample of 63 hospice volunteers and 950 volunteers from other organizations. Survey respondents were derived from over 40 nonprofit organizations in two Midwestern cities. In comparing hospice volunteers to volunteers serving in other types of organizations, hospice volunteers are differentiated by 11 determinant variables. One demographic variable (age), one social/lifestyle variable (the number of organizations to which the volunteer donates time for), and one personality variable (self-e...

A quality assessment tool is presented to detect the presence of out-of-control conditions in a school course system. The tool detects whether or not a set of courses offered by a certain discipline constitutes a stable (or in-control) system of courses. A system of courses is said to be stable if the variation in students' performance from course to course is only due to common causes. Students' performance in a course may be measured by their term grades in that course or any other method of evaluation. The proposed quality tool has the advantage of being applicable to numerical grades as well as to ordinal letter grades such as A, B, C, etc. A further advantage is that the proposed tool can be implemented graphically as a quality control chart. A pilot case study of the proposed tool was initiated in Fall 1995 to monitor a system of six of basic 200-level courses in the Department of Business Administration at Alabama State University. The results of this pilot study show that the system was out-of-control for the period Fall 1995 to Fall 1999 and then became in-control in Fall 2001.

This article develops two previous research efforts. William J. Winston (1994, 1995) has proposed a set of strategies by which health care organizations can benefit from forging strategic alliances. Raadt and Self (1997) have proposed a classification model of alliances including horizontal, vertical, internal, and osmotic. In the second of two articles, this paper presents a model of vertical, internal, and osmotic alliances. Advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed. Finally, the complete alliance system model is presented.

(2003). Winning in FastTime: Harness the Competitive Advantage of Prometheus in Business and Life. Quality Management Journal: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 52-53.