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Competitive advantage for industrial companies by value-based management of health care – results from research projects published in European Management Journal
Wouldn’t it be time to treat our employees as good and systematic as we treat our technical equipment and assets? How do we do that and how do we make sure we get positive, bottom-line results from that investment? These questions are increasingly on the mind of top managers in industrial firms because their competitive advantage is more and more depending on their people and not the equipment they produce.
Especially project-based companies changed their business model and nowadays deliver a major part of their value-added through services and therefore need to invest in their employee’s ability to work. For example, the burn-out of a project manager means the company will lose a valuable expert, and it directly affects the outcomes of the project and the customer relationship. As a result, it affects the competitiveness of the company. But how to systematically invest in the employees’ ability to work?
PBI Research Institute in collaboration with Hoffmanco International Oy and Åbo Akademi investigated the management methods for companies to invest in occupational healthcare in order to increase competitive advantage. The results show that employees’ ability to work can be improved while at the same time keeping health costs below the industry average. If you want to know more about this management method and how it saved Metso Corporation € 11.5 Mio in 2006 alone, please read our article published in European Management Journal, or contact us directly.
Parvinen, L.A., Windischhofer, R., Gustafsson, M., Competitive advantage through value-based health care: The case of Metso Corporation, European Management Journal (2010). Article in print and already available on-line at www.sciencedirect.com .
Contact:
Richard Windischhofer, Ph.D. (Management)
Åbo Akademi & PBI Research Institute, Tel: +358 40 84 64 854, richard.windischhofer@pbi-institute.com
Lasse Parvinen, CEO, Hoffmanco International OY
Åbo Akademi & Hoffmanco International OY, Tel: +358 40 52 55 481, lasse.parvinen@hoffmanco.fi
Magnus Gustafsson, Acting Professor, Industrial Management
Åbo Akademi &PBI Research Institute, Tel: +358 40 55 40 507, magnus.gustafsson@pbi-institute.com
CROL® feedback from over 140 countries
The CROL® process continues to evolve both in terms of sample sizes and utilization of the results. To date, over 40 000 evaluations have been collected from over 140 countries. This amount grows with approximately 50 evaluations per day. This is a substantial amount of information when taking into account that the CROL® process is designed and utilized mainly to track Business to Business (B2B) relationships.
The CROL® process is used to monitor business relations regularly and thereby continuously to improve our customers' business performance on different organizational levels. A core part of the process is corrective actions based on feedback. For this purpose, PBI has launched an on-line Corrective action tool which enables our customers to react rapidly on received feedback and document root causes and actions.
Read more about the CROL® process from here.
Professor Kim Wikström invited speaker at the Opening Plenary at the global IRNOP conference in Berlin
Professor Kim Wikström was invited as speaker at the Opening Plenary of the global IRNOP conference in Berlin, September 2009. The title of the presentation was Project Business and the Business Logic of Firms‘ Project Activities. Co-speaker was professor Karlos Artto from Helsinki University of Technology.
The International Research Network on Organizing by Projects (IRNOP) was founded in 1993 as a loosely coupled community of researchers. Since then, it has developed to a vibrant worldwide research network (http://www.irnop.org/). The IRNOP network connects scholars with a background in business, economics, engineering and other fields, with a common interest in projects, project organizations and temporary systems. So far, IRNOP has organized eight conferences.
"It is now 16 years since PBI started as a research organization specializing in research and knowledge creation and implementation of project business. To deliver the opening plenary at the IRNOP conference is a major milestone for our research and encourages us to continue with clinical management research, where we combine theory and practice in our research efforts. We expect that the presented knowledge is a strong base for future research. It also supports firms to further develop their strategies in a sustainable way, bringing benefits to the society at large through sound industrial investments."
The presentation focused on different types of business models in projects and project firms working in various types of networks. The challenges and possibilities to combine different business models in different configurations were discussed as central in future ways of generating value in project business. The results were based on a study carried out in close cooperation with a network of international firms and research units.
For further information please contact Professor Kim Wikström kim.wikstrom@pbi-institute.com
+358 40 553 3289
Professor Kim Wikström answers questions after the opening plenary. Accompanied by Professor Karlos Artto (Helsinki University of Technology) and the chairman of the IRNOP conference in Berlin, Professor Hans-Georg Gemuenden (Technical University of Berlin)