Given such inflexibility, it's no surprise that Japanese workers are a quarter less productive than Americans.
Despite its inflexibility on certain issues, Microsoft has relented on some WP7 design decisions.
FORBES: Microsoft Explains Windows Phone 7 Design Restrictions
And cynics will take the message too far, justifying every kind of deviousness and inflexibility.
On both sides, there is still too little trust and too much inflexibility.
She prided herself on her - what she would call - steadfastness, and what others would call her inflexibility.
For example, confidence in attaining accurate knowledge prior to war and the emphasis on preplanning often leads to inflexibility.
This inflexibility is seen as having alienated many Catholics from regular church attendance in the religion's traditional heartland, Europe.
More profoundly, behind Mr Adams's inflexibility lies the deepest fear of all republican leaders: that of splitting their movement.
An excess of confidence in your own own point of view or capabilities can harden into dogmatism, inflexibility, not listening.
Slow or near-zero growth in domestic demand has made the inflexibility of the German labour market ever more costly for businesses.
It has the decisiveness of a hierarchy but without its inflexibility, its rigidity and its tendency to demotivate workers and frustrate customers.
My question relates to the inflexibility demonstrated by people at call centres.
Barack Obama criticized President Bush for showing "stubborn inflexibility" on the plan.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), which has brought this test case, said the government's inflexibility was "tearing families apart".
As for inflexibility, though true, it is not much of a problem if the short-term fiscal adjustment also makes sense on long-term structural grounds.
So far, the cuts being proposed are designed mainly to cope with the lower level of funding and inflexibility associated with operating under the continuing resolution.
FORBES: Washington Budget Wars Poised To Devastate Military Communities
Because of inflexibility in the labour market and high labour costs, German companies do much of their labour-intensive production abroad, keeping the capital-intensive operations at home.
The nation is in general keen to stay within the euro, although some years back Berlusconi did complain about the inflexibility of the Stability and Growth Pact.
FORBES: Europe's Strikers Make G-20 Protesters Look Like Sissies
These crises were not caused by money that was too stable in value, but rather a short-term inflexibility of the base money supply around the harvest season.
FORBES: Let It Be Known That No Financial Crisis Was Ever Caused by Stable Money
What both groups share is the belief that Angela Merkel is the villain of the crisis whose inflexibility risks dooming entire nations to a never-ending cycle of misery.
Mr Greenspan mused on the inherent inflexibility of financial regulation.
The mayor's inflexibility, Mr. Bookman said, explains why the administration brought the proposal to the Board of Health, a panel handpicked by the mayor, instead of the City Council.
With ease of use comes certain restrictions and inflexibility.
IMF's critics accuse it of inflexibility and political naivety.
For its part, Deutsche Bank accused Dresdner of inflexibility.
For this client, the inflexibility of labor laws and the power of labor unions is a far bigger constraint to her IT agility than is the complexity of IT systems or internal processes.
FORBES: How A Few CIOs Use The Crummy Economy And A Bit of Data To Accelerate IT Strategy
But given the insularity and inflexibility that still hobble too many Japanese firms, this small source of alternative jobs offers an outlet for those who are getting a raw deal in corporate Japan.
ECONOMIST: More and more Japanese want to work for the gaijin
In the case of Bundesdruckerei, a state-owned printing works bought by Britain's Apax Partners in 2000, the inflexibility of the workforce and various other factors produced too little cashflow to service its debt.
ECONOMIST: American investors fight each other over Celanese
For these women, most of whom never envisioned having to choose between careers and children, the costs of workplace inflexibility are up close and personal -- diverted dreams and forgone earnings and independence.
应用推荐