The managerial revolution,the institutional infrastructure,and the problem of human capital

InScale and Scope, A.D. Chandler explores the role of management in shaping growth and competitiveness in industrialising nations. Chandler views managers as reacting to technological and economic change rather than initiating it, giving little attention to the extent to which growth of modern management and corporate capacities were tied to the emergence of parallel structures in government and society, and the important national differences in the role of public and private sectors in the process. His failure to offer a broad and encompassing paradigm of organisational growth and change produces a celebration of ‘American exceptionalism’ and corporate bigness rather than a genuinely comparative analysis.     

Relationships between Borda voting and Zermelo ranking

There are many situations wherein a group of individuals (e.g., voters, experts, sports writers) must produce an ordered list of ‘best’ alternatives selected from a given group of alternatives (e.g., candidates, proposals, sports teams). Two long established mechanisms that have been used for this task are ‘Zermelo’s Ranking Method’ (1929) and ‘Borda’s Voting Scheme’ (1781). The main purpose of this paper is to point out that they are, under certain common circumstances, identical. We then show that Zermelo’s Method can be used in situations that Borda’s Method is not designed to handle.     

Italy and ‘Balkan Greece’: Albanian Immigration in the 90s

The article proposes an interview with Mr. M. Baldwin Edwards—director of the Mediterranean migration observatory (MMO) based in Athens—made in January 2007. Interview object was the analysis of the way Greece faced the Albanian migration flow in the 90s. Critically he points out the actors, the strategies, the historical and sociological reasons of this response. The protection of human rights and the role of the European Union are also pointed out. The overall picture gives the impression of a Greek answer that makes a confusion between a ‘border policy’ and a ‘migration policy’ leading to a (more or less conscious) ‘non immigration policy’.     

Education Assistance to Africa: We Can Do More and Better

Based on the problems of Global Education Assistance to Africa (GEAA), and combined with China’s rationale and practice of Education Assistance to Africa, this paper proposes a vision and assumption to improve the GEAA, that is, using the assistance rationale of ‘Africa-based’, ‘equal-relationship’, and ‘mutual-benefits’, through ‘multi-stakeholders cooperation’, ‘multi-modes operation’, and ‘multi-goals achievement’ to build one ‘harmonious world’.     

Changes in local voluntary associations in Denmark

This article analyses the changes in the voluntary sector in Denmark at the local level, and compares associations in the ‘cultural field’ with those in the ‘social field’. The analyses, which are primarily based on research conducted in 1993, show that the voluntary sector changed significantly during the 1980s and the 1990s. First, over a third of the associations were established after 1979, and this has resulted in changes in the overall composition of the sector. Traditional value-oriented associations and associations that work for others have declined in relative terms, while narrow-interest associations that work for the members themselves are increasing. Second, the number of associations that are based and operate in a clearly-defined local area has declined. Third, despite professionalisation in some types of associations, more people than ever before are engaged in voluntary work in associations. Fourth, while public subsidies to the voluntary associations have increased, this has not changed the fundamental ‘political autonomy’ of the associations. Fifth, even though there are great differences in the political context of which the ‘cultural field’ associations and ‘social field’ associations are part, the associations in the two fields have many common features.     

W. H. Hutt and The economics of the colour bar

Conclusion Long before the international climate of opinion made South Africa’s system of legalized racial discrimination untenable, it was under attack from within. A tiny part of that struggle was waged on moral grounds by decent South Africans both white and nonwhite. The much larger part of the war was waged not on moral grounds but on the economic battlefield where the stakes were profit and losses. As W. H. Hutt so aptly points out, the major disadvantages of apartheid were borne by South Africa’s nonwhite population, but the disadvantage was shared by whites as well. As such it produced widespread tensions leading to resistance, evasion, contravention, and modi-fication of apartheid law. Often evasion and contravention of apartheid law was led by the very people who shared the ideology of white supremacy. The final abolition of apartheid law may indeed reflect a change in heart by South African whites but the coup de grace was, as Hutt put it, the liberating forces “released by what is variously called the ‘free market system,’ the ‘capitalist system,’ or the ‘profit system.’”     

Fengshui theory in urban landscape planning

The spatial configuration of urban landscapes results from cumulative interactions between human activities and the physical environment. Traditional philosophies and cultural legacies have had important influences on urban development and planning in East Asia. In Seoul, traditional land use practices based on ‘Fengshui’ have significantly contributed to human-mediated patterns of landscape changes, in addition to the role of the socio-economic background (development) and other human activities. The concept of Fengshui was originally founded upon people’s empirical cognition of natural landscape patterns. Recently, however, advanced economic development, westernization and urbanization have been rapidly altering the old traditions of the holistic landscape systems through changing urban planning practices. Since the type, scale, frequency, distribution and spreading pattern of environmental and human disturbances have been changed, a new paradigm for urban landscape planning is necessary to maintain the ecological and cultural integrity of landscapes in Korea. In this paper, we discuss recent concepts and methods of landscape ecology and urban planning from the viewpoint of Fengshui, the traditional land use patterns in Seoul, whose application has so far been restricted only to traditional land evaluation. We conclude that, to maintain the sustainability of the urban landscape, it is necessary to develop a new urban planning framework for the region that is based on the integration between landscape ecology principles with the traditional concepts of Fengshui.     

“We have a lot of goodwill, but we still need to eat…”: Valuing Women’s Long Term Voluntarism in Community Development in Lima

This paper focuses on recognizing the contribution made to development by grassroots women working on a voluntary basis in long term development projects. Using the example of healthcare, the paper problematizes the widespread move towards an increased reliance on voluntary and third sector provision. Drawing on literature around women’s community activism, the research considers the extent to which women carrying out health promotion work in Peru have taken on this role as more than “just voluntary work,” highlighting their long term commitment during more than a decade of health promotion activities. The paper develops debates around the professionalization of voluntary work, particularly considering the issue of economic remuneration for health promoters, and emphasizing the gendered nature of their voluntarism; concluding by questioning the sustainability of poor women’s long term, and largely unpaid, involvement as the linchpins of community development projects.

Sociology’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Suicide</Emphasis>: A Forensic Autopsy?

For decades Durkheim’s theory of suicide has been tested and found wanting. Yet, rather than being consigned to the dust-bin of history, it lives on and is pointed to as an exemplar of the powers of sociological theory and research. If this rationalizing and/or dismissal of so many falsifications of the theory were an isolated phenomenon, it might be evidence of some lemming-like propensity for suicide or a disciplinary death-wish, among a few sociologists. But it appears to be a much more widespread and common occurrence. In this paper we explore some possible explanations of this ‘falsification denial’—‘The Social Misconstruction of Reality’ (Hamilton 1996), ‘When Prophecy Fails’ (Festinger et al. 1956), ‘Underdetermination’ (Duhem 1954; Quine Journal of Philosophy 67:178–183, 1970, Erkenntnis 9:313–328, 1975; Lakatos 1970), and ‘Boundary Maintenance’ (Erikson 1966), and we outline some of the more important and pernicious consequences of this falsification denial for the discipline and future of sociology.     

Part of the welfare mix: The third sector as an intermediate area

This article presents a conceptional framework which analyses the third sector as a part of a mixed welfare system, otherwise made up of the market, the state and the informal private household spheres. From this perspective, the third sector appears as a dimension of the public space in civil societies: an intermediate area rather than a clear-cut sector. Third sector organisations are understood as polyvalent organisations whose social and political roles can be as important as their economic ones; they are portrayed as hybrids, intermeshing resources and rationales from different sectors. In present policies of ‘welfare pluralism’ the emphasis is consequently more on ‘synergetic’ mixes of resources and rationales than on mere issues of substitution processes between different sectors of provision. The last section discusses the potential distinguishing features of such policies with respect to ‘pluralist’ approaches which try to safeguard the conventional hierarchies in a mixed economy of welfare. This paper draws in part on the author's introduction to Evers and Svetlik (1993).     

The Chairman’s Paradox Revisited

This paper re-examines the so-called ‘chairman’s paradox‘ that was first noticed by Farquharson in his path breaking tract on sophisticated voting, Theory of Voting (1969). The Chairman’s paradox is concerned with the case of a three member committee in which a particular player who has a regular and a tie-breaking vote – the ‘chairman’ – not only will do worse in specific instances under the plurality procedure for three alternatives than if he did not have such a vote, but will also do worse overall. That is, the chairman’s a priori probability of success (‘getting what one wants’) for all possible games with linear (strict) preference orders is lower than that of the two regular members. It is demonstrated that this result, which comes about if voters act strategically rather than sincerely, is not as robust as it has been thought to be. By merely replacing the standard assumption of linear preference orders with weak preference orders, which allow for indifference, we can escape from the paradox for the canonical case of three players and three alternatives. With weak preference orders, the a priori success of the chairman is now greater than that of the other two players. We also point to a new paradox of sophisticated voting.     

Voting power: an information theory approach

In recent years, there has been increasing awareness of the importance of formal measures of voting power and of the relevance of such measures to real life political issues. Nevertheless, existing measures have been criticized, especially because of their dependence on the unrealistic assumption that different coalitions have equal probabilities. In this paper we show that the classical problem of measuring voting power can be naturally embedded in information theory. This perspective on voting power allows us to extend measures of voting power to cases in which there are dependencies among voters. In doing so, we distinguish between two different notions of a given voter’s power—‘control’ and ‘informativeness’—corresponding, respectively, to the average uncertainty regarding the outcome of a vote that remains when all others have voted and the average uncertainty that is eliminated when only the given voter has voted. This distinction settles a number of well-known paradoxes and enables the study of voting power on the basis of actual political behavior at all levels.     

An Examination of ‘Irregular Competition’ between Corporations and NGOs

The purpose of this article is to develop a theory which frames the demands of civil society in such a way as to better enable corporate subjects to manage and navigate ‘irregular’ engagement from activist organizations. Activist NGOs engage in advocacy at times by mounting, facilitating or encouraging popular social campaigns and actions against targeted corporations. In many cases, radical ‘direct action’ tactics are adopted, taking such approaches, NGOs may capitalise on the broader, more ethically diverse strategic possibilities open to them than are available to their corporate adversaries. We employ institutional theory to map out this asymmetric distribution of strategic possibility. We theorise NGOs and corporate subjects as effectively ‘competing’ with one another to maximise their own strategic possibilities and to minimise those of their opponents, in the perennial battle for hearts and minds that plays out between NGOs, corporate subjects, and broader civil society actors who ultimately determine boundary rules for NGO-corporate conflict. Within this context we explore the normative challenge arising from the possibility that corporate subjects might seek to tip the competitive balance by learning from how the military has adapted to successfully engage with ‘irregular’ adversaries through what is often termed ‘asymmetric’ or ‘irregular’ warfare. Should corporations follow a similar adaptive process, by mirroring the ‘irregular’ strategies of activist groups? Drawing evidence from the military experience, we suggest—perhaps counter intuitively—that such adaptations can create new opportunities for conflict resolution and for building sustainable cooperation between former adversaries.     

Internet Gamblers: A Latent Class Analysis of Their Behaviours and Health Experiences

In order to learn about the behaviours and health experiences of people who gamble on the Internet, we conducted an international online survey with respondents recruited via gambling and gambling-related websites. The mean (SD) age of the 4,125 respondents completing the survey was 35.5 (11.8) years, with 79.1% being male and 68.8% UK residents. Respondents provided demographic details and completed validated psychometric screening instruments for problem gambling, mood disturbances, as well as alcohol and substance misuse, and history of deliberate self harm. We applied latent class analysis to respondents’ patterns of regular online gambling activities, and identified subgroups of individuals who used the Internet to gamble in different ways (L ² = 44.27, bootstrap P = 0.07). We termed the characteristic profiles as ‘non-to-minimal gamblers’; ‘sports bettors’; ‘casino & sports gamblers’; ‘lottery players’; and ‘multi-activity gamblers’. Furthermore, these subgroups of respondents differed on other demographic and psychological dimensions, with significant inter-cluster differences in proportion of individuals scoring above threshold for problem gambling, mood disorders and substance misuse, and history of deliberate self harm (all Χ ²s > 23.4, all P-values <0.001). The ‘casino & sports’ and ‘multi-activity-gamblers’ clusters had the highest prevalence of mental disorder. Internet gamblers appear to be heterogeneous but composed of several subgroups, differing markedly on both demographic and clinical characteristics.     

Trust, repute and the role of non-profit enterprise

This article examines the trust hypothesis: the claim that asymmetric information can explain the existence of non-profit enterprise in certain markets. We argue that this hypothesis, in order to be viable, has to meet three challenges: ‘reputational ubiquity’, ‘incentive compatibility’ and ‘adulteration’. Drawing on modern agency theory, we conclude that the trust hypothesis stands on shaky ground. It can be sustained only under particular conditions that have been neither carefully described in theory nor subject to empirical assessment. The available evidence, patchy and inadequate as it is, seems to suggests that there are some ownership-related differences in aspects of organisational performance connected with asymmetric information. However, there is little evidence that this relates to trustper se or provides a rationale for the existence of non-profit ownership in these industries. We conclude with a plea for substantial research on consumer expectations and provider motivations. Visiting Associate Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.     

Geometric models of consistent judgement aggregation

Given a set of propositions with unknown truth values, a ‘judgement aggregation function’ is a way to aggregate the personal truth-valuations of a group of voters into some ‘collective’ truth valuation. We introduce the class of ‘quasimajoritarian’ judgement aggregation functions, which includes majority vote, but also includes some functions which use different voting schemes to decide the truth of different propositions. We show that if the profile of individual beliefs satisfies a condition called ‘value restriction’, then the output of any quasimajoritarian function is logically consistent; this directly generalizes the recent work of Dietrich and List (Majority voting on restricted domains. Presented at SCW08; see , 2007b). We then provide two sufficient conditions for value-restriction, defined geometrically in terms of a lattice ordering or a metric structure on the set of individuals and propositions. Finally, we introduce another sufficient condition for consistent majoritarian judgement aggregation, called ‘convexity’. We show that convexity is not logically related to value-restriction.     

The Ross-Dunlop debate revisited

An alternative interpretation of the Ross-Dunlop debate of the 1940s is provided, which reveals little difference in the opinions of these two theorists on the role of optimizing behavior and of economic factors in explaining trade union behavior. Importantly, both saw theories of union activity based on simple economic maximands as unable to incorporate some “political” features of those unions. The recent wave of economic analyses of trade unions however seems to have answered such criticism to a large extent. A survey of this work is provided to show how many of Ross’s “unanswered questions” can be explained by models where rational trade unions maximize relatively straightforward objective functions. This work is based on chapter 1 of the author’s M.A. thesis at the University of Melbourne. Many thanks are due to Ian McDonald for his generous help, and to Greg Whitwell for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The author is presently a graduate student at Yale University.     

“The Story of My Life”: AIDS and ‘Autobiographical Occasions’

Talk and ‘telling’ have assumed prominent roles in preventing HIV and promoting life with the disease at the start of the twenty-first century. Our concern in this paper is to show how social structures and circumstances shape the narrative productions of HIV positive patients whose lives are institutionally managed. We consider what ‘telling’ means when young women with few economic resources are encouraged or mandated to talk about themselves by case managers, researchers, therapists, welfare workers, and clinic staff. We organize our analysis around three such ‘autobiographical occasions’: disclosures to intimate partners prompted by agents of the state; employment opportunities in which women are hired to tell others about living with HIV as peer educators or outreach health workers; and research interviews. We argue that storylines about living with HIV have been laid down by powerful social actors whose illness experiences do not reflect those of many poor patients. These formulations constitute an ‘archive’ which organizes institutional practices and discourses. These matter not only because they provide patients with a language through which to render their actions meaningful, but because they shape the everyday experience of HIV outside the clinic, the welfare office, and the therapy session.

To the Dark Side and Back: The Administrative Odyssey of an Academic Sociologist with Lessons Learned

My first semester as a tenure-track faculty member at a mid-size university began ignominiously and suggested that my academic career might be short-lived. It began with a blistering memo that was stridently critical of the academic dean’s policy which led to being taken to the proverbial woodshed. Other less serious episodes followed which put me at odds with the “administration.” Yet I have spent more than a third of my career in administrative positions, including a stint in the provost’s office (as an assistant vice chancellor), and only recently returned to faculty status. Over the course of my academic career I have noticed that a large number of academic sociologists have taken administrative positions in academia beyond that of the department chair. This paper will explore this phenomenon and discuss the reasons members of the ‘debunking’ discipline assume administrative roles. I will address this issue within the context of my personal odyssey in administration and how the sociological perspective and imagination has contributed to working in the ‘dark side’ of academia. Finally, I will discuss lessons learned and recommendations for the aspirant administrators among the ranks of academic sociologists.