Ethical Futures and Public-Private Partnerships: Peering Far Down the Track

This article employs an institutional perspective in formulating predictions about the ethical futures of privatization partnerships. Although this paper focuses on ethical concerns in the U.S. public sector, it incorporates a multinational dimension in (a) comparing the meaning of privatization among societies and (b) probing privatization financing in the global economy. Five assumptions that flow from institutional reasoning are made explicit as supports for subsequent predictions. The institutional logic shifts privatization conversation away from conventional debate about competition and efficiency toward centralizing forces in both sectors in response to globalization. In that regard, this study identifies the systemic erosion of (local) community integrity as the key privatization problem of the future.     

A comparative study of U.S. and Iraqi students

This study uses a sample comprised of U.S. students and Iraqi students to determine if differences occur over ethical perceptions based on cultural/demographic issues. Irrespective of demographics, the results of this study indicate significant cultural differences between Iraqi students and American students with regard to selected ethical issues concerning graduate education. Specifically the differences occurred in the students' perceptions of winning is everything, selling one's soul, logic before emotion, and pander to professors. Iraqi students consistently viewed these beliefs as more necessary for success in their graduate education than did their American counterparts.     

Business student ethical values anew in the 1990s

This paper uses a Rokeach Value Survey methodology to again ask the question, now in the mid 1990s, whether business student ethics are different from non-business student ethics. Additionally, the paper addresses the question of whether a course can alter or change student ethics and values during a semester. Thirdly, this paper attempts to operationalize and empirically test and measure the new ethical concepts of moral management and moral maximization.     

Context in the Risk Assessment of Digital Systems

As the use of digital computers for instrumentation and control of safety-critical systems has increased, there has been a growing debate over the issue of whether probabilistic risk assessment techniques can be applied to these systems. This debate has centered on the issue of whether software failures can be modeled probabilistically. This paper describes a context-based approach to software risk assessment that explicitly recognizes the fact that the behavior of software is not probabilistic. The source of the perceived uncertainty in its behavior results from both the input to the software as well as the application and environment in which the software is operating. Failures occur as the result of encountering some context for which the software was not properly designed, as opposed to the software simply failing randomly. The paper elaborates on the concept of error-forcing context as it applies to software. It also illustrates a methodology which utilizes event trees, fault trees, and the Dynamic Flowgraph Methodology (DFM) to identify error-forcing contexts for software in the form of fault tree prime implicants.     

Approximation Algorithms for Quadratic Programming

We consider the problem of approximating the global minimum of a general quadratic program (QP) with n variables subject to m ellipsoidal constraints. For m=1, we rigorously show that an -minimizer, where error (0, 1), can be obtained in polynomial time, meaning that the number of arithmetic operations is a polynomial in n, m, and log(1/). For m 2, we present a polynomial-time (1- )-approximation algorithm as well as a semidefinite programming relaxation for this problem. In addition, we present approximation algorithms for solving QP under the box constraints and the assignment polytope constraints.     

Democratizing Risk Management: Successful Public Involvement in Local Water Management Decisions

This paper discusses a successful public involvement effort that addressed and resolved several highly controversial water management issues involving environmental and flood risks associated with an electrical generation facility in British Columbia. It begins with a discussion of concepts for designing public involvement, summarizing research that indicates why individuals and groups may find it difficult to make complex choices. Reasons for public involvement, and the range of current practices are discussed. Next, four principles for designing group decision process are outlined, emphasizing decision-aiding concepts that include value-focused thinking and adaptive management. The next sections discuss the Alouette River Stakeholder Committee process in terms of objectives, participation, process, methods for structuring values and creating alternatives, information sources, and results. Discussion and conclusions complete the paper.     

Fundamentals of Health Risk Assessment. Use,Derivation, Validity and Limitations of Safety Indices

We investigated the way results of human health risk assessments are used, and the theory used to describe those methods, sometimes called the NAS paradigm. Contrary to a key tenet of that theory, current methods have strictly limited utility. The characterizations now considered standard, Safety Indices such as Acceptable Daily Intake, Reference Dose, and so on, usefully inform only decisions that require a choice between two policy alternatives (e.g., approve a food additive or not), decided solely on the basis of a finding of safety. Risk is characterized as the quotient of one of these Safety Indices divided by an estimate of exposure: a quotient greater than one implies that the situation may be considered safe. Such decisions are very widespread, both in the U. S. federal government and elsewhere. No current method is universal; different policies lead to different practices, for example, in California's Proposition 65, where statutory provisions specify some practices. Further, an important kind of human health risk assessment is not recognized by this theory: this kind characterizes risk as likelihood of harm, given estimates of exposure consequent to various decision choices. Likelihood estimates are necessary whenever decision makers have many possible decision choices and must weigh more than two societal values, such as in EPA's implementation of conventional air pollutants. These estimates can not be derived using current methods; different methods are needed. Our analysis suggests changes needed in both the theory and practice of human health risk assessment, and how what is done is depicted.     

A New Era in Governmental Reform: Realizing Community

The good government models of the 1990s realized a focus that included reinventing, reengineer-ing, rethinking, quality, empowerment, and devolution of the organization. These organizational reform ideologies sought to increase involvement, improve productivity, manage performance, and drive results. One essential key that has been disregarded in these government models is the involvement of community in the decision-making process. This paper points to the importance of involving and empowering citizens in the decision-making process, particularly in regard to community justice based on the notion of restorative justice system. Community justice, a modern day reform movement with international proportions, is based on the principles of empowering community, repairing harm caused by a crime or disturbance, and reducing risk to the community.     

A Decision Theory Perspective on the Disposal of High-Level Radioactive Waste

In this paper the problem of high-level nuclear waste disposal is viewed as a five-stage, cascaded decision problem. The first four of these decisions having essentially been made, the work of recent years has been focused on the fifth stage, which concerns specifics of the repository design. The probabilistic performance assessment (PPA) work is viewed as the outcome prediction for this stage, and the site characterization work as the information gathering option. This brief examination of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository through a decision analysis framework resulted in three conclusions: (1) A decision theory approach to the process of selecting and characterizing Yucca Mountain would enhance public understanding of the issues and solutions to high-level waste management; (2) engineered systems are an attractive alternative to offset uncertainties in the containment capability of the natural setting and should receive greater emphasis in the design of the repository; and (3) a strategy of waste management should be adopted, as opposed to waste disposal, as it allows for incremental confirmation and confidence building of a permanent solution to the high-level waste problem.     

Politics,Public Opinion,and Privatization: A Test of Competing Theories in Great Britain

Reforms known collectively as the new public management (NPM) are sweeping governments worldwide. For a movement espousing customer-based service orientations, there is a curious paucity of research on citizens' attitudes toward these reforms. We know little about how citizens feel about them, how they arrive at their conclusions, and how durable their attitudes are likely to be. Using citizen attitudes culled from the 1987--1992 British General Election Panel Survey, we apply multiple regression analysis to begin exploring these issues in one critical area of NPM reform: privatization of state-owned enterprises. We find that the overall predictive power of the five theoretical perspectives culled from public opinion research and operationalized in our model is quite respectable, but that evaluations are too complex for any single explanation of public opinion formation to capture. We also find that British attitudes toward privatization were most associated with cue-taking from leaders and parties, ideological moorings associated with individualism, and income. From these findings we offer a set of hypotheses suitable for testing in future research—most especially, a disparate impact hypothesis—that have important implications for practice and theory-building regarding public opinion and market-based administrative reforms worldwide.     

Performance Assessments of Nuclear Waste Repositories: A Dialogue on Their Value and Limitations

Performance Assessment (PA) is the use of mathematical models to simulate the long-term behavior of engineered and geologic barriers in a nuclear waste repository; methods of uncertainty analysis are used to assess effects of parametric and conceptual uncertainties associated with the model system upon the uncertainty in outcomes of the simulation. PA is required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of its certification process for geologic repositories for nuclear waste. This paper is a dialogue to explore the value and limitations of PA. Two skeptics acknowledge the utility of PA in organizing the scientific investigations that are necessary for confident siting and licensing of a repository; however, they maintain that the PA process, at least as it is currently implemented, is an essentially unscientific process with shortcomings that may provide results of limited use in evaluating actual effects on public health and safety. Conceptual uncertainties in a PA analysis can be so great that results can be confidently applied only over short time ranges, the antithesis of the purpose behind long-term, geologic disposal. Two proponents of PA agree that performance assessment is unscientific, but only in the sense that PA is an engineering analysis that uses existing scientific knowledge to support public policy decisions, rather than an investigation intended to increase fundamental knowledge of nature; PA has different goals and constraints than a typical scientific study. The proponents describe an ideal, six-step process for conducting generalized PA, here called probabilistic systems analysis (PSA); they note that virtually all scientific content of a PA is introduced during the model-building steps of a PSA; they contend that a PA based on simple but scientifically acceptable mathematical models can provide useful and objective input to regulatory decision makers. The value of the results of any PA must lie between these two views and will depend on the level of knowledge of the site, the degree to which models capture actual physical and chemical processes, the time over which extrapolations are made, and the proper evaluation of health risks attending implementation of the repository. The challenge is in evaluating whether the quality of the PA matches the needs of decision makers charged with protecting the health and safety of the public.     

Democratic Implications of Public Organizations

The author suggests a Weberian methodology, based on theories of democracy and organization, for assessing normative implications of public organizations. How different organizational models contribute to (re)create democracy and legitimacy is scrutinized with reference to a Swedish IT program. The conclusion is that a system management organization will be an appropriate choice for dealing with tame problems, but it will at the same time promote an elitist democratization. In contrast, a development organization will be more appropriate in dealing with complex problems, and it will most likely promote discursive democratization.     

Risk Assessment Based on Financial Data: Market Response to Airline Accidents

The risk of catastrophic failures, for example in the aviation and aerospace industries, can be approached from different angles (e.g., statistics when they exist, or a detailed probabilistic analysis of the system). Each new accident carries information that has already been included in the experience base or constitutes new evidence that can be used to update a previous assessment of the risk. In this paper, we take a different approach and consider the risk and the updating from the investor's point of view. Based on the market response to past airplane accidents, we examine which ones have created a surprise response and which ones are considered part of the risk of the airline business as previously assessed. To do so, we quantify the magnitude and the timing of the observed market response to catastrophic accidents, and we compare it to an estimate of the response that would be expected based on the true actual cost of the accident including direct and indirect costs (full-cost information response). First, we develop a method based on stock market data to measure the actual market response to an accident and we construct an estimate of the full-cost information response to such an event. We then compare the two figures for the immediate and the long-term response of the market for the affected firm, as well as for the whole industry group to which the firm belongs. As an illustration, we analyze a sample of ten fatal accidents experienced by major US domestic airlines during the last seven years. In four cases, we observed an abnormal market response. In these instances, it seems that the shareholders may have updated their estimates of the probability of a future accident in the affected airlines or more generally of the firm's future business prospects. This market reaction is not always easy to explain much less to anticipate, a fact which management should bear in mind when planning a firm's response to such an event.     

The Changing Nature of Internal Labor Markets

Research on Internal Labor Markets (ILMs) has had enormous influence on social sciences since the seminal work by Peter Doeringer and Michael Piore, thirty years ago.This article discusses the past and current contribution of the ILM concept to the development of labor economics, organization theory and human resource management and argues that research on ILMs remains important, despite the changes occurred in the economy. Therefore, a renovated effort of theoretical and field studies is required and desirable in order to reach a better understanding of the efficiency and equity issues the knowledge economy poses to the employment relation. In fact, the emergence of a new employment contract, characterized by less sticky a relation between employer and employees asks for a major re-conceptualization of ILMs that cannot be limited to a diverse, more detailed classification, or to an update of their possible variants. Such re-conceptualizationcould be linked with the new organizational forms literature, i.e. with that body of research that models organizations as hybrids or networks.     

Mixed Levels of Uncertainty in Complex Policy Models

The characterization and treatment of uncertainty poses special challenges when modeling indeterminate or complex coupled systems such as those involved in the interactions between human activity, climate and the ecosystem. Uncertainty about model structure may become as, or more important than, uncertainty about parameter values. When uncertainty grows so large that prediction or optimization no longer makes sense, it may still be possible to use the model as a behavioral test bed to examine the relative robustness of alternative observational and behavioral strategies. When models must be run into portions of their phase space that are not well understood, different submodels may become unreliable at different rates. A common example involves running a time stepped model far into the future. Several strategies can be used to deal with such situations. The probability of model failure can be reported as a function of time. Possible alternative surprises can be assigned probabilities, modeled separately, and combined. Finally, through the use of subjective judgments, one may be able to combine, and over time shift between models, moving from more detailed to progressively simpler order-of-magnitude models, and perhaps ultimately, on to simple bounding analysis.     

Challenges to the Acceptance of Probabilistic Risk Analysis

This paper discusses a number of the key challenges to the acceptance and application of probabilistic risk analysis (PRA). Those challenges include: (a) the extensive reliance on subjective judgment in PRA, requiring the development of guidance for the use of PRA in risk-informed regulation, and possibly the development of robust or reference prior distributions to minimize the reliance on judgment; and (b) the treatment of human performance in PRA, including not only human error per se but also management and organizational factors more broadly. All of these areas are seen as presenting interesting research challenges at the interface between engineering and other disciplines.     

On Approximability of Boolean Formula Minimization

For a Boolean function given by a Boolean formula (or a binary circuit) S we discuss the problem of building a Boolean formula (binary circuit) of minimal size, which computes the function g equivalent to , or -equivalent to , i.e., . In this paper we prove that if P NP then this problem can not be approximated with a good approximation ratio by a polynomial time algorithm.     

Examining the link between social responsibility and decision styles

The paper examines the factors that influence socially responsible decision making by individuals. The study found four social responsibility styles: Playing it Safe, Weather The Storm, Problem to Solve, and Hope it Goes Away. These styles describe individuals on the basis of decision style, propensity for risk, and coping style. The styles explain why people with different values might come to the same decision in the same circumstances.     

Privatization and Public Opinion in Germany

Privatization has been a major issue around the world, but research on public opinion about it has been scarce. The German Social Survey provides an opportunity to compare citizen opinions from a formerly socialist-authoritarian regime with those from a democratic regime, in their opinions about privatizing banks, electrical power, and hospitals. As do citizens in surveys in other nations, Germans support privatization of the services in the order just given. Citizens from the east, where privatization led to sharp increases in unemployment, oppose privatization much more than do westerners. A LISREL analysis indicates that their opposition is not due to their concerns about its economic effects on themselves or the nation (economic pessimism), but more due to perception of the proper role of government (opposition to government spending), and sense of political efficacy. The analysis also reflects on the roles of other variables such as ideology, partisanship, gender, being unemployed, education, and preference for taxes versus public services. We discuss implications for theory and research on public opinion about government policies and services, such as the role of direct economic self-interest versus more symbolic and ideological orientations.