From Bureaucracy to Debureaucratization?

More than previous mild recessions, the current global crisis calls into question the merits of a model that held sway for almost three decades. Celebrated in the nineties in a “National Bestseller”, which even President Clinton considered to be a “blueprint” “for all officials to read”, the book—Reinventing Government—preached the reform of government in private sector ways. In stark contrast to Bureaucracy, which they considered “Bankrupt”. Authors Osborne and Gaebler (1993) promoted Debureaucratization, which they summed up as decentralization, deregulation, downsizing and outsourcing. It is time to revisit the assumptions of the Osborne-Gaebler model that has demonstrably failed. More than the model, however, the ways of its promotion in the market of ideas invites a word of caution. It prompted simplistic distortions, which typically followed from superficial analyses of Weber’s seminal opus (Timsit 2008:864–875). This paper reconsiders these two contrasting models, though not in “black” and “white”. Rather, the two are explored in dialectical terms, as outcomes of shifting ideologies, often taken to extremes.     

Crisis Communication Post Katrina: What are we Learning?

Hurricane Katrina and post-Katrina audits are an on-going project for public affairs scholarship. Much has been written but critical frameworks of analysis are minimal. Crisis communication taxonomies are rich and fruitful in understanding the framing of calamitous events. In revisiting a previous mapping of crisis communication vulnerability points in the Katrina tragedy, the authors provide a further “vulnerability audit” of crisis-communication capabilities within a changing political/administrative ontology—one pointing to the privatization of crises/disasters within the Neo-liberal state. Lessons about crisis communication according to the earlier four conceptual lenses (Garnett and Kouzmin 2007) are supported by more recent developments and scholarship.     

On the existence of sports sentiment: the relation between football match results and stock index returns in Europe

We test for a relation between football match results and the specific national stock index returns during the period 1990–2006 by means of an event study approach. We employ two different econometric frameworks to cross-check our results and prevent them from being solely model driven: the constant mean model and a two-state Markov-switching market model. Both approaches find no significant results. Consequently, in a modified setup, we control for expectations about probable game results by applying a “surprise” variable, which is computed from betting odds and is integrated into a regression analysis. Again, there does not seem to be a connection between a specific national soccer team’s win or loss and stock index prices. In addition, through a few modifications in our empirical setup, we show how easy it would be to “produce” significant results. Our results are contrary to those of Ashton et al. (Appl Econ Lett 10:783–785, 2003) and Edmans et al. (J Finance 62(4):1967–1998, 2007) and support market efficiency.     

Zeit und Zeitgeist in der Betriebswirtschaftslehre — dargestellt am Beispiel der betriebswirtschaftlichen Flexibilitätsdiskussion

Zusammenfassung  Gegenstand des vorliegenden Beitrags ist die Untersuchung der über 80 Jahre andauernden Flexibilit?tsdiskussion in der deutschen Betriebswirtschaftslehre. Eine quantitative und qualitative Analyse dieser Diskussion macht deutlich, dass die Zeit (bzw. die im Zeitablauf feststellbaren Entwicklungen oder Ereignisse) sowie der Zeitgeist (als Gesamtheit der eine Epoche kennzeichnenden Auffassungen, Ideen und Lebensformen) erkl?rende Variablen einer wissenschaftlichen Diskussion und ihrer Ergebnisse sein k?nnen. Schon der relativ lange Zeitraum der wissenschaftlichen Behandlung l?sst das Flexibilit?tsthema als „L?ngsschnittstichprobe“ zur Prüfung der oben genannten Hypothese geeignet erscheinen. So wird gezeigt werden, dass die Flexibilit?tsdiskussion durch externe Ereignisse ausgel?st wurde und im Zeitablauf immer wieder „neu“ an Dynamik gewonnen und sich an jeweils vorherrschende Themen und Probleme — den „Zeitgeist“ — ausgerichtet hat. Am Ende der Untersuchung stehen die folgenden Erkenntnisse:

Priority algorithms for the subset-sum problem

Greedy algorithms are simple, but their relative power is not well understood. The priority framework (Borodin et al. in Algorithmica 37:295–326, 2003) captures a key notion of “greediness” in the sense that it processes (in some locally optimal manner) one data item at a time, depending on and only on the current knowledge of the input. This algorithmic model provides a tool to assess the computational power and limitations of greedy algorithms, especially in terms of their approximability. In this paper, we study priority algorithm approximation ratios for the Subset-Sum Problem, focusing on the power of revocable decisions, for which the accepted data items can be later rejected to maintain the feasibility of the solution. We first provide a tight bound of α≈0.657 for irrevocable priority algorithms. We then show that the approximation ratio of fixed order revocable priority algorithms is between β≈0.780 and γ≈0.852, and the ratio of adaptive order revocable priority algorithms is between 0.8 and δ≈0.893. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of COCOON 2007, LNCS 4598, pp. 504–514.     

考虑参照依赖与产品展示的体验式商品定价与订购策略

消费者在购买体验式商品时面临着产品价值的不确定性，因而会产生参照依赖行为。本文研究了考虑消费者参照依赖行为的定价与订购问题，并分析了产品展示策略的影响。研究发现，给定产品满足率时，只有当消费者获得高价值的概率大于某个临界值时，参照依赖下的最优价格才会高于没有参照依赖下的最优价格，并且产品价值维度与产品价格维度的参照依赖对最优价格起着相反的作用。进一步给出了最优订购量满足的条件，并发现在一定条件下最优价格随着订购量的增大而增大。当企业采取产品展示策略之后，会产生两方面的效应，一是消费者数量减少，二是剩余消费者的保留价格增大，此时最优价格随着展示系数的增大而增大。最后，通过数值分析得到了更多的管理启示。     

The interactive relationship of corporate culture and knowledge management: a review

Knowledge management and corporate culture are two managerial concepts that are often connected in articles, especially in knowledge management literature. It is, however, a rather complex relationship, as evidenced by the existence of various theoretical and empirical contributions as well as various implicit assumptions. This review therefore, aims at systemizing and clarifying different approaches towards the relationship between intraorganizational knowledge management and corporate culture. I identified three different perspectives on this topic. The first perspective regards cultural values as knowledge resources. The second approach deals with the characteristics of “knowledge cultures” that are regarded as a favorable antecedents for knowledge management. The third view assumes a different causal relationship because knowledge management initiatives can also modify cultural assumptions if employees are subject to positive experiences. This paper describes all three, discusses their underlying assumptions, and shows their implications for theory and practice. By comparing the three perspectives, this systematic review reveals that they are based on different theories and therefore, their results cannot be easily combined. Our conclusions show that being aware of these differences and providing a common theoretical basis opens up avenues for future research in this field.     

Morals, Ethics, and Integrity: How Codes of Conduct Contribute to Ethical Adult Education Practice

This article examines the similarities and differences in the concepts or in the usage of the terms “integrity”, “morals” and “ethics” to provide a framework for understanding why these concepts are the foundation of professional ethics and to promote a more thoughtful consideration of the need for codes of ethics for the field of adult education. The article reviews the original interpretations of these terms by the classic philosophers whose works are fundamental for a greater appreciation of contemporary ethics.     

Supply chain configuration for diffusion of new products: An integrated optimization approach

We develop an integrated/hybrid optimization model for configuring new products’ supply chains while explicitly considering the impact of demand dynamics during new products’ diffusion. The hybrid model simultaneously determines optimal production/sales plan and supply chain configuration. The production and sales plan provides decisions on the optimal timing to launch a new product, as well as the production and sales quantity in each planning period. The supply chain configuration provides optimal selection of options and safety stock level kept at each supply chain function. Extensive computational experiments on randomly generated testbed problems indicate that the hybrid modeling and solution approach significantly outperforms non-hybrid alternative modeling and solution approaches under various diffusion and supply chain topologies. We provide insights on optimal production/sales plan and supply chain configuration for new products during their diffusion process. Also, managerial implications relevant to effectiveness of the hybrid approach are discussed.     

The multiple sequence sets: problem and heuristic algorithms

“Sequence set” is a mathematical model used in many applications such as biological sequences analysis and text processing. However, “single” sequence set model is not appropriate for the rapidly increasing problem size. For example, very large genome sequences should be separated and processed chunk by chunk. For these applications, the underlying mathematical model is “Multiple Sequence Sets” (MSS). To process multiple sequence sets, sequences are distributed to different sets and then sequences on each set are processed in parallel. Deriving effective algorithm for MSS processing is challenging.     

Exploring Strategy Implementation Consistency Over Time: The Moderating Effects of Industry Velocity and Firm Performance

In this paper we empirically investigate the temporal development of a firm’s strategy implementation consistency (SIC), i.e. the alignment between firms’ resource allocation decisions (RAD) and their articulated corporate concept (Noda and Bower, 1996; Burgelman and Grove, 1996; Love et al., 2002; Mintzberg, 1978). Doing so, we test whether (1) SIC is more likely to increase or decline over time, (2) whether firms competing in (low) high-velocity environments in fact show different temporal patterns in SIC, and (3) whether overperforming firms succeed in conserving their level of SIC. For our analysis we draw on 6238 RAD of 20 publicly listed firms with European origin over a period of 4–6 years. Applying maximum likelihood ordered logit estimation, our results indicate that the likelihood of an alignment of RAD and a firm’s corporate concept decreases over time. In line with scholars’ perception of high-velocity environments, we find that the firms in our sample competing under such conditions show no clear trend in SIC. These firms tend to “zig-zag” over time – swaying off and pulling back to their strategic course independent of the timing of the announcement of a corporate concept. We also find that overperforming firms are unsuccessful in preserving their SIC at the same level over time. Based on the empirical findings the paper discusses implications for theory and derives suggestions for corporate level managers on how to balance SIC and strategic flexibility.     

Labour Markets and Organisational Change: Future Working Structures for an Ageing Work Force

Flexible manufacturing systems, team work with decentralisation of decision-making, integration of tasks and multiple allocation across functional barriers demand a skilled work force prepared for continuous learning and adaptation. It is common to see a younger, well-educated and trained work force as being required for such a production environment. A closer empirical look at most of the internal labour markets in this study shows that existing labour market structures do not match this image. Existing labour markets consist very often of an older (and ageing) labour force with relatively low skills and with resistance to continuous training. These structural features have, over the last ten years — despite the existence of costly early retirement measures and new entries into internal labour markets — not much improved, and in many cases have even deteriorated. While age-related exit measures have contributed to maintaining sound corporate cultures in offering socially cushioned exit options and have also prevented internal labour markets from growing older too rapidly, they have — in the “lean employment environment” of mature industrial sectors — not led to a sustained restructuring of internal labour markets. The ending of many of the age-related exit measures owing to their impact on public and company budgets could lead to a growing mismatch between the structure of demand and the structure of supply in internal labour markets. This could have negative effects on company performance and increase the probability of unemployment for workers if no proactive policies for managing the age problem are introduced. Such proactive policies might consist of appropriate age-related training, age-related flexible working time and work organisation patterns. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A simulation tool for modeling the influence of anatomy on information flow using discrete integrate and fire neurons

There are theories on brain functionality that can only be tested in very large models. In this work, a simulation model appropriate for working with large number of neurons was developed, and Information Theory measuring tools were designed to monitor the flow of information in such large networks. The model’s simulator can handle up to one million neurons in its current implementation by using a discretized version of the Lapicque integrate and fire neuron instead of interacting differential equations. A modular structure facilitates the setting of parameters of the neurons, networks, time and most importantly, architectural changes. Applications of this research are demonstrated by testing architectures in terms of mutual information. We present some preliminary architectural results showing that adding a virtual analogue to white matter called “jumps” to a simple representation of cortex results in: (1) an increase in the rate of mutual information flow, corresponding to the “bias” or “priming” hypothesis; thereby giving a possible explanation of the high speed response to stimuli in complex networks. (2) An increase in the stability of response of the network; i.e. a system with “jumps” is a more reliable machine. This also has an effect on the potential speed of response.     

Governing Project-based Firms: Promoting Market-like Processes within Hierarchies

This article takes an empirical point of departure in an in-depth study of an R&D organization that was transformed into a strongly project-based organization. As demonstrated in the analysis, its mode of governance differed radically from traditional bureaucratic and cultural conceptions of governance. Instead the new “rules-of-the-game” introduced amounted to creating an institutional framework, promoting new individual responsibilities and enabling lower level market-like processes of self-organizing discovery. The specific set-up used, included anew organization structure, new responsibilities, etc and the use of “prices”, playing a role both in shaping incentives and guiding knowledge work. The interpretation put forward relies on combining economic theories of governance with more “fine-grained” organization theories, and suggests that there is some discretion for top managers to engage in the design of a market-promoting mode of governance for their project-based firms. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Becoming the best: by beating or ignoring the best? Toward an expanded view of the role of managerial selection in complex and turbulent environments

This paper explores how the rules that guide search affect organizational adaptation in complex and turbulent environments. Our consideration of such rules extends beyond search scope—i.e., exploitation of current technologies vs. exploration of new technologies—to include focus on competition. We consider two types of competitive focus—i.e., external, where the choice of focal technology to be improved is influenced by information about other organizations and internal, where it is not influenced by others. We refer to this expanded set of rules as managerial selection and vary it to explore how it affects organizational adaptation. Employing an agent based simulation model, built on the framework of NKC fitness landscapes, we consider multiple types of interdependencies within and between technologies and across competitors. We show that in the presence of these multiple interdependencies, the ability of organizations to adapt is conditioned as much or more by the focus of search than by its scope. In particular, we observe that in simple and stable environments, organizational adaptation is enhanced by an external focus but in complex and turbulent environments, such external focus is counterproductive.     

Well paired-dominated graphs

A paired-dominating set is a dominating set whose induced subgraph contains at least one perfect matching. This could model the situation of guards or police where each has a partner or backup. We are interested in those where all “minimal” paired-dominating sets are the same cardinality. In this case, we consider “minimal” to be with respect to the pairings. That is, the removal of any two vertices paired under the matching results in a set that is not dominating. We give a structural characterization of all such graphs with girth at least eight.     

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.     

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.     

The small world of German CEOs: a multi-method analysis of the affiliation network structure

Journal of Management and Governance - This paper seeks to understand the structure of corporate networks in the period following the dissolution of Deutschland AG (“Germany Inc.”). For...