Future trends in computing

This paper examines the important developments which are taking place within the technologies associated with computing and communications. The author claims that the future of computing in the U.K. depends upon four elements. The availability of the most up to date processing and storage components; the existence of a great variety of ‘end-user’ and other peripheral and terminal devices incorporating these components; a wide range of standards and software and supporting services making it easier to design, create, debug and operate micro-based systems; an awareness throughout industry and society of the new opportunities emerging and the impediments in the U.K. to reaping full benefits from them.

In this paper the author examines the problems which the U.K. require to overcome in developing an effective and profitable computer industry. Furthermore, through a historical evaluation of developments in Japan and other countries, in particular the role of government investment, the author examines four possible options which are open to the U.K. in relation to its development of the computer industry. Finally, the author emphasizes the importance of making the correct choices now since the lead times for developments, and the rapid rate for development, necessitates that the U.K. industry settles on the ‘right-lines’ as soon as possible.     

Coaching für die Schulentwicklung

Coaching in school development The author focusses on coaching as a method of school development. In most cases school development is designed as organizational change realized by external experts (change agents). In contrast to this procedure, the author favours a school development by internal persons, especially by the principals of schools. It is argued, that if they are carefully coached during the whole process they are much more likely to succeed in developing the whole system.     

Corporate planning—a conceptual critique

Corporate planning is accepted by some as being an effective, efficient, and feasible means of charting the path an enterprise takes through the future. In this paper the author questions both the concept and the contribution of corporate planning. The author examines not only the problem of budgetary analysis within a planning process but also questions the ability of corporate planning to provide the necessary perspective of the future in any identifiable or probabilistic sense. The author postulates ‘the guts of corporate planning’. In the author's own word conceptual critiques ‘may be defined as setting up your own straw man in place of the other fellow's sawdust totem’. However, this paper presents some controversial yet fundamental criticisms of the current concepts of corporate planning. It is for the reader to judge whether the straw or the sawdust is deepest.     

Economic and industrial development— A key ingredient

The material which follows is a synthesis of two research projects^1,2 and personal experience of the author plus some extrapolation and surmises. Those readers who desire more information on the research projects are referred to the sources indicated under references 1 and 2. The result, the author believes, is the delineation of some important actions that should be taken by private firms and governments in underdeveloped and developing countries that want to expand economic growth and industrialization at near optimum rates.     

Packing trees in communication networks

Given an undirected edge-capacitated graph and given (possibly) different subsets of vertices, we consider the problem of selecting a maximum (weighted) set of Steiner trees, each tree spanning a subset of vertices, without violating the capacity constraints. This problem is motivated by applications in multicast communication networks. We give an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation for the problem, and observe that its linear programming (LP) relaxation is a fractional packing problem with exponentially many variables and a block (sub-)problem that cannot be solved in polynomial time. To this end, we take an r-approximate block solver (a weak block solver) to develop a (1−ε)/r-approximation algorithm for the LP relaxation. The algorithm has a polynomial coordination complexity for any ε∈(0,1). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approximation result for fractional packing problems with only weak block solvers (with arbitrarily large approximation ratio) and a coordination complexity that is polynomial in the input size. This leads also to an approximation algorithm for the underlying tree packing problem. Finally, we extend our results to an important multicast routing and wavelength assignment problem in optical networks, where each Steiner tree is to be assigned one of a limited set of given wavelengths, so that trees crossing the same fiber are assigned different wavelengths. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE 2005), LNCS, vol. 3828, pp. 688–697. Research supported by a MITACS grant for all the authors, an NSERC post doctoral fellowship for the first author, the NSERC Discovery Grant #5-48923 for the second and fourth author, NSERC Discovery Grant #15296 for the third author, the Canada Research Chair Program for the second author, and an NSERC industrial and development fellowship for the fourth author.     

Strategic planning for research and development

This paper examines the need for and the difficulties in implementing strategies for planning the research and development activities of a company. The author does not accept that research planning reduces creativity, though he is of the view that planning's exclusive concentration on economic aspects of a company's activities, such as turnover or profit, can lead to erroneous decisions in the research and development field. This paper outlines a number of specific and explicit research strategies which can be followed, and relates them to the company's strategic objectives. Furthermore, the author explicitly categorizes different types of research and comments upon the relevance of strategic planning to each.     

Strategic planning—Myth or reality?—A chief executive's view

The author of this paper is Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Emhart Corporation. Emhart has worldwide revenues of over $1.8bn and ranks 41st among the 150 largest U.S. multinationals. The author is a foe of interoffice memos and an advocate of face-to-face communication. The author has written and talked extensively on the role of the Chief Executive in the 1980s: thinks business's poor communication with the media may be its own fault; worries about mixing politics and sociology into foreign trade; is concerned that business should properly adjust and adapt to the better educated, more individualistic employee coming into the work force and thinks that business's credibility would improve if it applied its resources more prudently and refrained from trying to solve all of society's problems.     

Was heißt „systemisch“ in Supervision und Coaching?

The author discusses a book of Stefan Kühl about supervision and coaching, who presents a system theoretical background for the analysis of supervision and coaching. He defines them as “person oriented counselling” and he postulates that there hardly exist a difference between these counselling formats. The author relates to the writings of Niklas Luhmann about organisational phenomena. Following Kühl, the main concern of supervision and coaching are conflicts with different severity. He discusses different settings, the problems of evaluation and of charlatanism, the paradoxicality in the self presentation of counsellors and the specific effects of person oriented counselling.     

Elusive Critical Elements of Transformative Risk Assessment Practice and Interpretation: Is Alternatives Analysis the Next Step?

This article argues that “game‐changing” approaches to risk analysis must focus on “democratizing” risk analysis in the same way that information technologies have democratized access to, and production of, knowledge. This argument is motivated by the author's reading of Goble and Bier's analysis, “Risk Assessment Can Be a Game‐Changing Information Technology—But Too Often It Isn't” (Risk Analysis, 2013; 33: 1942–1951), in which living risk assessments are shown to be “game changing” in probabilistic risk analysis. In this author's opinion, Goble and Bier's article focuses on living risk assessment's potential for transforming risk analysis from the perspective of risk professionals—yet, the game‐changing nature of information technologies has typically achieved a much broader reach. Specifically, information technologies change who has access to, and who can produce, information. From this perspective, the author argues that risk assessment is not a game‐changing technology in the same way as the printing press or the Internet because transformative information technologies reduce the cost of production of, and access to, privileged knowledge bases. The author argues that risk analysis does not reduce these costs. The author applies Goble and Bier's metaphor to the chemical risk analysis context, and in doing so proposes key features that transformative risk analysis technology should possess. The author also discusses the challenges and opportunities facing risk analysis in this context. These key features include: clarity in information structure and problem representation, economical information dissemination, increased transparency to nonspecialists, democratized manufacture and transmission of knowledge, and democratic ownership, control, and interpretation of knowledge. The chemical safety decision‐making context illustrates the impact of changing the way information is produced and accessed in the risk context. Ultimately, the author concludes that although new chemical safety regulations do transform access to risk information, they do not transform the costs of producing this information—rather, they change the bearer of these costs. The need for further risk assessment transformation continues to motivate new practical and theoretical developments in risk analysis and management.     

Fehlerkultur,Fehlermanagement und ihre Bedeutung für Maßnahmen der Personalentwicklung in Kliniken

Error culture, error management and the significance in personnel development The author picks up themes about error culture and error management. As a first step are discussed the relationships between error culture and education and error management and economics. After this the main view of the article lies on high security systems like the atomic industries and the air transportation business. Especially the error reporting in the cockpit may be a model for developing good error cultures in clinics. In the end the author gives some recommendations in personnel work for clinics.     

Road socialism

Road socialists maintain that government is the best manager for the nation's vehicular transportation arteries. Contrary to their views, the present author maintains that the managerial role can best be fulfilled by private entrepreneurs. Under highway privatization, he claims, traffic fatalities and automobile congestion will be sharply reduced.The author wishes to thank the North American Editor of Transport Policy, and an anonymous referee from the present journal, for helpful suggestions and commentary on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Are we going towards a society of “activity” or “work”?*

Abstract. The aim of the article is to discuss the perspective of a decline in dependent work - which Dahrendorf and Braverman had argued was coming - either due to an emerging society of “activities” or a process of work “degradation”. Why did such a scenario not prove to be realistic? The author shows from which concepts such a downgrading stems and points out the responsibility of approaches that do not see work as a social activity and see technology as a deus ex machina. As a matter of fact, the western world is not experiencing a dissolution but, rather, a persistent (if not growing) importance of work. The author sketches the great technical and organizational transformation in the ongoing production patterns and work schemes in contemporary society. He maintains that these processes, decreasing the homogeneity and increasing the heterogeneity of work, make a society of “works” more likely than one of “activities”.     

Towards a global economy

The author, a well known consultant on planning for technology, argues cogently for planning on a global scale. The alternative to widespread recognition and acceptance of the need for global planning is, he says: “the choice of which of the weapons existing we, as a species, shall use to commit suigenicide.”     

Management training film on long range planning Made in association with the Society for Long Range Planning

This paper describes the thinking behind the making of a film on Long Range Corporate Planning. The author acted as Technical Adviser to EMI who have made the film “FOCUS THE FUTURE — introducing Long Range Planning”.     

Coaching für japanische Migranten in Deutschland

Compared to other minority groups, Japanese migrants in Germany are regarded as privileged and homogeneous. The author argues against the stereotype of homogeneity and closely analyses this particular migrant group and its situational, heterogeneous necessities and objectives which motivate the use of diverse coaching methods. In addition, the author discusses traditional hierarchical values in the home culture which tends to project a role model in a coach. The mixture of Japanese migrants’ heterogeneous needs in coaching and their hierarchically homogeneous values cannot be adequately addressed by the application of conventional coaching methods in Germany.     

Strategic planning in small and medium-sized companies

In analysing the characteristics of strategic planning applications in different types and sizes of companies, confusion often arises not because of the application but because of the definitions utilized. This paper analyses the use of strategic planning concepts in small and medium-sized companies in Holland. As the author points out, in this context the definition of small and medium-sized is determined by five strategically relevant criteria which are distinctive. The author points out, however, that whilst these criteria are distinctive of the category of small and medium-sized companies surveyed, they do not all have to occur at the same time; the higher the number that do occur, the more typical the company. Whilst this paper does not, as the author admits, represent the result of a systematic survey, the authors wide experience as a consultant is in itself a valuable background to his analysis. Indeed, the findings stated in this paper represent an analysis of the strategic planning practises of some 75–100 companies. Therefore, in view of the detailed criteria utilized and the number of companies analysed the results represent an important addition to our knowledge of the application of strategic planning.     

Role of Government in an Era of Total Quality Management (TQM) and Globalization: Challenges and Opportunities

This article addresses the changing role of government in the rapidly changing environment of globalization, a process through which worldwide integration is pursued by forces of global capitalism. Government is challenged by conflicting and contradictory forces of globalization of corporate capitalism seeking absolute profit, while at the same pressures for quality services and quality assurance are mounting worldwide. As a result, an impossibility theorem develops, with new challenges and opportunities facing governments. Alternative theories of government are presented, and suggestions are offered on what government should do to promote quality assurance and TQM in the age of globalization. An original version of this paper was presented at the International Conference on Total Quality Management (TQM), Tehran, Iran, December 18–20. No quotation without permission of the author. Please send comments to the author at the above address.     

Developing strategies: A practical approach

This article describes some of the criteria which the author believes should be taken into account in developing strategies in order to meet a company's planning objectives, and gives examples drawn from his own planning experience of how in practice such strategies can be formulated and then implemented.     

Democracy and Trade Union Action: A Comparative Overview

ABSTRACT: In this paper the author covers the current Italian debate on union representativeness and democracy, i.e. relations between union leadership and the rank-and-file, focusing on democratic procedures adopted (or not) in the internal decision-making process of the labour organisations. Experiments in the area of union self-regulation (autoregolamentazione) are discussed in connection with the collective bargaining process and strike action, mainly in public and private essential services. The author critically compares these experiments with more innovative solutions adopted in Spain, France, U.K., U.S.A. and Japan. Special attention is given to the role played by secret ballots in increasing union responsiveness.