The Dream of Abundance Reconsidered

David Riesman is Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences,Emeritus, at Harvard University. A graduate of Harvard Collegeand its Law School (1931, 1934), he was introduced by Carl Friedrich,Professor of Government at Harvard, to the study of public opinionand mass communications. On the faculty of the University ofChicago (1946–1958), he came into contact with Paul Lazarsfeldin the Bureau of Applied Social Research and with the NationalOpinion Research Center. For the last 25 years most of his researchhas been in the field of higher education.     

INTERNATIONAL DIFFUSION OF ISO 14000 CERTIFICATION

The ISO 9000 series of quality management systems standards and the more recent ISO 14000 environmental management systems standards have generated much controversy among practitioners. Although ISO 9000 has become a de facto requirement for many firms, its effects are poorly understood, and similarly the value and domain of applicability of ISO 14000 have been questioned. This paper reports on an exploratory study into the global spread of ISO 14000. We interviewed practitioners worldwide to identify factors that they believe explain differences between national ISO 14000 certification counts. We then collected quantititive data for these factors and, using regression analysis, we found that exports, environmental attitudes (combined with economic development), and ISO 9000 certification count were significant. The fact that ISO 9000 appears as an important factor explaining diffusion of ISO 14000 certifications suggests that the drivers behind the two have significant overlap. This indicates that, although ISO 14000 is an environmental standard, many of the factors driving national certification patterns are not at all environmental in nature, and that ISO 14000 therefore needs to be studied from a broader perspective than from a purely environmental point of view.     

Stakeholder Reporting: The Role of Intermediaries

Corporate social responsibility encompasses a multiplicity of different concepts, such that its nature is confused, and it remains difficult to operationalize because opening dialogue with and responding to the various expectations of diverse stakeholders is beyond the capacity of many companies. This paper adapts Mayston's normative “information beneficiaries” framework and focuses on intermediaries who might potentially use published financial information to open a restricted form of dialogue with companies, which might benefit unsophisticated stakeholders. The paper examines the Mayston framework using interviews conducted in organizations that might act on behalf of three stakeholder groups associated with gas and electricity suppliers in the United Kingdom, these being: consumers, employees, and the environment. While a long chain of communication exists between utility company and stakeholder, and many organizations do not fulfill their full potential as information intermediaries, there is some evidence that Mayston's framework might well operate in practice.     

中庸思想在西安城市文化标识系统中的应用研究

略述儒家学说天人合一的宇宙观和西安深厚文化底蕴的内涵,并通过中西方的比较,提出用儒家的”中庸”思想来解决在城市现代化的发展和如何把城市文脉传承下去的问题,并诠释了西安已有的人文景观、商业文化、标志建筑,色彩、市民行为五大系统。西安城市文化标识系统的开发应从色彩应用、图案设计、文字定位人手。     

Truth and Rhetoric: The Promise of John Dean's Memory to the Discipline of Psychology

The paper unpacks the far‐reaching theoretical and practical issues that underlay the classical debate between cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser and discursive social psychologists Derek Edwards and Jonathan Potter on Watergate witness John Dean's memory. Accounting for their disagreements, Neisser claimed the mantle of the cognitive‐ecological approach to memory and emphasized the psychologist's ultimate priority of truth over discourse, while Edwards and Potter claimed that of discursive/rhetorical psychology and focused exclusively on discourse over truth. As such, the debate at the time ended in mutual misunderstanding and the shadow of theoretical incommensurability. However, a rhetorical analysis of the arguments suggests that Neisser was right about truth when he intuitively sensed the importance of discourse, and Edwards and Potter were right about discourse when they did not lose sight of truth. Therefore, beyond the impasse there has remained a promise inherent in the debate: it demonstrated an imaginative attempt to undermine the absolute dichotomy of truth and rhetoric and demonstrate their mutual inter‐dependence. As will be argued, such integration of traditional concerns of the psychologist entails the re‐conceptualization of the discipline as political and moral science.     

A RECONSIDERATION OF THE ‘GREAT RATIOS’ OF ECONOMICS

Autocorrelations are found in the disturbance terms of regressions employed by L. R. Klein and R. F. Kosobud in a global model of growth employing five celebrated ratios of economics. This paper summarizes the Klein-Kosobud conclusions, modifies them by removing the autocorrelations, and extends the model to include more recent years. The modified conclusions hold even with the added observations.