Pitfalls in multi-national long-range planning

The authors of this article argue that too many companies are not getting the benefits which should be produced by their long-range planning systems. Of the many possible explanations for this, the authors concentrate on the major pitfalls which should be avoided in order to ensure good results. The article is based upon the results of a survey of planning pitfalls among corporations in six industrialized countries.     

Le modèle de « l'État-stratège » : genèse d'une forme organisationnelle dans l'administration française

Since the 1990s, a new organisational form of the administrative system in France has been steadily redefining relations between central administrations and local state units. Labelled “the steering state” or the “managerial state”, this new paradigm hinges on separating the strategic functions of steering and controlling the state from the operational functions of execution and policy implementation. The making of this new form of state organization involves two parallel processes: political and cognitive. For one thing, the adoption of concrete measures for “government at distance” results from power struggles between three major ministries (Home Office, Budget and Civil Service). For another, a new legitimate “categorization of the state” is being formed in the major committees involved in the reform process of the 1990s; it is borne by top civil servants and inspired by the ideas of New Public Management. — Special issue: New patterns of institutions.     

Disappointment without prior expectation: a unifying perspective on decision under risk

The central idea of Disappointment theory is that an individual forms an expectation about a risky alternative, and may experience disappointment if the outcome eventually obtained falls short of the expectation. We abandon the hypothesis of a well-defined prior expectation: disappointment feelings may arise from comparing the outcome received with anyof the gamble’s outcomes that the individual failed to get. This leads to a new, general form of Disappointment model. It encompasses Rank Dependent Utility with an explicit one-parameter probability transformation, and Risk-Value models with a generic risk measure including Variance, providing a unifying behavioral foundation for these models. JEL Classification D80 . D81     

Contents Volume 54

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 54     

Comment se font les administrations : analyser des activités administratives constituantes

Between studies in historical sociology on changes in public administrations and microsociological analyses of the ordinary work done by civil servants, an intermediate perspective is advocated, one centered on “constituent administrative activities”. Following a panorama of the varied researches on public administrations, the proposal is made to focus on the arrangements that shape administrations and form their essential operations. Recruitment, personnel evaluation, the division of labor, the restructuring of hierarchies and the activities of keeping written records and statistics (writing and counting) should be the subjects of study. When placed in their historical and social contexts, they help us better understand how public administrations last and change. Discussing the scale of analysis and making comparisons over time and in space, this article presents the other contributions to this special issue. Less linear approaches are suggested for analyzing the historical processes of the “bureaucratization” and “managerialization” of administrative systems.     

Harsanyi's Aggregation Theorem: multi-profile version and unsettled questions

Harsanyi's Aggregation Theorem states that if the individuals' as well as the moral observer's utility functions are von Neumann-Morgenstern, and a Pareto condition holds, then the latter function is affine in terms of the former. Sen and others have objected to Harsanyi's use of this result as an argument for utilitarianism. The present article proves an analogue of the Aggregation Theorem within the multi-profile formalism of social welfare functionals. This restatement and two closely related results provide a framework in which the theorem can be compared with well-known characterisations of utilitarianism, and its ethical significance can be better appreciated. While several interpretative questions remain unsettled, it is argued that at least one major objection among those raised by Sen has been answered.The author is grateful to V. Barham, J. Broome, M. Fleurbaey, D. Hausman, S. Kolm, J. Roemer, and P. Suppes, for useful discussions and suggestions. Special thanks are due to C. d'Aspremont, N. McClennen, J. Weymark, and an anonymous referee for detailed comments on an earlier version. The usual caveat applies. The author also gratefully acknowledges financial support from the SPES programme of the Union Européenne.     

Discovering Spatio-Temporal Models of the Spread of West Nile Virus

Emerging infectious diseases are characterized by complex interactions among disease agents, vectors, wildlife, humans, and the environment. Since the appearance of West Nile virus (WNV) in New York City in 1999, it has infected over 8,000 people in the United States, resulting in several hundred deaths in 46 contiguous states. The virus is transmitted by mosquitoes and maintained in various bird reservoir hosts. Its unexpected introduction, high morbidity, and rapid spread have left public health agencies facing severe time constraints in a theory-poor environment, dependent largely on observational data collected by independent survey efforts and much uncertainty. Current knowledge may be expressed as a priori constraints on models learned from data. Accordingly, we applied a Bayesian probabilistic relational approach to generate spatially and temporally linked models from heterogeneous data sources. Using data collected from multiple independent sources in Maryland, we discovered the integrated context in which infected birds are plausible indicators for positive mosquito pools and human cases for 2001 and 2002.     

Tools for decision making under imprecise risk

Generalizing risk, imprecise risk is a situation where available objective information is expressible by a lower probability. We study properties of certain lower probabilities in metrizable spaces. Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for stability of their cores under image and mixture, which are useful features in applying Expected Utility Theory under imprecise risk. Received: December 2000; revised version: March 2001