bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Direct and Indirect Participation in Dutch Firms and Hospitals
Authors: Lammers Cornelis J. , Meurs Pauline L. , Mijs Ton A.
Published: March 2007

Does shopfloor participation reinforce or thwart the functioning of a Works Council? This question is examined with the aid of data collected in a study about Industrial Democracy in Dutch firms and hospitals. The analysis brings to light a few significant correlations only between indices of direct and of indirect participation. These few correlations suggest that, particularly in hospitals, employees tend to ascribe more influence to a Works Council, the less autonomy and upward influence they have with respect to core activities in their own work situation. In general, in hospitals 'key-persons' and 'rank-and-file' see more eye to eye on these matters than in firms.
Meta-analysis and the Culture-free Hypothesis
Authors: Miller George A.
Published: March 2007

This paper employs meta-analysis to evaluate the relationships between size and three dimensions of organizational structure. The purpose was to synthesize and integrate existing knowledge pertaining to the 'culture-free' hypothesis by analyzing the results of 27 previously published studies, which provided a total sample of 1066 organizations from 11 different countries. The results show that size is significantly related to both specialization and formalization, but that the relationship between size and centraliza tion is not significantly different from zero. The effects of type of organization and type of country upon these relationships were inconsequential. The findings imply that the development of a general theory of organizational structure need not be hampered by current preoccupations with minor differences across studies.
Anti-social Actions of Committed Organizational Participants: An Existential Psychoanalytic Perspective
Authors: Schwartz Howard S.
Published: March 2007

Anti-social actions of organizationally committed individuals are explained on the basis of the 'ontological function' of organizations. This is the function of providing a sense of identity, or Being, to participants whose identity is in question. The identity that thus develops is threatened by perceived threats to the organization, and anti-social action can result. It is shown how the development of the potentiality for such anti-social action is built into the process of socialization for organizational commitment.
The Temporal Dimension in Organizational Studies
Authors: Gherardi Silvia , Strati Antonio
Published: March 2007

Organization studies and theories are based on time-free statements. This paper introduces the concept of 'organizational time' in order to explore the internal and particular time of the individual organization (or event) and the time involved in intra-organizational dynamics in relation to other times. Two research studies prompted the authors' reflections on organizational time as an important variable in the shaping of the scenario of decision-making processes. It is argued that the heuristic validity of the variable 'organizational time' lies in the interpretation of the choices and culture of organizational actors and in their defining of the boundaries of the organization.
Ideologies and Contradictions in a Public Relations Department: The Seduction and Impotence of Living Myth
Authors: Filby Ivan , Willmott Hugh
Published: March 2007

Following a review of the major theoretical approaches of the organizational culture literature, the paper presents an ethnographic analysis of a specialist department within a state bureaucracy. Specifically, the study explores how ideology and myth serve to define, defend and mediate the interests of members of the public relations department in relation to the host organization. Their use, we suggest, has self-defeating consequences for the specialists' access to valued symbolic and material resources.
Patterns of Inter-Firm Control in Japanese Business*
Authors: Orru Marco , Hamilton Gary G. , Suzuki Mariko
Published: March 2007

Studies of inter-firm relations in modern capitalism have often relied on either an exchange theory or a structural theory of control. Both paradigms prove inadequate in explaining non-Western patterns of inter-firm relations. This study adopts an institutional theory of power to explain the peculiar patterns of horizontal control that obtains in inter-firm relations within and among large Japanese business groups. We develop our argument in four steps. First, we review and assess the adequacy of three different theories of power in capitalist business; second, we describe our case study: two major types of Japanese business groups, third, we identify forms of vertical and horizontal control through our analysis of patterns of inter-firm shareholding, and we show how additional means of control are adopted to reinforce the existing organizational patterns; fourth, we compare and contrast the highly structured and cohesive inter-firm relations in Japanese business with the more loosely organized pattern that is characteristic in the U.S., and we conclude that the current research on capitalist organizational forms will advance by emphasizing not the unchanging, universal nature of capitalist domination, but rather its varied institutional nature and its apparent cross-cultural diversity.
Sociology of Organizations Around the Globe. Similarities and Differences Between American, British, French, German and Dutch Brands
Authors: Lammers Cornelis J.
Published: March 2007

Sociological thought on organizations exhibits considerable similarity with respect to modes of analysis: most studies of organizations represent either the model of a socio-cultural system, or a conglomerate of interest groups, or a mixture of the two. Furthermore, certain basic types such as the traditional organization, the 'classic' and the 'flexible bureaucracy' recur in one form or another in various typologies, theories or treatises. These and other types reflect three ubiquitous dimensions (traditional/modern, hierarchical/democratic, mechanical/organic) of sociological thinking on organizational forms and processes.

The sociology of organizations consists of a hard core to which national varieties add their own local products. The sociology of organizations as developed in the U.S., the U.K., France, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands is characterized with reference to the model(s) and types emphasized in these countries. Furthermore, the degree of 'Americanization' (cosmopolitanism?) and of 'ethnocentrism' (localism) of organizational sociology in these five countries is illustrated by data on the references occurring in textbooks in use in the nations in question. It is concluded that the more the sociological approach to organization becomes popular as a point of view, the less viable it is in the form of a specific, well organized sociological sub-discipline.
Politics and Pain in Managing Information Technology: A Case Study from Insurance
Authors: Knights David , Murray Fergus
Published: March 2007

Drawing on case study material, this paper explores the politics of career and resource competition that is a medium and outcome of IT investment strategies and system development priorities. This is achieved by examining the manner in which different managers and operating divisions in the case study organization perceive and pursue distinct IT priorities. This they do by involving particular constructions of 'markets', 'technology', and 'organization'. The paper argues that the difficulties encountered around the development of IT systems in the case study company are symptomatic of tensions which are a condition and conse quence of struggles over resource allocation and career advancement within management. These activities necessarily generate considerable political activity which has potentially painful consequences for actors tied into power/identity relations in the modem organization.
Administrative Cuts Amidst Decline in American Railroads
Authors: Mentzer Marc S. , Near Janet P.
Published: March 2007

During organizational decline, the administrative component grows in some organizations and shrinks in others. Why do such differences occur? In a study of U.S. railroads, efficient organizations were found to be most prone to make administrative cuts. Furthermore, railroads making such cuts improved their chances of long-term survival. When an organization is faced with organizational decline, the results suggest that managers must cut to survive.
Research Note: An Analysis of Specificity in Transaction Cost Economics
Authors: Nooteboom Bart
Published: March 2007

The transaction specificity of assets yields dependence, and hence transaction costs in case of opportunism and bounded rationality. However, this dependence need not be symmetric between buyer and supplier, and there may be dependence without transaction specific assets. There are many forms of speci ficity, yielding different patterns of more or less symmetric dependence. These different forms of specificity are analyzed in terms of a formal, generalized rela tion of specificity. The implications for dependence are discussed.
Control Mechanisms in Cross-border Acquisitions: An International Comparison
Authors: Calori Roland , Lubatkin Michael , Very Philippe
Published: March 2007

This paper analyzes the influence of national culture on the integration mechan isms exercised in international acquisitions. The study of 75 international acquisi tions in Europe (France and the United Kingdom) shows that firms are influenced by their national administrative heritage when they acquire companies abroad.

For instance, the French exercise higher formal control of the strategy and the operations, and lower informal control through teamwork than the Americans when they buy firms in the United Kingdom. The Americans exercise higher formal control through procedures than the British when they buy firms in France. As some of these aspects of control were found to be linked with the attitudinal and/or economic performance of the acquired company, we argue that being conscious of the influence of a national administrative heritage should help anticipate cultural problems in the integration process following international acquisitions.
Japanese Culture, Western Management: Taylorism and Human Resources in Japan
Authors: Warner Malcolm
Published: March 2007

This paper attempts to examine Taylorism and the development of Human Resources Management (HRM) in Japan. It looks at the translation of Taylor's works, books based on his ideas, and direct applications of 'Scientific Manage ment' as well as the later work of practitioners promoting their diffusion in Japanese enterprises. It concludes that imported Taylorism was an important factor in the development of what most observers have held to be a uniquely indigenous Japanese system of organization and management, and that late Tay lorism may have been the bridge to Total Quality Management (TQM) in the post-war period. Japan's clear contribution, it concludes, was to absorb and adapt such imported concepts and practices in an 'organization-oriented' rather than a 'market-oriented' context.
Industrial Organization and Organizational Ecology: The Potentials for Cross-fertilization
Authors: Boone Christophe , van Witteloostuijn Arjen
Published: March 2007

The population of organization studies that has become known under such names as population ecology and organizational ecology (OE), is entering the stage of maturity. It is argued here that this branch of organization studies can increase the carrying capacity of its niche by seeking cross-fertilization with the century-old field of industrial organization and the economically inspired sub-field of strategic management. Doing so would enrich the study of the long-run evolution of organizational populations by adding a focus on differ ences between and within industries to OE's emphasis on universal similarities. The argument is illustrated by investigating the long-run development of the German and U.S. brewing industries on the one hand and the Dutch audit industry on the other.
Political Organizations and Commedia Dell'Arte
Authors: Czarniawska-Joerges Barbara , Jacobsson Bengt
Published: March 2007

This paper employs the dramatistic metaphor of commedia dell'arte to interpret developments in a set of interlocking public administrative organizations in Sweden. More specifically, the performances given by state and municipal politicians studied in several projects of ours are analyzed, with the help of what we know of this special kind of theatre. In so doing, we relate to a long tradition within the social sciences. The symbolic acting, the public perform ances, and the ambiguous connection between ideas and realities of various sorts that are evident all made the theatre metaphor appear relevant to an analysis of politics in society at large and in organizations within it. Of the different forms of theatre, commedia dell'arte is that which seems to render itself best to the exploration and interpretation of contemporary organizations within the public sector, imprinted as they are with the stamp of modern demo cratic politics, which bespeaks force but is highly contradictory.
From Modern to Postmodern Organizational Analysis
Authors: Chia Robert
Published: March 2007

The terms 'modem' and 'postmodern' have become common currency in intel lectual debates within organization studies. The postmodern is variously inter preted as an 'epoch', a 'perspective', or a new 'paradigm' of thought. In this paper the author argues that what distinguishes the postmodern from the modem is a 'style of thinking' which eschews the uncritical use of common organizational terms such as 'organizations', 'individuals', 'environment', 'structure', and 'culture', etc. These terms refer to the existence of social entit ies and attributes within a modernist problematic. This is because a modernist thought style relies on a 'strong' ontology (the study of the nature and essence of things) of being which privileges thinking in terms of discrete phenomenal 'states', static 'attributes' and sequential 'events'. Postmodern thinking, on the other hand, privileges a 'weak' ontology of becoming which emphasizes a transient, ephemeral and emergent reality. From this thought style, reality is deemed to be continuously in flux and transformation and hence unrepresent able in any static sense. Debates about modernism and postmodernism which do not address this ontological distinction miss critical insights which postmod ernism brings to the study of organization. Adopting a postmodern mode of thinking implies radical consequences for rethinking organization studies. Instead of the traditional emphasis on organizations, organizational forms and organizational attributes, what is accentuated is the importance of examining local assemblages of 'organizings' which collectively make up social reality. A postmodern style of thought, therefore, brings with it a different set of onto logical commitments, intellectual priorities and theoretical preoccupations to bear on the study of organization.
'Having Fun'?: Humour as Resistance in Brazil
Authors: Rodrigues Suzana B. , Collinson David L.
Published: March 2007

Highlighting the under-researched interrelationship between workplace humour and resistance, this paper examines employee opposition in a Brazilian telecommunications company. Much of the literature on corporate culture and humour has emphasized the way that 'having fun' can facilitate production. Functionalist in perspective, such studies treat organizational joking both as a means by which employees can 'let off steam' and as a flexible tool for man agers in reinforcing corporate culture. Questioning the universality of this 'safety-valve' theory of humour, our empirical analysis suggests that humour may be a relatively effective means of expressing employee dissatisfaction especially where more overt forms of resistance might provoke managerial reprisals.
The Meaning and Meaninglessness of Postmodernism: Some Ironic Remarks
Authors: Alvesson Mats
Published: March 2007

This paper discusses the popularity of postmodernism in social and organiza tional studies. It is argued that the word conflates quite different social phe nomena and lines of development, and theoretical and philosophical positions. Framing issues in terms of modernism/postmodernism easily leads to insensit ive conceptualizations of the varied positions within what is dumped together as 'modernism'. 'Modernist' ideas about contemporary society and types of organizations encourage an oversensitivity for novelty. It is argued that many of the themes raised under the banner of postmodernism are worth taking seriously, but no effort should be taken to combine them under the same concept.
Advanced Manufacturing Technology: Organizational Design and Strategic Flexibility
Authors: Lei David , Hitt Michael A. , Goldhar Joel D.
Published: March 2007

This paper explains how investments in flexible, advanced manufacturing tech nologies (AMT) have special properties that can transform organization design and the economic bases of strategic flexibility. Investments in AMT that pro vide significant economies of scope (i.e. low-volume/low-cost manufacturing) produce strategic options that allow the firm to place a 'call' on related markets that it may potentially enter. The value of AMT investments grow with the increasing changes in the environment. In addition, CAD/CAM networks, a vital component of most AMT systems, enable the firm to work selectively with external designers, suppliers, customers and other firms to rapidly com press the product development and commercialization process. Firms seeking to maximize economies of scope and the option value of AMT need to recon figure their organizations into loosely coupled systems with a modular, open systems perspective. Flexible AMT systems facilitate the pursuit of emergent, product-based strategies based on the selective exercise of the process techno logy's option value. Furthemiore, AMT helps firms develop more complex competitive strategies (e.g. integrated low cost and differentiation) necessary for strategic competitiveness in global markets. Finally, AMT can facilitate the development of a learning laboratory in organizations.
In Praise of Duality and Dualism: Rethinking Agency and Structure in Organizational Analysis
Authors: Reed Michael I.
Published: March 2007

This paper develops a critique of a number of highly influential theoretical interventions in contemporary organizational analysis that have collapsed structure into agency. It suggests that these approaches, which draw, in various ways, on the 'postmodern turn' in organizational analysis, have seriously weakened the explanatory power and political imagination of the latter. In direct contrast to theoretical approaches based on flat or compacted social onto logies, the paper supports a critical realist position as providing a layered or stratified social ontology on which a more structurally robust and inclusive explanations of organizational phenomena can be constructed. By adopting a realist ontology and methodology, organizational analysis will be much better placed to understand and explain the interplay between structure and agency, and its 'fateful' consequences for social actors.
Technology, International Stratification, and the Politics of Growth
Authors: Mazrui Ali A.
Published: March 2007

The politics of stratification are part of the history of interdependence within and between human communities. Primitive or primordial interdependence concerns reciprocal reli ance among kith and kin or within face-to-face societies. Feudo-imperial interdependence includes both feudal relations in single societies and imperial relations between societies. These are based on exploitation and hierarchy. Mature interdependence comes with egalitarianism and a rational division of labor based on equity under modern conditions.

While technology helped to demoralize individual Western societies, it also consoli dated Western control of other societies. The internal democratization of the West coin cided with the stratification of the world under Western dominion.

How can the Third World escape this dominion? One approach is that of disengage ment ; another is that of counterpenetration.

The West's Achilles' heel is its need of energy from the Third World. This need could make the West at least responsive to Third World demands for greater equity. Successful energy conservation in the West would, on the other hand, be detrimental to Third World interests in the short run.

The oil-rich Third World countries may have beencast by history as temporary leaders of the oppressed in the global system. Inequality within the Third World could be a neces sary precondition for the liberation of the Third World.
The Politics of Local Planning in Norway
Authors: Hansen Tore
Published: March 2007

The aim of this article is to assess the political conditions for an efficient local planning, giving first an outline of the current planning system in Norway and turning then to the relationship between planning and local politics. The perceptions and attitudes of local concillors in relation to planning are presented on the basis of data from a questionnaire survey, which included about 400 local councillors in 16 Norwegian municipalities. The data suggest that a substantial majority of the councillors regard planning as an important policy-making activity. It is argued that in spite of the lack of success of local planning in terms of approved plans, it has been successful in encouraging local political debate and thereby contributed to the general decision-making process.
Conservative Socialism
Authors: Drucker H.M.
Published: March 2007

The ideology of the British Labour Party is both forward looking-seeking to overthrow British capitalism—and backward looking-being firmly rooted in the myths and memories of workers about their past and their struggles for socialism. Indeed, the forward-looking aspect of the party's ideology is only explicable as a project born of oppression and its memory. Some elements within the Labour Party see the party's attachment to its past as an encumbrance in its fights with the Conservatives. Others would like to freeze Labour's ideas at about 1945. Both views are exaggerations. The battleground between them is over the party's commitment to nationalize the means of "production, distribution, and exchange." The modernizers wish to water down this commitment; the neanderthals wish to reduce the party's ideology to this sole commit ment. The strength of the commitment arises from its genesis in the workers' struggles. The party cannot drop such an important commitment because the creation of that commitment is an important part of the party's view of its past-and it is only this sense of a common past which binds the party and the labour movement. On the other hand, the commitment originally pointed to the future and the party will remain healthy only if it continues to do so.
Spatial Partitioning and the Politician's Wisdom
Authors: Gottmann Jean
Published: March 2007

Jean Gottman presents the general theme of this special issue of the International Review of Political Science. He surveys the other six articles, all of which are concerned with the general theme of relationships between spatial partitioning and political thought, although they deal with different subjects and take different approaches. Two aspects of the relationships in question are examined in this issue of the Review, which sets the views of geographers alongside those of political scientists. In the first place, spatial partitions are considered as boundaries; while the latter have become more flexible in recent years, they continue to be a source of problems and tensions. The second aspect studied is electoral geography and its methodology. By way of conclusion, the article raises the issue of the dynamic nature of partitions and society, in contrast to the geographical stability of electoral patterns. Must we conclude that political ideas are rooted in geographic space, or that the basis of geographical stability is an inheritance from earlier habits of thought?
La Selection Des Ministres En Italie
Authors: Dogan Mattei
Published: March 2007

Le processus de sélection des gouvernants est analysé et résumé en dix règles: (1) les membres du gouvernement sont recrutés parmi les parlementaires; (2) on ne devient ministrable qu'après avoir atteint une certaine ancienneté à la Chambre ou au Sénat; (3) on ne peut devenir ministre qu'après avoir été sous-secrétaire d'Etat; (4) on ne peut rester sous-secrétaire d'Etat plus de cinq ans; (5) toutes les régions doivent être représentées au gouvernement; (6) la compétence n'est pas le principal critère de la sélection; (7) la composition du gouvernement reflète la répartition des factions au conseil du parti; (8) le choix des hommes répond aux auto-désignations des factions; (9) les factions n'ont pas le droit de véto; (10) le chef de l'Etat et le Chef du Gouvemement jouent un rôle modeste dans ce processus de sélection.
Dependent Reproduction and the Role of Science in Cultural Alienation
Authors: Greven Michael Th.
Published: March 2007

This article stresses the roles of science and international scientific relations in the emergence of social and political problems in societies of the Third World. It uses the theoretical framework of "peripheral capitalism" to demonstrate that patterns of dependent reproduction lead to structural heterogeneity. This has been demonstrated by various scholars for the economic and political relations between centers and peripheries, but it holds true for the cultural reproduction of dependent societies too. Science and its mere transfer as "Western science" into those societies plays a substantial role for the emergence and persistence of cultural hetergeneity. Science and education systems thus support a political and socioeconomic power structure in countries of peripheral capitalism that disturbs balanced development and that supports the enduring political rule of élites and the exploitation of masses.
Scientific Expertise in Technological Controversies
Authors: Conrad Jobst
Published: March 2007

Public debate and conflict around technology has increased significantly in the past decades. The main features of the interplay of expertise and counterexpertise in technological controversies, as found in the literature, are summarized. Role and behavior of experts in the nuclear controversy and in the recombinant DNA debate are briefly described and the controversies compared. The importance of questions of safety and risk, the cognitive structure and substance of arguments used, the effect of the scientific community and basic scientific theory, historical parallels and differences among these controversies, and the technocratic, apolitical reasoning of many scientists involved are analyzed in particular. Some conclusions are drawn concerning transformation processes of science, such as establishment of intermediate institutions for expertise and a growing market of expertise, institutionalization of dissent, lines of scientific criticism or criticism of science, and changing legitimation patterns of science.
New Elites in Old Parties
Authors: Feist Ursula , Liepelt Klaus
Published: March 2007

In the changing socio-economic conditions and political climate of the early 1980s in West Germany, a significant change in the composition and outlook of major party supporters, especially in the Social Democratic party, but also in the Christian Democratic opposition (CDU/ CSU) is discernible. Evidence is presented that traces the rise in leadership status and militancy of a new class of relatively more affluent, younger, better educated, and, especially, dogmatic party mid-élite participants. The emergence of the Green Party has destabilized the party system, causing young intellectuals (especially in the SPD) to align with it in articulating environmental and conservationist concerns, and to search for public forums rather than intra-organizational contexts in which to voice their positions.
Interest Intermediation in Capitalist and Socialist Systems
Authors: Lehmbruch Gerhard
Published: March 2007

Because most studies of interest intermediation have not been undertaken comparatively, it is desirable to apply to the study of East European socialist systems a functionalist comparative taxonomy, notably by applying the concept of subsystem autonomy. It is argued that limited subsystem autonomy may increase the problem-solving capabilities of political systems, while high subsystem autonomy may have dysfunctional consequences. Combining a functional with a genetic perspective, the emergence of neo-corporatist interest intermediation has been in part attributable to the specific cultural characteristics originating in the early industrialization of certain European countries. Capitalist and socialist systems are facing comparable functional problems.
Democracy and Scarcity
Authors: Botwinick Aryeh , Bachrach Peter
Published: March 2007

In contrast to the conditions prevailing in an era of abundance, during an age of scarcity a whole new theorizing of the nature and role of participation in democratic theory seems plausible-one that sees it as integral to the functioning of the democratic process. With the private sphere no longer offering the satisfactions and opportunities that it did in the past, a participatory conceptualization of democracy might offer the only hope for stabilizing democratic values and institutions in an age when the traditional foundation for democratic consensus (namely, material abundance) is being eroded by diminishing resources. A "temporal politics" rooted in issues of personal development and human dignity needs to replace a "spatial politics" absorbed in questions of acquisition.
The Challenge of the "Participatory Revolution" in Pluralist Democracies
Authors: Kaase Max
Published: March 2007

This article asks what the likely consequences are of the "participatory revolution" on the political process in Western democracies. The first wave of political mobilization provided citizens with equal voting rights and thereby laid a firm ground for the legitimacy of democratic institutions. After two "quiet" decades, the second wave of mobilization challenged those institutions, particularly the political parties. The nature of the challenge lies in the enormous social and technological changes Western democracies have undergone, as well as in the changing yardsticks citizens have come to apply to the established political institutions. This article raises the question why, in light of these developments, established political institutions have survived so well. The key to this quesion lies in the peripheral role of politics to most citizens and the lack of convincing alternative models of the political order to the democratic liberal polity.
Centralisation Et Pluralisme
Authors: Croisat Maurice , Tournon Jean
Published: March 2007

LaFrance est dans une situation paradoxale par rapport aux paradigmes du fédéralisme: Une exceptionnelle hétérogénéité ethnique et géographique n'a pas donné naissance à des autonomies territoriales mais a une forte unité adminstrative et politique dans laquelle des acteurs locaux partiellement dépouillés de leur particularisme tiennent le devant de la scène. Pour la première fois depuis la Révolution, un gouvernement français a entrepris une grande réforme de décentralisation territoriale. Malgré l'adoption de principes quasi fédéraux (séparation des compétences nationales et locales, abolition des tutelles et rapports hiérarchiques, autonomie des élus), la persistance de facteurs extra-légaux de centralisation est telle que la réforme en cours sera davantage un desserrement des contrôles étatiques qu'une marche vers la fédéralisation.
The State in Africa
Authors: Gana Aaron T.
Published: March 2007

Embracing a conception of the state as both an entity that acts, in the last instance, on behalf of the ruling class (which, in the case of Africa, is the metropolitan bourgeoisie) and as a set of institutions that constitutes an arena for class struggles, the author argues that the state in Africa continues its colonial function of integrating the continent more firmly into the orbit of capitalist imperialism. Proceeding from the observation that the state in Africa originated from the class forces of the metropole, it is argued that this remains the decisive factor in its social orientation, an orientation that explains its primary function of subordinating Africa's resources to the profit impulse of multinational capital. The author concludes that the contradictions of global capitalism that radiate with peculiar intensity in Africa promise an uncertain future for the postcolonial capitalist state, as it becomes increasingly difficult for the dominant classes to maintain their grip on the institutions of the state.
Using Microcomputers To Choose Among Government Structures
Authors: Nagel Stuart S.
Published: March 2007

A microcomputer program called Policy/Goal Percentaging is now available for process ing a set of (1) political goals to be achieved, (2) government structures or other alterna tives for achieving them and (3) relations between goals and alternatives in order to choose the best alternative or combination for maximizing societal benefits minus societal costs. It is called Policy/Goal Percentaging because it relates policies to goals and because it uses part or whole percentaging to deal with the goals being measured on different dimensions. The government structures analyzed in this article include (1) democracy-dictatorship, (2) federalism-unitary government, (3) parliamentary-presidential government, (4) judicial review and (5) alternative party systems. The microcomputer program shows how tenta tive conclusions might change as a result of values in the weights of the goals or the alterna tive scores on the goals. This kind of analysis helps to choose among the alternative government structures and to obtain a better understanding of why some societies prefer one structural form over another.
Theses On the Democratization of Communication
Authors: Szecskö Tamás
Published: March 2007

The theses scrutinize some sociological and economic aspects of the concept "democratiza tion of communication". Stressing the dialectics of its quantitative and qualitative sides, the author tries to offer a more articulated definition of the concept than those to be found in the MacBride Report. The study employs global and national (social) structures as frames of interpretation for the concept and concludes with some normative statements regarding communicators and communication research.
On the Notion of Rule
Authors: Losco Joseph
Published: March 2007

This paper explores the utility of the construct of rule as a means for integrating insights from the behavioral and life sciences. It is suggested that biological "rules" hypothesized by evolutionary biology and mediated proximately by empathy constitute a kind of basic grammar around which human social action is built.
In the Name of the Fatherland
Authors: Johnson Gary R.
Published: March 2007

Kin terms like "motherland" and "fatherland" appear rather frequently in patriotic speech and literature. This article suggests that kin terms function in patriotic speech and literature to help evoke altruistic dispositions that have their origin in kin selection. This function, as well as its origin, is explained through a theory which links kin selection, socialization, and patriotism. Types of kin term usage in patriotic speech and literature are identified, and several lines of research on this subject are suggested.
La socialisation politique en Hongrie: la continuité dans le changement
Authors: Szabó Ildikó
Published: March 2007

Les particularités de la socialisation politique hongroise sont intimement liées aux nombreux changements que le pays a connus au cours de XXe siècle. Ces changements ont empêché la cristallisation dans la pratique sociale des modèles de socialisation. Entre 1948 et 1956, le pouvoir a centralisé les mécanismes de la vie sociale et économique et, voulant créer un "homme nouveau," s'est assuré le contrôle direct des processus de socialisation. Après 1956 les institutions n'ont pas connu de changement radical, mais la pratique sociale a progressivement évolué, laissant se développer des formes alternatives. Cependant ces changements n'ont pu s'institutionnaliser. On observe que deux systèmes de valeurs, contradic toires, coexistent dans la pratique sociale, celui de la splière formelle et celui de la sphère informelle. Les institutions socialisatrices ne fournissent pas aux enfants des modeles qui leur permettraient de gérer les conflits, mais leur apprennent à les éviter.
Loyalists and Revolutionaries: Political Elites in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Rejai Mostafa , Phillips Kay
Published: March 2007

This paper identifies a series of similarities and differences involving two matched lists of loyalist and revolutionary leaders, building towards two complementary sets of results. The delineation of the similarities highlights a single leadership group that transcends the loyalist-revolutionary distinction and focuses on leadership characteristics in general. The elaboration of the differences yields a small cluster of key variables that effectively separates two leadership types and makes possible probabilistic statements about leaders who are likely to turn to loyalist or revolutionary politics. The paper draws on its main findings to outline an "interactional" theory of political leadership.
Bureaucratic Morality in India
Authors: Dwivedi O.P. , Jain R.B.
Published: March 2007

Independent India inherited the best administrative machinery among all developing nations, along with a highly moral and dedicated public service. However, bureaucratic immorality soon engulfed the political and administrative apparatus of the country. This paper focuses on the insidious aspects of such a change in India's bureaucratic culture, analyses briefly the state of political corruption and the misuse of constitutional and legal mechanisms, and concludes with lamentation on the prevailing politico-bureaucratic morality and its impact on the body politic of India.
The Faltering Development of Cable Television in Britain
Authors: Dutton William H. , Blumler Jay G.
Published: March 2007

This paper summarizes the development of cable systems and cable policy in Britain from the 1920s into the late 1980s. It links the course of cable system development to four general types of factors: (1) the strength of organized interests in support of and in opposition to cable; (2) the pragmatic ability of a new service such as cable to meet reasonably the expectations of major actors; (3) supports and constraints within the legal-institutional framework, including the nature of cable policy itself; and (4) the role of both positive and negative symbols surrounding this particular innovation. The case suggests ways in which the faltering development of cable television in Britain reflects the unique historical circumstances of cable and broadcasting in this nation. But since the same forces may be at work in other national settings, this typology of factors and, particularly, the role of symbolic politics is offered as a framework for comparative inquiry.
Concealment and Disclosure: From "Birth of a Nation" to the Vietnam War Film
Authors: Williams Doug
Published: March 2007

This article contends that film and other forms of popular culture place enormously sensitive resources for practical reasoning at the disposal of students of politics and society. After an historical exploration of the role of cinematic representations of war and its aftermath in the development of American political culture, the article analyzes an increasingly complex, philosophically disturbing, and ideologically ambiva lent cinematic genre of the past two decades, films concerned with the American war in Vietnam. While Hollywood films about the Vietnam war to date have disclosed the psychological and subjective dimensions and the toll the war took, they have systematically concealed the tougher, more important moral and political lessons that that tragedy has to teach us. As a form of mass entertainment, films may not exist primarily to help teach us such painful lessons; that social science and political theory can show us that they might is one of this article's animating hopes.
The Judicialization of Politics in Sweden
Authors: Holmstrom Barry
Published: March 2007

As to judicial intervention in politics, Sweden sides with skepti cal states like the United Kingdom or Third and Fourth Republic France. The Social Democrats, in power for more than four decades, have consis tently defended a majoritarian and popular sovereignty view of democracy, hostile to built-in checks on the elected representatives. But judgments of the European Court on Human Rights at Strasbourg, and a gradual weakening of the Social Democratic dominance in Swedish politics, have initiated a slow but steady process toward a more significant role for court litigation and the judicial branch. This judicialization of the political process will probably accelerate now that interest organizations have discovered this "American" way of influencing politics.
Party Government in Latin America: Theoretical Guidelines for an Empirical Analysis
Authors: Cansino César
Published: March 2007

The hypothesis of this article is that in Latin America govern ment parties do not dominate the policy-making process, unlike in some European countries. Only some countries of the region have developed coherent programs and the institutional forms needed for the party-government role to be fulfilled as occurs in the European model. This factor maintains a direct relationship with the many existing diffi culties preventing young Latin American democracies from consolidating. To prove this hypothesis, the article suggests an analytical methodology allowing the degree of influence of political parties on the policy-making process to be measured.
The Sexist Naming of Collegiate Athletic Teams and Resistance to Change
Authors: Stanley Eitzen D. , Zinn Maxine Baca
Published: March 2007

Colleges and universities use nicknames, logos, and mascots as identifying and unifying symbols, especially surrounding their athletic teams. More than half of U. S. colleges and universities use sexist names and mascots for their women's athletic teams. We argue that these naming practices define, deprecate, and excude women. We show how these linguistic marking systems adopted by schools promote male supremacy and female subordination. They do so, just as sexist language does, by trivializing women, diminish ing them, and making them invisible. A case study of one university is presented where the name for male and female teams is a ram—a male sheep. When this name was identified in the school newspaper as sexist, various constituencies rallied to retain the traditional name. Their defenses are examined, looking especially at the parallels between these arguments and those used to resist changing sexist language in general.
Benefit-Cost Analysis of Voyageurs National Park
Authors: Mills Allan S. , Massey Joseph G. , Gregersen Hans M.
Published: March 2007

The beneficial and adverse effects associated with the establishment of Voyageurs National Park are compared using a modified version of the 1973 Water Resources Council Principles and Standards for Planning Water and Related Land Resources. A measure of willingness to pay determined by the Clawson travel cost approach is the principal beneficial effect attributed to the park. Actual land purchase and development costs constitute the principal adverse effects. Sensitivity analyses are presented to show alternative results when basic assumptions are altered. Resulting net beneficial effects are positive in most cases, but rather than focusing on precise results the intent is to present an example of a method for evaluating establishment of a new national park.
Microcomputer Workstations for Evaluation Research
Authors: Brookshire Robert G.
Published: March 2007

This article discusses the hardware and software components of three workstations suitablefor evaluation researchers, one for those on a limited budget, one for professional researchers, and one for a research team or department. The systems range in cost from just under $3,000 to over $30, 000, and include the features most frequently used by professionals. These example systems and the discussion of the components should serve to illustrate the wide variety of possibilities open to researchers interested in acquiring microcomputer workstations.
Developmental and Geographical Equity in Global Environmental Change
Authors: Kasperson Roger E. , Dow Kirstin M.
Published: March 2007

Change in climate and other portions of the global environment will have uneven consequences across countries and regions. These changes already may be underway, will remain highly uncertain, and will prove challenging to diagnose. The geographical separation between the sources of human driving forces and the affected areas is a potential source of international tension and conflict. Some of these changes will exacerbate existing social and economic inequities and threaten sustainable development. This article examines the major equity prob lems arising from the interaction of geographical discontinuities, uncertainty, and international development.
Deployment of Violence
Authors: Campbell Alec , Berk Richard A. , Fyfe James J.
Published: March 2007

In this article, the authors address empirically the relationship between the racial composition of areas patrolled by police and the use of police dogs to apprehend suspects. The authors find that even after controlling forfactors that police claim determine the allocation of canine patrols, dogs are disproportionately employed in areas with higher proportions of minority residents. Moreover, when more dogs are deployed, there are citizens bitten, often severely.
Individual: Community: Nation a Case Study in Maasai Music and Kenyan Education
Authors: Floyd Malcolm
Published: March 2007

This article explores how Maasai cultural practices could be applied to the goal Kenya has long held of developing a sense of nation among its diverse peoples. It sets the context for education for post-independence Africa and examines patterns of development in Kenyan education from 1964 to 1992. Maasai practices-in-culture, or enculturative processes, are explored, with the suggestion that these provide some solutions to problems in Kenyan education, and experiments with reifying this through music.
Brilliant performers as teachers: A case study of commonsense teaching in a conservatoire setting
Authors: Persson Roland
Published: March 2007

This article reports an exploratory study into applied music teaching at a tertiary level. The study was staged as a case study where the case comprises one performance teacher of piano and nine students. The focus of the study is how a performance teacher with no formal training fares in the training of musical performers, how students respond, and what are the particular successful or unsuccessful issues in what could feasibly be termed ‘commonsense teaching’. The data were gathered through participant observation, informal interviews and questionnaires. The findings suggest, after content analysis, that the distinction between the role of the instrumental teachers and the role of the expert performer is an essential distinction. In spite of good intentions the participating teacher failed to provide a successful instructional strategy. The article concludes by tentatively proposing some instructional considerations for applied music teaching, as drawn from the case study.
Professional music groups and the community: The Bournemouth Sinfonietta in Romania
Authors: Joss Tim
Published: March 2007

A week's residency by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta in Romania is described: the extensive preparatory work; the collaboration with a British charity, ‘Musika in Romania’, which was essential for the project's success; the concerts, and the visits to schools, an orphanage and an assessment centre for street children across Bucharest and two other centres; the effect on the orchestra's members; and plans to follow up the project and maintain the Bournemouth/Romania link.