This book takes a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches to the issue of organization and authority in the modern corporation. Including contributions from scholars in the US, Germany and Japan, it considers such relations, and the possible advantages of family ownership. The book combines historical and contemporary case studies from a range of different industries.
This book takes a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches to the issue of organization and authority in the modern corporation. Including contributions from scholars in the US, Germany and Japan, it considers such relations, and the possible advantages of family ownership. The book combines historical and contemporary case studies from a ra
This book takes a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches to the issue of organization and authority in the modern corporation and includes contributions from scholars in the US, Germany and Japan.
Initial material for this book was developed over a period of several years through the introduction in the mid-seventies of a graduate-level course en titled, "Control and Operation of Interconnected Power Systems," at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Subsequent involvement with the utility industry and in teaching continuing education courses on modern power sys tem control and operation contributed to the complimentary treatment of the dynamic aspects of this overall topic. In effect, we have evolved a textbook that provides a thorough under standing of fudamentals as needed by a graduate student with a prior back ground in power systems analysis at the undergraduate level, and in system theory concepts normally provided at the beginning of the graduate level in electrical engineering. It is also designed to provide the depth needed both by the serious graduate student and the power industry engineer involved in the activities of energy control centers and short-term operations planning. As explained in Chapter 2, the entire book can be covered in a two quarter course sequence. The bulk of the material may be covered in one semester. For a two-semester offering, we recommend that students be in volved in some project work to further their depth of understanding. Utility and consulting industry engineers should concentrate on the more advanced concepts and developments usually available at the latter half of each chap ter.
The number of studies discussing the labour relationship under industrial capitalism is overwhelming, but the literature on labour and its concrete, day-today shop-floor practices is much less abundant. How and by whom workers were supervised is one of the neglected aspects in the history of labour relations. After an insightful introductory chapter discussing the different forms of supervision in the United States, Britain, France and Germany before the First World War, the case studies in this volume focus on foremen: vital, but largely unstudied figures in the history of factory life, labour relations and management. Illustrating the multiple faces of the foreman, the contributors examine the artisanal sector, textiles, mining, printing, engineering, heavy manufacturing and car industries in Western Europe and show that the foreman was a multifaceted character who possessed technical expertise in addition to educational and organizational qualities. This comprehensive volume is further enhanced by comparisons with practices of supervision in Russia, Japan, China and India.
The Practice of Technology explores the narrative themes of modern industrial technology that reveal the underlying agenda of modern culture, which is to redesign the human and natural worlds to conform to the monoculture models of Western society that are embedded in industrial paradigms and practices. The author argues that ecological and social responsibility should be built into the design of new technology practices based on ecosophy (ecological wisdom) that enable us to harmonize with our specific place and ecological context. Root metaphors and mythologies of the West are examined so as to transcend the modern-postmodernist debate that devalues human life and the natural world. Drengson explains how our current problems, such as the environmental crisis, violence, social injustice, dehumanization, and alienation cannot be diagnosed, let alone cured, without understanding the role of technological forces and activities in modern civilization.
The experiment with neoliberal market-oriented economic policy in Latin America, popularly known as the Washington Consensus, has run its course. With left-wing and populist regimes now in power in many countries, there is much debate about what direction economic policy should be taking, and there are those who believe that state-led development might be worth trying again. Susan Gauss’s study of the process by which Mexico transformed from a largely agrarian society into an urban, industrialized one in the two decades following the end of the Revolution is especially timely and may have lessons to offer to policy makers today. The image of a strong, centralized corporatist state led by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) from the 1940s conceals what was actually a prolonged, messy process of debate and negotiation among the postrevolutionary state, labor, and regionally based industrial elites to define the nationalist project. Made in Mexico focuses on the distinctive nature of what happened in the four regions studied in detail: Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey, and Puebla. It shows how industrialism enabled recalcitrant elites to maintain a regionally grounded preserve of local authority outside of formal ruling-party institutions, balancing the tensions among centralization, consolidation of growth, and Mexico’s deep legacies of regional authority.
