Technologies of model-based rationality are the core technologies of strategic management, having largely replaced earlier technologies that placed greater reliance on traditional practice or on communication either with the stars or with the gods. The technologies used by organizations in their pursuit of intelligence can be imagined to change over time as a result of responding to the successes and failures associated with the technologies. Although technologies of rationality seem clearly to be effective instruments of exploitation in relatively simple situations and to derive their adaptive advantage from those capabilities, their ventures in more complex explorations seem often to lead to huge mistakes and thus unlikely to be sustained by adaptive processes. Whether their survival as instruments of exploratory novelty in complex situations is desirable is a difficult question to answer, but it seems likely that any such survival may require hitchhiking on their successes in simpler worlds. Survival may also be served by the heroism of fools and the blindness of true believers. Their imperviousness to feedback is both the despair of adaptive intelligence and, conceivably, its salvation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Rationality, foolishness, and adaptive intelligence

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: NATURE AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM Requirements of a Social Ecology Nature, Labor, and Production The Natural Bias of Labor Productivity and Surplus Labor Labor and Labor Power as Natural and Social Forces PART II: NATURE AND CAPITALISM Nature, Labor, and Capitalist Production Capital's 'Free Appropriation' of Natural and Social Conditions Capitalism and Nature: A Value-form Approach Reconsidering Some Ecological Criticisms of Marx's Value Analysis Capitalism and Environmental Crisis Marx's Working-day Analysis and Environmental Crisis Nature and Communism Nature and the Historical Progressivity of Capitalism Nature and Capitalism's Historical Limits Capital, Nature, and Class Struggle Nature and Associated Production PART IV: TWO CRITIQUES Reassessing Schmidt's Concept of Nature in Marx A Critique of Neo-Malthusian Marxism, Part I: Society, Nature, and Population A Critique of Neo-Malthusian Marxism, Part II: Labor, Nature and Capital

Marx and nature : a red and green perspective

Cost-benefit analysis--applying economic reasoning to increasingly complex health policy decisions--continues to be a source of vehement disagreement among its practitioners. re than merely technical issues in measurement and accounting are involved; basic social values embedded in different intellectual traditions are coming into conflict. The "human capital" and "willingness-to-pay" approaches can each aid policy formulation, but neither can substitute for open political process.

/pdf/philosophical-origins-of-the-economic-valuation-of-life-7lpcibyvxn.pdf

Philosophical origins of the economic valuation of life.

This paper studies the roles that images and ideas of market creation played in the re-articulation of relations between government, audit expertise and professional organisation in post-Soviet Russia. It examines the change from state-led inspection to market-oriented auditing between 1985 and 2005, and analyses this in terms of the notion of “linked ecologies”. The paper queries the relationship between audit and neoliberal modes of governing. It argues that we should be careful not to see audit as an unproblematic expression of neoliberalism. Investigating the dynamics and conflicts accompanying attempts to establish auditing as a site for governmental reform, this paper examines the manifold ways in which the meaning of markets and the roles of auditing in them can be unsettled, reinvented and transformed. The paper analyses how auditing was made marketable, and investigates how projects of post-Soviet audit development came to be carried forward, shifted and changed through new “enterprising selves” and their newly founded audit and consulting firms. The paper concludes with a more general discussion of the implication of these findings for our understanding of the dynamics of professionalisation, and the changing of relations between politics and expertise.

/pdf/from-inspection-to-auditing-audit-and-markets-as-linked-5bww29kxd1.pdf

From inspection to auditing: Audit and markets as linked ecologies

Corporate Farm Performance in Russia, 1991–1995: An Efficiency Analysis☆

The economics of Soviet oil and gas

Soviet-Type Economies

Introduction (Robert W. Campbell. ) Long-Term Perspectives On Transition Postcommunist Transformation: Between Accident and Design (Andrzej Brzeski. ) Sustainable Transition (Hans Aage. ) Self-Regulating or Regulated Market Economy? On the Model of East Central European Transformation (Ivan Berend. ) Transport in Russias Future (Holland Hunter. ) New Institutions, New Behaviors From Enterprise to Firm: Notes for a Theory of the Enterprise in Transition (Barry W. Ickes and Randi Ryterman. ) Money, Debt, and Equity in the Transition from Socialism (R. W. Campbell. ) Regions, Local Power, and Reform in Russia (Michael J. Bradshaw and Philip Hanson. ) Policy Choices Privatization in Russia: Options and Transaction Costs (Silvana Malle. ) Cost Tradeoffs in Activity Shutdowns: A Note on Economic Restructuring During the Transition (Richard E. Ericson. ) The Old System In Retrospect: Dynamics And Viability The Growth of the Second Economy in the Soviet Union and Its Impact on the System (Vladimir G. Treml and Michael Alexeev. ) Perestroika and the Chinese Model (Joseph S. Berliner. ) Bureaucrats Versus Red Guards: A Politico-Economic Model of the Stability of Communist Regimes (Mario Ferrero.)

The postcommunist economic transformation : essays in honor of Gregory Grossman

PREFACE 1. Introduction 2. A Perfect-Administration Interpretation of the Soviet-type Economy Actors, Sectoring, Administration, and Markets in the Classic CPE What Is Administration or Management? Functions of Management Is Perfect Administration Possible? Soviet-type Economic Bureaucracies A Possible Model of Perfect Administration 3. Resource Allocation in the Classic CPE Short-run Balancing Control-Evaluating Performance and Passing Out Rewards Investment Decisions Research, Development, and Innovation 4. Market-mediated Relationships Market-mediated Relations in the Administrative-Command Economy Relations with Households Agriculture Foeign Trade 5. Financial and Macrophenomena in the Administered Economy Allocation, Efficiency, and Value under Perfect Administration Linear Programming Fundamentals Finance and Money under Perfect Administration Behavior of the Actual System: Microeconomics Behavior of the Actual System: Macroeconomics Implications for Reform 6. Growth Strategy and Growth Performance in the Socialist World Soviet Development Strategy Growth Performance Productivity Conclusions on Soviet Growth Growth in Eastern Europe The Chinese Variant 7. The Semi-reformed Economy and Its Characteristic Problems The Semi-reformed Economy Addition of New Sectors and Markets Difficulties of Coherent Decentralization through Regulators Monetary Institutions and Policy Fiscal Instruments and Fiscal Policy The Problem of Monopoly Power What Remains to Be Done 8. The Foreign Sector in the Semi-reformed Economy Tasks of the Transition Compromises and Halfway Houses in Foreign Trade 9. Property, Ownership, Privatization Theoretical Considerations Creation of New Property Institutions in the Reforms 10. The Problem of Transition and the Future of Reform Issues of the End Point Issues in the Transition Is Transformation Possible? SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTHER READING INDEX

The Socialist Economies in Transition: A Primer on Semi-Reformed Systems

0-8133-8856-2 the Post-Communist Economic Transformation : Essays in Honor of Gregory Grossman

Robert Campbell

Papers

The economics of Soviet oil and gas

Soviet-Type Economies

The postcommunist economic transformation : essays in honor of Gregory Grossman

The Socialist Economies in Transition: A Primer on Semi-Reformed Systems

Soviet And Post-soviet Telecommunications: An Industry Under Reform