Showing papers on "Surprise published in 1975"

Managing Strategic Surprise by Response to Weak Signals

Abstract: Modern strategic planning systems increasingly confront two difficulties: strategic information about impending threats and opportunities is perceived too late to permit timely and effective response; and the corporate planning cycle is too long to permit timely response to fast-developing events. In response to the first difficulty, the author develops a technique for early identification of early strategic signals and a method for matching the firm9s response to the quality of information. In response to the second problem, a real time planning system, called strategic issue management, is developed.

The Experiment Hope

Abstract: Living in hope, Professor Moltmann points out, is an experiment. Hoping is a risky matter; it can bring disappointment and surprise developments. To live in hope is a mark of the Christian, and is so in every age, so that a theology of hope should not be regarded as a passing fashion. The essays collected in this book are experiments made by Professor Moltmann in conversation with a wider audience. They include the texts of lectures given in America, Asia, Africa and Australasia, as well as in Europe and are marked by the concern of a distinguished theologian that German theology shall learn from other cultures and other movements of thought. Almost all of them were written after 1970 and cover subjects in theology, ethics, philosophy of religion and politics. They also show how the themes of Professor Moltmann's two major books, Theology of Hope and The Crucified God may be applied in practice to the basic issues of our time.

Child care in the People's Republic of China: 1973.

Abstract: The enthusiastic accounts of remarkable and widespread improvements in health care in the People9s Republic of China (PRC) provided by recent visitors there have been provocative, to say the least. For everyone familiar with, and concerned about, the problems of providing decent health care and adequate nutrition to the millions of preschool children in developing countries throughout the world, the Chinese approach to such problems is of interest. After many years of teaching pediatrics or community pediatrics in developing countries and many opportunities to examine child care problems in other such countries, my own interest was particularly great. Thus, an invitation to join the American Early Childhood Development Delegation for a threeweek visit to the PRC in late 1973 came as an unexpected and altogether delightful surprise. The Delegation were guests of the government of the PRC from November 15 to December 6, 1973. In response to requests submitted earlier by the Delegation, our hosts provided an extensive itinerary that included a variety of child care facilities but focused on nursery schools and kindergartens. We visited such facilities in and around four cities, Canton, Peking, Sian, and Shanghai-in urban neighborhoods, old and new, in factories, and in rural communes. As the only physician in the Delegation, I was assigned the primary responsibility for observing and investigating the health and nutritional aspects of child care. Our hosts arranged interviews with those responsible for health care in the nurseries and kindergartens visited, where there were often full-time health personnel. In addition, I visited a variety of neighborhood and district health centers and hospitals in urban areas, factories, and communes.

Investment Objectives: Diversification, Risk and Exposure to Surprise

Abstract: (1975). Investment Objectives: Diversification, Risk and Exposure to Surprise. Financial Analysts Journal: Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 42-50.

The Effect of World War II on Industrial Science

Abstract: The second world war made considerable demands on science within industry itself, whose scientists consequently experienced fewer basic changes of job than did their academic and Government counterparts; thus there was rather less upheaval, surprise, discontinuity, and exciting change, although of course there were new demands and new kinds of urgency. Moreover, it is possible to draw some rough conclusions about the effects of the war on industrial science by studying, on the one hand, overall economic trends and, on the other, the general pattern of innovation before, during, and after the war.

Foster's Paradigm-Surrogate and the Wealth of Underdeveloped Nations.

Abstract: THE 'DECADE OF DEVELOPMENT' has come and gone. This, unfortunately, is more than we can say of the problems it addressed. Indeed, the inflation, unemployment, stagnant economies, outflow of capital, political instability and the increased immiseration of the poorest 30-40 percent of the population in so many Third World countries suggests that, far from undergoing development, a process of underdevelopment has become institutionalized.1 Educational systems have not been immune to this process, and they are often paradoxically characterized both by extensive educated unemployment and by an access pattern to primary education which is not even close to being universal. It is, then, something of a surprise to read Foster's assessment that "There is, in some degree, a common paradigm that can be used to interpret the relationship between education and aspects of socioeconomic change in many of the "new states"2 because of the implication which it carries that things have been working out according to the capitalist theory of development. Paradigms are hard to come by in the social sciences, and they are almost nonexistent in the field of comparative education. In this opening statement, then, Foster is promising a great deal. I will argue, however, that he is promising something which he does not deliver. Foster's development of his paradigm is theoretically vague, as his phrase "aspects of socioeconomic change" suggests. Neither education, nor the economy, nor the relationship between them is discussed with any theoretical clarity. Also, there is a continual shifting back and forth between considering the paradigm as an explanatory model and using the paradigm as a prescriptive model. Moreover, the nature of the paradigm also changes with this shift in usage. Indeed, there is a philosophical issue involved which Foster does not recognize, namely, whether the paradigm even in the descriptive version is descriptive of a necessary, determined pattern of development or one that is the result of past prescriptions. This issue is of critical importance, because Foster's entire argument rests on the belief that within the general political-economic framework which he accepts it is possible to introduce remedial policies which will substantially alleviate the major problems which have thus far characterized socioeconomic change in many Third World countries. As we will see later, some of his solutions address goals which are commendable, but

Adult illiteracy — an urgent problem

Abstract: Increasingly the world is becoming aware of adult illiteracy. Its extent may still surprise many people—in 1970 there were 783 million illiterate adults throughout the world, at least one million of whom were living in the United Kingdom—but what should really give us reason to pause are the social and economic implications of the problem.

Washington: Exorcising HEW

Abstract: often than not, messiahs take the world by surprise; we seldom recognize them as they wait for the summons and the moment. In the case of David Mathews, whose moment has come but whose messianic credentials have yet to be proved, an initial surge of surprise laced with skepticism has given way to substantial hope and confidence among education leaders that the new Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare will deliver education from the bureaucratic doldrums of

Domestic Politics in the Second Century

Abstract: The expansion of the Roman Empire in the third and second centuries b.c. was not only rapid and continuous, it was also unpremeditated and to some extent undesired. The Romans were carried along without any clear perception of the responsibilities involved in their new acquisitions, and they were slow to observe and control the inevitable reactions of their conquests upon their domestic affairs. In fact they were caught unprepared in much the same way as the modern world has been taken by surprise by the Industrial Revolution and by the changes of the last hundred years in methods of communication. The domestic history of the later Republic is largely a record of successive crises resulting from this failure of adaptation to a quickly changing environment.

Crises in a Transforming International System

Abstract: : An international crisis, however defined or conceptualized, generates serious stress with which decision makers must cope. Distinguished from other international phenomena by its high levels of threat and surprise, and relatively short decision time, a crisis is the perfect setting for mishap, miscalculation, accidental war, unanticipated consequences and disaster. (C. Hermann, 1972:13-14). All of the ingredients necessary for bridging the peace- war gap are embodied in a crisis. Crisis situations spawn international stresses which provoke the restraints on total conflict. In a crisis conflict thresholds become tenuous and highly susceptible to violation.