外资银行饕餮中国:金融"解冻"前的盛宴

2006年对外资银行来说是极其关键的一年.根据加入世贸组织的承诺,中国将在年底前向外资银行开放人民币业务,并取消对外资银行所有权、经营和设立形式采取的非审慎性限制措施,实现对外资银行的国民待遇.金融"解冻"前夕,为了抢占先机以占据有利的竞争地位,外资银行通过参股和扩张网络的方式加紧了对中国市场的抢滩,一场外资银行饕餮中国的盛宴拉开帷幕.     

Weak signals: Ansoff today

This paper examines the concept of weak signals: its basic idea presented by Igor Ansoff and its later developments. We argue that recent futures studies have essentially deepened the analysis of this concept, which originally lacked an accurate definition. Placing weak signals in the general context of futures research has provided the concept with a theoretical point of attachment and linked it with other futures concepts – such as strong signals and trends. Recent studies have also increased the applicability of the concept of weak signals, specifying ways in which signals can be identified, collected and interpreted. Consequently, a number of empirical examples of the analysis of weak signals are nowadays available. In the present paper, we summarize and evaluate both theoretical contributions and managerial implications of these new approaches. While emphasizing the advancements of research, we also want to point out that Ansoff not only was a pioneer in the field, but developed many ideas that are still applicable today. We conclude our paper by suggesting directions for the further development of weak signals research.     

Why the far-future matters to democracy today

As the complexity of social and political interaction becomes increasingly over-whelming it is only natural that the pragmatic, technocratic, and expert-driven character of contemporary policy-making is even further consolidated. Though making use of existing knowledge this approach may lead to a deprivation of the democratic debate as the time horizons are shortened and the number of significantly different policies is restrained by the framework within which decisions are to be made.

This article analyses the tension between a more holistic or even ‘utopian’ attitude to policy-making and the trial-and-error piecemeal approach which today seems to be prevailing in the industrial countries. It is argued that a theoretical distinction made by Leszek Kolakowski may help us overcome that tension. The distinction is then applied to the classical stage-heuristic for policy-making leading to a discussion about how the power of far-future visions can be brought into the nexus of democratic deliberation.

The article also examines how different time-frames may cause diverging practical policy-recommendations. Finally, the paradoxical merit of negative visions, as in the dystopian literary genre, is presented.     

Fixing health care from the inside, today

Today, you are about as safe in a U.S. hospital as you would be parachuting off a bridge or a building. But it doesn't have to be that way. Right now, some hospitals are making enormous short-term improvements, with no legislation or market reconfiguration and little or no capital investment. Instead of waiting for sweeping changes in market mechanisms, these institutions are taking an operations approach to patient care. In case after detailed case, the article describes how doctors, nurses, technicians, and managers are radically increasing the effectiveness of patient care and dramatically lowering its cost by applying the same capabilities in operations design and improvement that drive the famous Toyota Production System. They are removing ambiguity in the output, responsibilities, connections, and methods of their work processes. These changes-which can be done in the course of an ordinary workday, sometimes in a matter of hours-are designed to make the following crystal clear: Which patient gets which procedure (output); Who does which aspect of the job (responsibility); Exactly which signals are used to indicate that the work should begin (connection); and Precisely how each step is carried out (method). Equally important, managers are being transformed from rescuers who arrive with ready-made solutions into problem solvers who help colleagues learn the experimental method. Thus, these hospitals are breaking free of the work-around culture that routinely obscures the root causes of so many problems, creates so much waste, and leads to so many unnecessary deaths.     

The accounting profession today: A poststructuralist critique

This paper addresses recent critiques of the accounting profession by the authors in Critical Perspectives on Accounting(CPA) (Vol. 9, No. 5, 1998); Briloff (1990), Briloff (1993), Briloff (1994); and Francis (1994), from Jean Baudrillard’s poststructural semiotics perspective. Relying on his phases of the image and orders of simulacra schemes, the paper concludes that (1) theCPA authors merely reiterate arguments and Whiggish remedies that have been around for a long time, (2) the profession no longer has any sacred covenant with society, (3) the Income sign produced by accountants no longer refers to nor has any rapport with any real referent, and (4) that auditing working papers are simply mirror images of other mirror images. The paper then draws out some of the possibilities of poststructuralist analyses for revitalizing the Critical Accounting project. In response to Moore’s (1991) observation that the project is “politically conservative" and has “placed nothing at stake," our analysis manifests the stake as no more nor less than the profession’s near-monopoly on accounting services.     

Things are different today: the challenge of global systemic risks

While most OECD countries have been rather successful in reducing risks to human lives, health, and the quality of the environment, the record for new global risks such as climate change, pandemics, financial breakdowns, and social inequality is much less convincing. This is the challenge of systemic risks. Since the global financial crisis, it has received rapidly growing attention. However, considerable conceptual confusion mars research on and practical responses to this challenge. We undertake an effort of conceptual clarification, starting with the paradigmatic example of the financial crisis. This leads to a view of global systems as involving an interplay between micro- and macrodynamics internal to the system, with the system simultaneously interacting with its environment. Such dynamics typically show periods of stability, punctuated by situations opening up several possible futures. Alternative global futures, like other prospects, constitute risks for an agent if she considers some of these futures as less desirable than others. Agents may have lexicographic preferences over futures they would like to avoid, so as to consider some futures as just undesirable, but others as catastrophic. If an agent expects some of the relevant futures at a bifurcation point of a global system to be catastrophic in this sense, they are faced with a systemic risk.     

“Every today was a tomorrow”: An integral method for indexing the social mediation of preferred futures

The visions we hold of the future, whether they are of utopias or dystopias, are not simply a matter of personal imagination. Our conceptions of the future are mediated to us as much as they are privately created by us. To this point, futures studies have not developed an integrative and broad-based framework for considering the social mediation of futures. Understanding how social mediation impacts on our futures visioning requires an interpretive framework that can cope with the multilayered nature of futures visions, the worldviews that are associated with them and a theory of mediation that can be applied within such a context of ‘depth’. Using theory-building methodology, the current paper attempts this task by describing a theory of social mediation that builds on the integral futures framework. An application of the framework explores the relationship between various scenarios of health care futures, their associated worldviews and the mediational factors that influence our visions of future health care systems.     

How numbers of the future are shaping today: The role of forecasts and calculations in public sector strategic thinking

This article examines the role of numbers in forming a city strategy in the case of Gothenburg, Sweden. The article illustrates how numbers make people act and react and shape the strategy process. The study is situated between the theoretical fields of accounting and strategy processes in cities. By relating them to the concept of ‘governmentality’, numbers are seen as helping render the city governable. Because strategizing is seen as concerning the future, the actors involved in drafting the strategy feel free to challenge historically institutionalized practices. The effect is paradoxical: the future‐looking strategy process becomes a forum for solving current problems.