Hayek’s 1945 Finlay Memorial Lecture: Tracing the origins and evolution of his ‘true’ individualism

Hayek’s original 1945 University College Dublin lecture outlined the origins and evolution of two different interpretations of ‘individualism’, comparing and contrasting what Hayek terms ‘true’ and ‘false’ individualism notwithstanding the misleading contemporary interpretations and distorted perceptions of the assumptions underlining ‘true’ individualism. Hayek developed and extended the Scottish Enlightenment theory of spontaneous order originally formulated by Adam Ferguson’s maxim that social order was the result of unintended human action rather than the result of deliberate human design in order to explain the origin of complex social structures, which originated in a Cromwellian maxim. The origination and inspiration for the title of Hayek’s lecture is also considered, as is the influence of other thinkers; Mandeville, Tocqueville, Mill, Acton and Schatz that Hayek cites in his Dublin lecture.     

Measuring efficiency in the public sector using nonparametric frontier estimators: a study of transit agencies in the USA

Transit agencies in the USA must provide service under increasing operating constraints. Using data from 1989–1993, technical efficiency among these firms is estimated and characteristics indicative of differential efficiency in transit agencies are identified. This paper verifies the robustness of the second step regression results to the choice of efficiency measure by comparing results of the two step regressions using a pair of non-parametric efficiency estimators. It is discovered that the structure of government subsidy to this industry negatively affects not just cost efficiency, but technical efficiency as well. Furthermore, maintenance appears to be an important component of operational efficiency in this industry.     

Connectivity and control in the year 2000 and beyond

By now, most executives are familiar with the famous Year 2000 problem--and many believe that their companies have the situation well in hand. After all, it seems to be such a trivial problem--computer software that interprets "oo" to be the year 1900 instead of the year 2000. And yet armies of computer professionals have been working on it--updating code in payroll systems, distribution systems, actuarial systems, sales-tracking systems, and the like. The problem is pervasive. Not only is it in your systems, it's in your suppliers' systems, your bankers' systems, and your customers' systems. It's embedded in chips that control elevators, automated teller machines, process-control equipment, and power grids. Already, a dried-food manufacturer destroyed millions of dollars of perfectly good product when a computer counted inventory marked with an expiration date of "oo" as nearly a hundred years old. And when managers of a sewage-control plant turned the clock to January I, 2000 on a computer system they thought had been fixed, raw sewage pumped directly into the harbor. It has become apparent that there will not be enough time to find and fix all of the problems by January I, 2000. And what good will it do if your computers work but they're connected with systems that don't? That is one of the questions Harvard Business School professor Richard Nolan asks in his introduction to HBR's Perspectives on the Year 2000 issue. How will you prepare your organization to respond when things start to go wrong? Fourteen commentators offer their ideas on how senior managers should think about connectivity and control in the year 2000 and beyond.     

Understanding the employment relationship: markets,hierarchies and power

The employment relationship is fiercely contested both in theory and practice. This article examines recent theoretical initiatives in economics that have sought to illuminate the nature, specificity, and complexities of the employment relationship. It examines claims by proponents of the new institutional economics (NIE) that they can account for the historical emergence of authority relations and the dominance of hierarchical work organisations without reference to the forces of class power, coercion and labour subordination. The NIE is contrasted with the ‘old’ institutional economics (OIE) and the distinctive insights of an industrial relations perspective. The paper considers in conclusion whether a synthesis of NIE and industrial relations research would achieve a deeper understanding of the institutional forms of wage‐labour in contemporary capitalist economies.