Effacing the political future: A response to interfutures

Political change within industrial countries will accompany the restructuring of economies and international relations in the 1980s. The most detailed study of alternative scenarios involving the latter issues—the interfutures report—treats domestic politics in terms of notions of value change. This article criticises these widespread ideas. Futures studies need to take political trends seriously, including those towards corporatism and the strong state. In this light the development of the informal sector can be no panacea for problems of political and economic power.     

PRICE PREDICTIONS AND ECONOMICALLY AFFORESTABLE AREA

The profitability of forestry depends on the future trend of timber prices. Three plausible price predictions placed the margin of profitability at three widely differing levels of physical productivity. A good estimate of the elevation at which marginal profitability could be expected under each price prediction was given by productivity/elevation regressions for existing plantations in each of three localities in North Wales. Cartographic sampling enabled the cumulative area of rough grazings below this elevation to be estimated. By combining empirical relationships between price trend, profitability, productivity, elevation and cumulative area, a heavy dependence of afforestable area on future price trend can be demonstrated for North Wales; similar results would be expected throughout Britain. Inclusion of land products other than timber complicates the exercise. The significance of price trend for many forestry decisions justifies much more research on price prediction.     

Internationalising Entrepreneurship Education

Despite growing policy and research interest in small firm internationalisation, little attention has been focused on the international dimensions of entrepreneurship and even less on the academic formation and personal/professional development of international entrepreneurs. The need to address these issues is particularly crucial in light of the emergence of small entrepreneurial “born global” firms that have able to take advantage of technological advances to internationalise rapidly. This contribution outlines and evaluates approaches that have been adopted to embed international entrepreneurship dimensions in undergraduate and postgraduate business programmes in Ireland. The authors contend that many of these mechanisms are eminently transferable to educational programmes in other locations.     

Bringing computer power to the consumer market

Firms in m a y industrial sectors are seeking to capitalize on the promise of new information technology to generate new consumer products which can gain substantial markets. Where these are improved versions of familiar products, the marketing task is relatively easy, but many of the new product opportunities involve radically new types of consumer good and/or service. Drawing on studies of efforts to establish such radical innovations, this paper examines the problems that are confornted in attempting to define what sort of product is actually being created and how it may fit into consume life-styles. Though there is considerable discussion of these topics in industrial circles, it appears that until late stages of product development, little serious analysis of social issues is undertaken— if at all. Furthemore, such discussio of the nature and use of products are more intended to mobilize the group of actors who are needed to support the innovation than to feed substantial information about possible user reqquirements into the design process. The design process is much more liable to invorporate ideas derived from analysis of technological trends and the use of products in professional applications, than information derived from social scienc or market research.     

The causal analysis of contingency tables: A return to first principles

Given the undoubtedly major advances in the analysis of contingency tables which have been achieved over the past ten years or so (see for example, Fienberg, 1980; Upton, 1978; Everitt, 1977; Haberman, 1978, 1979), it might seem rather unnecessary to want to return to first princples again. However, the need arises precisely because of these advances; for progress in the specifically causal analysis of contingency tables has not matched the other advances at all. Whilst Fienberg devoted a chapter to causal analysis, he made it clear that he views “the assignment of numerical values [to the arrows in a path diagram] as problematic, and [he] would limit [the analysis] to an indication of sign for causal relationships, in a fashion similar to that described by Blalock (1964)” (Fienberg, 1980, pp. 91–92). Considering how far quantitative-variable causal analysis has developed since Blalock (1964), it becomes clear that the causal analysis of qualitative data is still at a rather primitive stage. Indeed, Haberman (1978, 1979), in his two-volume survey of the analysis of qualitative data, does not mention it at all. The problem, I believe, is that log-linear and logit methodology are not particularly suited to the logic of causality in contingency tables. In order to derive a suitable method, it is necessary to uncover the logic underlying causality when applied to qualitative variables. A few others have taken seriously the idea that a direct analysis of the form of a contingency table can lead to fruitful results (see, especially, for example, Boudon, 1967), but their work has been overshadowed by the statistically more profound advances made in log-linear methods. This article is an attempt to provide a statistically rigorous analysis based on the direct interpretation of causality embodied in a contingency table.