SOME FACTORS AFFECTING THE SUCCESS OF 'MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES'

Questionnaire data were obtained from 128 managers representing all levels and functions of a large manufacturer. Variables describing the superior/subordinate relationship were related to respondent's perceptions of the values of management by objectives using correlational methods. These relationships were then moderated using personality and situational characteristics of the respondents.
The involvement of the boss is generally related to positive orientations     

The systems approach to school administration: Some perceptions on the state of the art in 1967

Some of the salient administrative activities consistent with systems are clear delineation of objectives; recognition of the dynamic nature of goals and priorities; generation of alternative means for allocating resources; generation of models of the system under study; utilization of quantitatively oriented tools in analysis; and in decision making, and employment of interdisciplinary teams of specialists in problem analysis. Hard data on the implementation of these systems oriented approaches in education are not available as yet.

School administrators in late 1967 were on the threshold of awareness of concepts, vehicles, and procedures related to systems. They have not as yet perceived systems as an approach to better define, comprehend, or resolve perplexing educational issues or operational problems.

Those aspects of school administration most amenable to operations analysis such as transportation, school plant planning and construction, inventory control or food services are less likely to be classified as crucial problems of administrators. The more significant long-range policy problems in instruction, race relations, adapting the institution to change, teacher militancy, or amelioration of social injustices have been considered by too many to be outside the range of quantitative analysis.

Not everyone talking about systems uses the same data base. The systems approach is more likely to flourish where certain conditions prevail. Some pressing improvements in education are needed to create readiness and use of systems.     

The application of artificial intelligence to medicine

This article reviews current developments in artificial intelligence as they apply to medicine. Initial applications of this approach to medicine are being actively pursued in medical diagnosis, interpretation of data from chemical studies, and the development of computer models of human behavioural processes. Of special interest is a new research programme established at Stanford University called SUMEX, one of whose major goals is the application of artificial intelligence to medicine. Within the framework of SUMEX, research is actively under way in a number of aspects of biomedical research and clinical medicine. Some of the work reviewed includes the DENDRAL and META-DENDRAL programs, the Protein Crystallography System, SECS, MYCIN, DIALOG, CASNET, the Present Illness Program, PARRY, and Believer. Suggestions for future applications of artificial intelligence to medicine will include clinical patient-record information systems, pharmacology, prosthetics, gerontology, and radiology.     

A Holy Alliance: Collusion in the Renaissance Europe Alum Market

On June 11, 1470, representatives of Pope Paul II and Ferdinand, King of Naples concluded a cartel agreement to restrict competition in the sale of alum. The agreement was one element of a broader plan to monopolize the sale of alum throughout Christendom. We discuss the background of the cartel agreement and analyze its terms (which include arrangements to facilitate detection of and reduce the profitability of defection) and the constraints that limited, but did not eliminate, Rome’s ability to extract economic profit from the European alum market.     

Asymptotic behaviour of tests for a unit root against an explosive alternative

We compare the asymptotic local power of upper-tail unit root tests against an explosive alternative based on ordinary least squares (OLS) and quasi-differenced (QD) demeaning/detrending. We find that under an asymptotically negligible initialisation, the QD-based tests are near asymptotically efficient and generally offer superior power to OLS-based approaches; however, the power gains are much more modest than in the lower-tail testing context. We also find that asymptotically non-negligible initial conditions do not affect the power ranking in the same way as they do for lower-tail tests, with the QD-based tests retaining a power advantage in such cases.     

Marrying personality and job resources and their effect on engagement via critical psychological states

This study examined the process by which individuals become engaged with their jobs by integrating seminal engagement theory. More specifically, we suggest that an individual factor (i.e. autotelic personality) and two contextual factors (i.e. feedback environment, job autonomy) interact to predict work engagement through three critical psychological states – namely availability, meaningfulness, and safety. This moderated mediation framework was tested using a cross section of the US population (n = 284); data were collected at two points in time with 3 months in between. Availability and meaningfulness mediated the relationship between autotelic personality and work engagement. Autotelic personality’s indirect effect on work engagement through meaningfulness and safety was conditional such that the nature of feedback environment’s effect depended on job autonomy level. Theory and practice implications are discussed.     

Information,market power,and price volatility

We consider demand function competition with a finite number of agents and private information. We show that any degree of market power can arise in the unique equilibrium under an information structure that is arbitrarily close to complete information. Regardless of the number of agents and the correlation of payoff shocks, market power may be arbitrarily close to zero (the competitive outcome) or arbitrarily large (so there is no trade). By contrast, price volatility is always lower than the variance of the aggregate shock across all information structures. Alternative trading mechanisms lead to very distinct bounds as a comparison with Cournot competition establishes.