变化中的国际社会软环境

国际社会软环境包括国家软实力影响、世界体系、意识形态等及国际关系变化的最敏感层,反映了国家实力较量、综合国力竞争和国际力量对比等实质性问题.2005年国际社会软环境发生显著变化,这是冷战结束以来国际形势阶段性发展的趋变点,对于推动解决和平与发展问题,特别具有方向性的重要意义.     

The changing role of multinational corporations

The multinational corporations’ (MNCs) environment and their international eminence have recently been threatened because of the turbulent international arena, the unlimited scope of information which they have to consider in their decision-making , and the accusations that they are a jeopardy to the political and economic independence of their host countries. Thus, they have to adopt a new strategy which is in contrast to the past where they were identified as the primary operators in their host environment and that they controlled to a great extent the political, economic and social environment in which they functioned.     

Europeanization and changing patterns of governance in Ireland

In order to examine institutional change in Republic of Ireland (hereinafter referred to as 'Ireland' or 'the Irish case') as a consequence of European integration, this article looks at the adaptation of national institutions subsequent to EU membership. A new institutionalist approach is taken towards the definition and discussion of institutions in order that the analysis may encompass the broadest range of changes consequent to EU membership: in relation to national structures; decision-making patterns; socialization processes; and overall 'system change'. The analysis uses the organizing concepts offered by Bulmer and Burch (1998) in their evaluation of the impact of Europeanization on national systems of public administration in Britain. According to this framework, 'institutions can be analysed in terms of four gradations moving from the formal, through the informal, to the normative and cultural' ( Bulmer and Burch 1998 , p. 604).     

Suicide and changing values and beliefs in Ireland

This paper addresses some of the generalized theories explaining rising suicide rates in Ireland. The conclusion here is that linking suicide patterns to changing beliefs and values is problematic. Church attendance as well as adherence to traditional values remain high in this country compared to European levels, and variations in beliefs and values, especially rural/urban differences, do not fit with general explanations. Moreover, attitudes to value areas fluctuate in that justification for suicide--which showed an upward trend in the 1980s--was reversed in the 1990s, and this may have resulted from increased public focus and debate. Generalized explanations are unlikely to decipher complex phenomena such as suicidal behavior. Religious belief, if protective in relation to suicide, is unlikely to act alone. Social transformations have a differential impact depending on one's socio-economic positioning, which translates ideas of a general male vulnerability to suicide into focused areas of male distress.     

Administrative decentralisation and changing state-society relations in china

This study seeks to explain the evolution of the state and state policies under China's decentralised system by taking into consideration the political input from society and the dynamics of state-society interaction. It argues that the emergence of unorganised collective action creates an unique channel of political inputs from the society, while the diffusion of the power centre and the flattening of bureaucratic hierarchies make local leaders much more sensitive and responsive to political demands from the local populace. These two conditions together provide the basis for the state-society interaction in the reform era, leading to the collapse of the state's institutional levers of coercion (such as the commune and the brigade in rural areas and to some extent the unit or “danwei” in urban areas), resulting in new state-society relations.     

Changing policies for changing times in long-term care

This article presents a case study which illustrates part of the problem with long-term care. Next, the extent of the challenge in delivering and financing long-term care is presented. Finally, twenty potential policy solutions are suggested and analyzed.     

The changing roles of local government in education

This article explores the ongoing debate about the changing roles of local government in education in Britain. It focuses on research evidence from Scotland, especially issues associated with devolving management to schools and reorganising local government. These findings are compared with the debate and evidence about the changing role of local government in education in England and Wales during the past decade. It is suggested that while there has been substantial reform of education and local government throughout Britain, the policies have differed in nature and outcomes north and south of the border.     

Decisionism and action: changing perspectives in organization theory

The neglect of moral discourse in mainstream organization theory during the past four decades may be attributed to the dominance of the “decision,” popularized by Herbert Simon, as the field's primary unit of analysis. Underwritten by an epistemology derived from the logical positivists’ analytical distinction between value and fact, the idea of decision has come to be uncritically accepted as a morally neutral and empirically self-evident beginning point for organizational analysis. The ethnomethodological writings of Harold Garfinkel, coupled with insights from contemporary philosophy of language, radically challenge the value-fact distinction, pointing to an epistemology of everyday life in which value and fact are initially fused. The inherent fusion of value and fact provides the basis for an alternative epistemology for organization theory—termed the “action” or “process” perspective—which fundamentally alters the empirical understanding of organizational life and, consistent with the writings of Mary Parker Follett, enables the recovery of organization theory's moral center.

Commenting on the effects of technology on modern consciousness, Manfred Stanley has noted that:

Of all the upheavals of history and culture, it is difficult to imagine any of greater scope than the decline and fall not of some one vision of the good, but of the good itself. The rise of the notion that there is no such phenomenon as the good in the objective nature of things must be the most ironic anticlimax possible to centuries of bitter conflict between those who felt themselves empowered to define it.⁽¹⁾

For Stanley, the problem is not technology as such, but “technicism”: the implicit, even unconscious, belief that the humanly possible is synonymous with the technologically available. In technicist consciousness, technology is no longer a means for attaining the good, because “means” presupposes a prior moral or practical end in whose service that means is applied. Should any conception of the good be embraced at all, he argues, it ironically can merely be an artifact of what has been made available by technology.

Technicism has become the predominant attribute of modern consciousness, producing what William Barrett, speaking in a slightly different context, calls “the illusion of technique.”⁽²⁾

In the collective infatuation with technology, Barrett argues,

... we have come to regard it [technology] as the source for the discovery of human meaning. The tragic consequence of this is the inevitable alienation of man from himself and his estrangement from others. The irony of technicism to which Stanley alluded earlier may be summarized as a reversal of a familiar aphorism—invention has now become the mother of necessity—albeit one devoid of moral content.

Stanley sees the rise of technicism as concomitant with the emergence of liberal society, whose institutions have achieved coherence and legitimacy explainable in terms of three themes that have dominated Western thought since the seventeenth century. The first is the general desanctification or secularization of the political economy exemplified ... in the transformation of human skills and the earth itself into objective commodity resources for commercial production.⁽³⁾ The second theme is the ascendancy of the market principle as the chief basis of socioeconomic organization, wherein interests are privately held by individuals rather than shared by communities or other larger collectivities. Finally, there is the theme of pluralistic representation in political decision making, where the expression of individual (and group) interest is tolerated in the hope of achieving a balance among them.

Taken together these themes have produced a pervasive sense of nihilism in Western society insofar as they seem to exclude the possibility “of grounding collective standards of value priorities in anything more transcendent than the simplest shared utilities like power, wealth, and the security of one's immediate personal circumstances.”⁽⁴⁾

The consequence of the three themes of liberal society, profoundly abetted by technicist consciousness, is nothing less than the loss “of a sense of common human community in the West”⁽⁵⁾and also of the moral possibility of a common, transcendent good.     

4.3 Emergency planning ‐ aspects of a changing strategy

Based upon in‐depth interviews with female councillors from Hull, England and from Montreal, Canada, this article seeks to address the motivations, expectations and experiences of female local councillors. It examines what galvanised these women into political activity, whether or not they encountered any difficulties in their quest to become a councillor and, once elected, how they operate. The key aspects identified by this research include, firstly, the obstacles faced by females in their quest to become local councillors; secondly, the benefits/necessity of having a supportive partner and, thirdly, the concept of the ‘dual calibre of councillor’, that is, the community representative and the local politico.     

Southeast Asian industrialisation and the changing global production system

The diversion of foreign direct investment ( fdi ) flows into developing Asia, from Southeast Asia to China, has renewed doubts about whether Southeast Asia's traditional reliance on fdi has left the region without the local capabilities required to sustain the region's long-term competitiveness. Southeast Asia's industrialisation has involved deepening integration into international production networks, comprising internal exchanges between multinational corporations ( mnc s) and their subsidiaries, affiliates and subcontractors. While indigenous industry has been secondary to Southeast Asian industrialisation, this paper highlights three elements of local technological accumulation and clustering within foreign-dominated export industries: production deepening, co-location of design, engineering and R&D with off-shore manufacturing, and the spatial clustering of mnc s in particular industry segments. Southeast Asian governments have responded to these trends by broadening investment promotion from manufacturing to business services and regional headquarters operations, by targeting incentives and infrastructure development to foster industrial clusters, and by invigorating technical support programmes for local small and medium-sized enterprises ( sme s) in supporting industries. Taken together, these trends suggest that Southeast Asia will remain an important site within multinationals' international production networks.