The limits of strategy

The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. By Henry Mintzberg. Prentice Hall International, 1994. Pp.320. £22.95 pb.     

An internal history of the communist party of Thailand

This is a translation of a history of the Communist Party of Thailand, written by a leading party member in 1978. The Thai original was published for the first time in early 2003. The document begins with a background analysis of Thai society, then traces the party's history from the 1920s, and ends with the “lessons” learnt. The document is especially detailed on the party's adoption and adaptation of the Maoist strategy of rural armed struggle.     

Exploring perceptions of technology between the united states and ecuador

Despite an overall increase in technology research in recent years, the focus on perceptions of technological issues across diverse cultures has received little attention. Moreover, the transfer of technology from industrialized nations to developing countries has essentially been overlooked by scholars. The purpose of this study is to measure differences in perceptions of technology between managers from Ecuador and the United States. The typology of motivators and inhibitors of technological growth developed by Cragg and King (1993) is used as the basis for this empirical inquiry. Results suggest that improving planning and control is a key motivator in Ecuador while stimulating managerial enthusiasm is important to U.S. managers. Excessive cost was found to be a powerful inhibitor in both nations. These findings have vast implications for both the public and private sectors as the business environment continues to change in Latin America.     

Low self-control and coworker delinquency: A research note

Since the publication of Gottfredson and Hirschi [A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990], a large amount of research has shown a link between low self-control and delinquency. Some research has revealed that low self-control has not been able to account for the strong effects of peer delinquency on delinquency. Criminological literature has, until recently, neglected the interactional relationship between low self-control and delinquent peers in predicting delinquency. This study used a sample of employed high school seniors to assess the interaction between low self-control and coworker delinquency on occupational delinquency. Regression analyses indicated that the interaction term was a strong predictor of occupational delinquency, even after controlling for several established predictors of delinquency.     

Limits to growth: The case of Dutch prison capacity

This article deals with the question of why the dentention capacity in the Netherlands has been increasing since 1975, and what the consequences are for the future. Analysis is based on literature. Dutch policy is reactive: capacity depends on the sum of detention sentences. The interaction between the judicial system and its political imbedding leads to a continuous growth in detention capacity. This spin-off process is also active when crime is not increasing. As a consequence, continuation of this growth is to be expected. It is not clear whether judges allow capacity to affect the length of the prison sentences they pass. If so, a spiral process is going on, where the increase in capacity fuels the need for a greater capacity in the future. In theory, this spiral could also go downwards. Therefore, when the spiral is stronger than the spin-off, a pro-active government policy could lead to a reduction in capacity. However, as it is not clear that this is the case, it is concluded that the detention capacity could best be reduced by ad hoc measures like legalising drugs.     

Political instability in Africa: A rent-seeking approach

The foregoing analysis developed the paradigm of self-interest motivated revolutionary activities. In effect, the construct presented differs from the by-product theory developed by Tullock only in its specific modeling of government-created rents as the engine which drives the violent political behavior. The empirical test of the positive relationship between rent creation by the government and the amount of destabilizing political activity yields strong support for the structuring of politically destabilizing activities as rent-seeking in nature. It is the authors' hope that further empirical investigation and a more general and rigorous modeling of revolution as a rent-seeking activity will become an important part of the literature in public choice.Finally, some policy implications should be discussed. The policy emphasis for the governments of Africa countries should be on opening the economy to competition. Instituting programs to make the economic system more accessible to all segments of society would result in reduced opportunities for rent-seeking. Reducing rent-seeking should result in increased political stability. A reduction in government market intervention would also reduce the costs of government regulations on individual entrepreneurs inducing them to increase their participation in economically productive activities. Taken together the result would be increased political stability and higher rates of economic growth.