The Varieties of Faith-Related Agencies

Although some recent literature suggests religious social service agencies can help governments reach important social program goals, the true social organization and services of the agencies remain in dispute. This article interviews officials in the wide class of "faith-related" agencies in two cities to consider two aspects of this issue: the ties or "coupling" of agencies to faith, and the impact of coupling on agency structure and service programming. The results suggest that many sampled agencies are loosely tied to faith in terms of resources, more tightly coupled in terms of authority, and moderately coupled with respect to culture; that certain aspects of service-delivery technology are heavily secularized in many agencies; that faith is more influential in such matters as the agencies' choices of services; and that the larger, potentially more secularized agencies that might be least likely to be characterized as faith based balance differing sets of resources and thereby can more fully deliver services that arguably express faith in action. Given this finding and that most agencies profess a focus on protecting the dignity and rights of clients rather than on individual responsibility or other themes that are stressed by some recent policy proposals, governments need to be extremely selective in funding agencies to promote those proposals' themes.     

Diffusion performance of major steel-making countries: alternative econometric tests

The purpose of this study is to compare the speed of diffusion in major steel-making countries. This is a cross-system analysis, involving industrial market countries (Western Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan), quasi-market economies (selected newly industrializing countries, India), and the central planning states (the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe). The study reveals that at least in this, significant case, the latter countries are clearly inferior, i.e. slower. The article seeks the most accurate measure of speed of diffusion of one radical steel innovation, the oxygen process. The speed is estimated by regressing a logistic function not applied to the steel industry to date. Parameters of a logistic function are estimated first with linear least squares methods and then with nonlinear (or iterative) least squares, to establish which offers more accurate estimation than the widely used linear approach. It is shown that the iterative method produces a better statistical fit.     

Evaluating differences in technological activity between transnational and domestic firms in Latin America

This study uses a sample of Latin American firms from four areas to compare the performance and technological activity of transnational to domestic firms. After accounting for scale, age and location of firm, we find few differences in either traditional methods of growth or profitability or in implementation of new technology embodied in processes or products. There are important differences in the sources of new technology. Domestic firms have a relatively higher level of internal innovative activity, whereas foreign firms rely more heavily (but not exclusively) on sources external to the subsidiary.