URWICK ON THE PIONEERS OF MANAGEMENT

Colonel Lyndall Fownes Urwick is one of the major theoreticians and historians of the management movement of the twentieth century. For this he has been recognized internationally, holding most of the major awards for excellence in contributions to management. He is now 87 years old and lives in Australia. In this paper the authors report an edited version of Urwick's verbal responses to questions about Taylor, the Gilbreths, Gant, Fayol, Mayo, Mooney, Reiley, Mary Parker Follett, Barnard, Drucker and Koontz. Questions were designed to elicit Urwick's experiences with the individuals rather than just their ideas. Anecdotal recollections have been included where they give insights into the pioneer's personality and writings.     

An assessment of the determination of energy needs: The case of nuclear power

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) forced the Atomic Energy Commission, and subsequently the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to weigh costs and benefits of proposed nuclear power plants. This paper examines how the Commission has developed a framework for decision making in response to the NEPA mandate. Its principal conclusions are that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not interested in being in the business of assessing power needs, and that regulating need by electricity source is counterproductive. If the question of power needs should be addressed at all, the paper argues that a more general framework should be used which would apply to all new facilities. Such a framework would allow a utility to build the plant of its choice, subject to satisfaction of existing regulations, after it is determined that sufficient demand exists.This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Quality Laboratory at Caltech. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on the Economics of Nuclear Power Regulation at the Brookings Institution. I wish to thank Roger Noll, James Krier and Gary Miller for their helpful comments. Any remaining errors are solely my responsibility.     

Dilemmas in a general theory of planning

The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems. They are wicked problems, whereas science has developed to deal with tame problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about optimal solutions to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no solutions in the sense of definitive and objective answers.This is a modification of a paper presented to the Panel on Policy Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Boston, December 1969.