Academics From The United Kingdom

"What happens to the state? It probably gets less powerful over time – and in the end its functions are assumed by society. I’ve tried to make this a project usable both by people who see states as useful and those who don’t; you could model an anarchist version and a statist version and try them out. There is probably even a conservative version of postcapitalism, and good luck to it."

"Globalisation was an unstoppable natural process; free-market economics simply the natural state of things. But when the country that designed globalisation, imposed it and benefited from it most votes against it, you have to consider the possibility that it is going to end, and suddenly. If so, you also have to consider a possibility that – if you are a liberal, humanist democrat – may be even more shocking: that oligarchic nationalism is the default form of failing economies."

"An economy based on information, with its tendency to zero-cost products and weak property rights, cannot be a capitalist economy."

"This new generation of networked people understand they are living through a third industrial revolution, but they are coming to realize why it has stalled: with the credit system broken, capitalism cannot sustain the scale of automation that is possible, and the destruction of jobs implied by the new technologies."

"This was the first Book I ever read with that Juvenile Avidity so delicious during the racy Season of Life. I felt its Beauties, repeated its Precepts,—wearied my Parents with Quotations and my Tongue with Praises of this—shall I call it unlucky Volume, which made a Writer & a Critic of H:L:P."

"It were to be wished that no youth of genius were suffered ever to look into Statius, Lucan, Claudian, or Seneca the tragedian; authors who, by their forced conceits, by their violent metaphors, by their swelling epithets, by their want of just decorum, have a strong tendency to dazzle and to mislead inexperienced minds, and tastes unformed, from the true relish of possibility, propriety, simplicity, and nature. [...] If I might venture to pronounce so rigorous a sentence, I would say, that the Romans can boast of but eight poets who are unexceptionably excellent,—namely, Terence, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Phaedrus. These only can be called legitimate models of just thinking and writing. Succeeding authors, as it happens in all countries, resolving to be original and new, and to avoid the imputation of copying, become distorted and unnatural. By endeavouring to open an unbeaten path, they deserted simplicity and truth; weary of common and obvious beauties, they must needs hunt for remote and artificial decorations..."

"He that peruses Homer, is like the traveller that surveys mount Atlas; the vastness and roughness of its rocks, the solemn gloominess of its pines and cedars, the everlasting snows that cover its head, the torrents that rush down its sides, and the wild beasts that roar in its caverns, all contribute to strike the imagination with inexpressible astonishment and awe. While reading the Aeneid is like beholding the Capitoline hill at Rome, on which stood many edifices of exquisite architecture, and whose top was crowned with the famous temple of Jupiter, adorned with the spoils of conquered Greece."

"Truth can never suffer from argument and inquiry; but may be essentally injured by the tyrannous interference of her pretended advocates. Impede her energies by the pains and penalties of law, and, like the Fame of Virgil, she will creep along the ground, diminutive in stature, and shrunk with apprehension: give free scope to all her tendencies, and she will soon collect her might, dilate herself to the fullness of her dimensions, and reach the stars."

"We seem to be in the place of God to them, to be his vice-regents, and empowered to receive homage from them in his name. And we are obliged, by the same tenure, to be their guardians and benefactors."

"With respect to animal diet, let it be considered, that taking away the lives of animals, in order to convert them into food, does great violence to the principles of benevolence and compassion. This appears from the frequent hard-heartedness and cruelty found amongst those persons whose occupations engage them in destroying animal life, as well as from the uneasiness which others feel in beholding the butchery of animals."

"The only one of Lockes successors who attempted,and achieved, any considerable improvement and extension of the analytical part, and thereby added anything to the explanation of the human mind on Locke's principles, was Hartley."

"Some scholars have argued strenuously against the idea that the organization is determined by its situation and have instead asserted that managers have free choice and are thereby to be held morally accountable (Bourgeois 1984; Whittington 1989). Contingency theory appears to some critics to be a managerially convenient ideology that justifies as inevitable organizational characteristics that are not really inevitable, because they are not really required for organizational effectiveness, and that injure the interests of employees (Schreyogg, 1980). Thus contingency theory is opposed by free choice."

"[The model towards which strategic choice analysis led would therefore] direct our attention towards those who possess the power to decide upon an organization’s structural rationale, towards the limits upon that power imposed by the operational context, and towards the process of assessing constraints and opportunities against values in deciding organizational strategies."

"[It was assumed that effective strategic choice required the exercise of power and was therefore an essentially political phenomenon] incorporation of the process whereby strategic decisions are made directs attention onto the degree of choice which can be exercised ... , whereas many available models direct attention exclusively onto the constraints involved. They imply in this way that organizational behaviour can only be understood by reference to functional imperatives rather than to political action."

"Environmental variability...refers to the degree of change which characterizes environmental activities relevant to an organization's operations...it is a function of three components:"

"Strategic alliances are increasingly common, as many organizations look towards various partnering arrangements. This second edition of Strategies of Cooperation extends the first edition's clear and comprehensive survey of strategic alliances. Presenting different disciplinary perspectives (economics, strategy, organization theory) and numerous examples from the corporate world. The text has been thoroughly revised and updated, taking account of new theoretical models, and its coverage of case studies has been extended. It will be ideal for business students and managers alike wishing to understand the challenges of managing alliances."

"This book is concerned with the management of organisational change. It focuses on and provides an in-depth study of change within this famous British company. Cadbury Ltd is famous for its pioneering personnel management. One of the purposes of this study is to assess how this established company ethos facilitated change by examining the development and implementation of a capital investment programme that radically changed working practices at the company's Bournville plant in Birmingham. At a more general level the authors develop a theory of organisational change that emphasises the interaction between external market forces and internal management action. This approach unites an emphasis on the structural parameters that limit a firm's capacity for independent change, with a recognition of the vital role performed by influential members of an organisation in initiating and managing change. This book will be of interest to teachers and students of business history, organisational behaviour, industrial relations and industrial sociology."

"Human resource management (HRM) developed initially from work in the United States of America in the 1960s and 1970s and since the mid 1980s has been an ever more visible feature of the academic literature, of consultancy services and of organisational terminology; particularly in the USA and Great Britain."

"The subject of human resource management (HRM) and its development has been much contested in the literature. Most of the relevant theories originated in the United States of America. There is in the literature no distinctly “European” approach to HRM and, indeed, our knowledge of comparative HRM practices in different European states is limited."

"The ’strategic choice’ perspective was originally advanced as a corrective to the view that the way in which organizations are designed and structured is determined by their operational contingencies (Child 1972). This view overlooked the ways in which the leaders of organizations, whether private or public, were able in practice to influence organizational forms to suit their own preferences. Strategic choice drew attention to the active role of leading groups who had the power to influence the structures of their organizations through an essentially political process. It led to a substantial re-orientation of organizational analysis and stimulated debate on three key issues:"

"Donaldson [is] a leading proponent of ‘sociological positivism’ in the field of organisation studies."

"Within organization studies, contingency theory has provided a coherent paradigm for the analysis of the structure of organizations. The paradigm has constituted a framework in which research progressed leading to the construction of a scientific body of knowledge... Contingency theory states that there is no single organizational structure that is highly effective for all organizations. It sees the structure that is optimal as varying according to certain factors such as organizational strategy or size. Thus the optimal structure is contingent upon these factors which are termed the contingency factors. For example, a small-sized organization, one that has few employees, is optimally structured by a centralized structure in which decision-making authority is concentrated at the top of the hierarchy, whereas a large organization, one that has many employees, is optimally structured by a decentralized structure in which decision-making authority is dispersed down to lower levels of the hierarchy."

"The aim [of positivism in organization studies] is to reveal causal regularities that underlie surface reality."

"Critics of structural contingency theory sometimes argue that it is not sensible for organizations to move into fit with their contingencies, because while the organization is changing its structure to fit the contingencies, the contingencies themselves change, so that the organizational structural change does not produce fit. Nevertheless, by moving towards the fit, the organization is decreasing misfit, and thereby increasing its performance relative to what it would be if it were to make no structural change."

"Some scholars have argued strenuously against the idea that the organization is determined by its situation and have instead asserted that managers have free choice and are thereby to be held morally accountable (Bourgeois 1984; Whittington 1989). Contingency theory appears to some critics to be a managerially convenient ideology that justifies as inevitable organizational characteristics that are not really inevitable, because they are not really required for organizational effectiveness, and that injure the interests of employees *Schreyogg, 1980). Thus contingency theory is opposed by free choice."

"Suppose you want to design the best company on earth to work for. What would it be like? For three years we’ve been investigating this question by asking hundreds of executives in surveys and in seminars all over the world to describe their ideal organization. This mission arose from our research into the relationship between authenticity and effective leadership. Simply put, people will not follow a leader they feel is inauthentic. But the executives we questioned made it clear that to be authentic, they needed to work for an authentic organization."

"Production systems which are technologically the most advanced are also the least adaptable and work to the longest time scale of decision making. These are the process industries (chemical plants, oil refineries and so on) in which vast resources are invested in the creation of a closely programmed and tightly controlled process which will continue to perform the same task over a very long period."

"Highly engaged employees are, on average, 50% more likely to exceed expectations that the least-engaged workers. And companies with highly engaged people outperform firms with the most disengaged folks- by 54% in employee retention, by 89% in customer satisfaction, and by fourfold in revenue growth."

"A company's culture is often buried so deeply inside rituals, assumptions, attitudes, and values that it becomes transparent to an organization's members only when, for some reason, it changes."

"Small businessmen and entrepreneurs came firmly back in fashion when this book was first published in 1980. As the Western economies moved into recession, many governments, particularly Mrs Thatcher’s administration, looked to the entrepreneurial spirit of the small businessman to rejuvenate and revitalise Western society."

"For us, an authentic organization is one in which you can be your best self, you can identify with the organizational purpose, you can understand and trust it. These are the qualities that came through from interviews with individuals working in organizations around the world."

"The number of levels of authority in the management hierarchy increased with technical complexity, while the span of control of the first-line supervisor decreased."

"Our work on leadership encouraged people to “be themselves, more, with skill.” This message has resonated well. But one response has been that people will act authentically when they find themselves in authentic organizations. So our new book answers the question, “what would an authentic organization look like?” We have identified six DREAMS dimensions here:"

"A breakdown of management into its basic functions — development, production and marketing — revealed that the character of the functions, their chronological sequence, the closeness with which they had to be integrated and their relative importance to the success and survival of the business, all depended upon the system of techniques in the firm concerned."

"Those responsible for marketing had to sell, not a product, but the idea that their firm was able to produce what the customer required. The product was developed after the order had been secured, the design being, in many cases, modified to suit the requirements of the customer. In mass production firms, the sequence is quite different: product development came first, then production, and finally marketing."

"As open systems, organizations faced an environment that might be placid and benevolent, or turbulent and harsh. Economic, social, political, and technological changes could come rapidly or slowly, and some organizational arrangements might be better able to cope with the changing environment than others. Could it be that there was no one way to structure an organization that design was influenced by environmental factors and could vary, depending on technology?"

"The ‘fit’ between organisation and technology has long been a theme of interest for academics. A key piece of work in this vein is Joan Woodward’s 1958 report which links the manufacturing set up an organisation operates with not only the structure the organisation adopts but also the way people within the organisation communicate and work together. This work gives a relationship between the organisational world and the technology it deals with, it moves beyond the simple assumption of technological determinism often used in economics that Langlois (2002)refers to, by providing a mechanism."

"For Woodward, the main research question is the following: How and why do industrial organizations vary in structure and why do some structures appear to be associated with greater success for the organizations than others?... In order to analyze this question, Woodward needs to establish a model according to which the companies participating in her study can be categorized. She starts by observing that several people working within this field (incl. Taylor) come from a manufacturing industry background, and that they tend to generalize on this basis. Referring to Dubin (1959) she analyzes different dimensions that can be part of a model used to categorize different companies:"

"There was a particular form of organisation most appropriate to each technical situation."

"Organizational theorists, at least since the pioneering work of Burns and Stalker, 1961 and Joan Woodward, 1965 and others in what came to be called the contingency school, have recognized that centralization is appropriate for organizations with routine tasks, and decentralization for those with nonroutine tasks. For an early statement see Perrow 1967, and Lawrence and Lorch, 1967."

"In some firms role relationships prescribed by the chart seemed to be of secondary importance to personal relationships between individuals."

"As technology advances the entire concept of authority in industry may have to change. In process firms the relationships between superior and subordinate was much more like that between a travel agent and his clients than that between a foreman and operators in mass production. The process foreman's job was to arrange things within limits, set by the plant, which both he and the operators accepted."

"From a legal point of view, an organisation is a legal person. It is legitimised, under the laws of the land, by a legally recognised and binding constitution specifying purpose, procedures to be followed, hierarchical offices to be taken up, authority to be granted, and membership criteria and categories."

"Lewis was a superb historian, probably the last in the line of the Western Orientalists. He educated millions through his books, rather than indoctrinating dozens through his lectures. He got the big questions right, and correctly foresaw the moral and political breakdown of the Islamic world. But when it came to the invasion of Iraq, his professional opinion was wrong. It could have been worse. Most of the time, historians don’t even predict the past correctly."

"Nasr had thought through the question posed after 9/11 by the British American historian Bernard Lewis: “What went wrong?” Lewis saw everything as a clash of civilizations, and it was he who coined that term. He believed that Arab countries were sick: “either we bring them freedom or they destroy us.” If Nasr agreed with Lewis about the decline of Islamic civilization because of intellectual stagnation, the kind that had sent him into exile, he disagreed virulently with the idea that Muslim society was intrinsically retrograde. He saw the way forward very differently: salvation did not have to come from the West. Islam’s transition to modernity would come from within; renewal was possible. He knew it because he was a product of that intellectual journey and was walking in the footsteps of nineteenth-century progressive Salafist thinkers like Muhammad Abduh, those who took inspiration from the wisdom of the prophet’s companions to forge a way forward in the modern world."

"In Europe, the Palestinian question has quietly relegitimated hatred of the Jews. Here we can certainly agree with Bernard Lewis when he says that for many of their supporters, “the Arabs are in truth nothing more than a stick for beating the Jews.”"

"Coming back to Iraq, obviously the situation has been getting worse over time, but I think it is still salvageable. We now have a political process going on, and I think if one looks at the place and what's been happening there, one has to marvel at what has been accomplished. There is an old saying, no news is good news, and the media obviously work on the reverse principle: Good news is no news. Most of the good things that have happened have not been reported, but there has been tremendous progress in many respects. Three elections were held three fair elections in which millions of Iraqis stood in line waiting to vote and knowing they were risking their lives every moment that they did so. And all this wrangling that's going on now is part of the democratic process, the fact that they argue, that they negotiate, that they try to find a compromise. This is part of their democratic education.So I find all this both annoying and encouraging. I see that more and more people are becoming involved in the political process. And there's one thing in Iraq in particular that I think is encouraging, and that is the role of women. Of all the Arab countries, with the possible exception of Tunisia, Iraq is the one where women have made most progress. I'm not talking about rights, a word that has no meaning in that context. I'm talking about opportunity, access. Women in Iraq had access to education, to higher education, and therefore to the professions, and therefore to the political process to a degree without parallel elsewhere in the Arab world, as I said, with the possible exception of Tunisia. And I think that the participation of women the increasing participation of women is a very encouraging sign for the development of democratic institutions."

"[G]enerally speaking, Muslim tolerance of unbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom, until the rise of secularism in the 17th century."

"In the 19th century you had two important events in Europe: the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany, and both of these had a tremendous impact in the Arab world. They saw in this, a model for what they should be able to do, and they tried for a long time to do it. Nasserism is probably the final phase of that movement and, as you know, it failed. Now all the Arab states are independent but no union of Arab states has ever worked. They always fall apart through internal dissension."

"I have not suggested that we should launch an armed attack on Iran. I don't think that's necessary. I don't think we should do anything that would either offend or tickle Iranian national pride. We're doing both at the present time. We're offending them by saying you mustn't have nuclear weapons, and we're tickling them by allowing their leaders to present themselves as defying the mighty West, standing alone and successfully defying the United States. I think that's the wrong way to do it. There are other things that one can do to indicate displeasure and to help those there who want a big change."