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The article reports the author's opinions regarding a paper written by Colonel Urwick. While the author found many of Urwick's statements about the work "Papers in the Science of Administration" to be valid, he found some of them to be misleading. Topics of discussion include organizational structure, organizational behavior, business size, and the diffusion of technological innovations.

Comments on an article about slavery and technological change. Classes of technical progress; Response of slaves to technological innovations.

Comments on several articles about the evolution and diffusion of technological devices. Analogy between the evolution of a technological device and Darwinian evolution; Factors that affect technology and Darwin's natural environment.

The article presents abstracts of management literature. They include "Administration and Economic Development in India," edited by Ralph Braibanti and Joseph J. Spengler, "Automation and Technological Change," edited by John T. Dunlop, and "The Business Representative in Washington," by Paul W. Cherington and Ralph L. Gillen.

The article presents a critique by Philip Sporn of the papers concerning "The Control of Science for Civil Needs" written by Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Myron Tribus, Daniel C. Drucker, and Alan Mencher. The papers all express faith in science and technology in solving mankind's problems. Although science and technology has contributed to economic and political upliftment, man also mistrusts it, given that science may also become an instrument in the annihilation of mankind. The tragedy is that science, technology and big business have diverted man from ethical and moral imperatives.

The article presents the paper on analyzing questions of social control and direction of the technological and scientific revolution which was discussed at the conference titled "The Control of Science for Civil Needs" at a Northwestern University Colloquium on April 12-13, 1971. The paper focuses on the impact of technological innovations on the structure of the government. The author points out that the amount of power that the technological revolution has created far exceeds the capability of even the most inspired, dedicated or brilliant leaders to control that power unaided.

This paper presents the Matrix model of organizational analysis and a partial empirical test of its descriptive validity. The model, concerned with the impact of technology and personal discretion on organization structure, offers a series of propositions about task-unit differentiation and integration. Two major propositions provide the focus of the empirical section of this paper: (1) task units become increasingly autonomous from the administrative system as the structural design moves from the Routine to Heuristic organizational strategy; and (2) task unit members become increasingly autonomous from supervision as the structural design moves from Routine to Heuristic. Data from 828 task units generated from 18 attitude survey items are used to test the first proposition; the data support the proposition, and modifications of the model are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The explanation of organizational structure has always been an important issue to administrative theorists. This paper investigates the structure of manufacturing operations and therefore starts from the premise that technological factors are most crucial. One current approach to structure and technology, comparative analysis, has studied the overall context but at a highly aggregative level. The "constituent" approach, on the other hand, has investigated intraorganizational relationships but at the expense of empirically verifiable theory. We develop a heuristic computer model capable of testing existing constituent theories. The model uses work flow data as technological inputs and produces a structural configuration as output. It employs administrative rules (based on Thompson's propositions for structuring the technical core) to convert inputs into outputs. The inputs, outputs, and rules are formally represented using list processing concepts. Operationalizing the formal concepts has been satisfactorily explored in a pilot study of a small manufacturing firm. Testing existing constituent theory is just the initial phase of this project. It is possible to develop new structural theory for the technical core and the rest of the organization, and to engage in a form of comparative analysis to judge the effects of varying contexts. Moreover, the fact that a structural configuration is produced implies utility in the area of design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although science and business are distinct, the operations of businesses produce data of scientific interest, and businessmen are willing to pay scientists to answer certain kinds of questions. On the other hand, scientists working on their own initiative discover things which business can profitably use. Thus, both for the economy and for science, there exist autonomous changes and induced changes. It requires care in formulation to avoid imprecision in thinking. Research, as used in the paper, will refer only to a flow of new statements about the natural world. Invention, as used in the paper, consists of a flow of prototypes of articles which have never been made before, or processes which have never been used before. Development, as used in the paper, means a flow of instructions which enable the construction and equipment industries to build fixed plant of kinds never used before and also enable the personnel of these plants to operate them when finished. It may also make it possible to use existing fixed plant to make articles unlike those they had hitherto made.

This section presents abstracts of research and articles on price and allocation theory, income and employment theory and history of economic thought. S. Ahmad evaluates the idea that change in the relative price of the factors may lead to an induced bias in invention in the paper, On the Theory of Induced Invention. Ahmad uses the concept of the innovation possibility curve for examining Professor Charles Kennedy's conclusion that the influence of the relative shares of the factors on inventions, tends to bring about a constancy of the relative shares in the long run. Meanwhile, R. Anspach's paper, The General Incompatibility of the Traditional Consumer Equilibrium with Economic Rationality--an Exploratory Analysis, demonstrates through classical utility analysis that once this assumption is discarded the traditional consumer equilibrium is normally incompatible with rational behavior. In Notes on the Theory of Second Best, author L. Athanasiou suggest that a genuine second constraint may not exist in general; which casts serious doubts on the existence, in general, of second best solutions. Further, implementing a second best may, in the long-run tend to propagate imperfections, leading to a poorer and poorer optimum possible.

This paper examines research on the diffusion of innovation, the final stage in the process of technological change. The focus rests primarily on two traditions in diffusion research: that of economists and that of sociologists. Diffusion researchers in these and related disciplines have made significant contributions to the understanding of the dynamics of processes of change; yet the state of the art in diffusion research is not equal to the sum of its parts. This is due in large measure to disciplinary parochialism: scholars have concentrated on those innovations, diffusion environments, explanatory variables, and analytical methodologies which are most compatible with their particular disciplines, despite the fact that diffusion is not a discipline-specific phenomenon. Deficiencies in current understanding of diffusion are examined in the context of this and other significant problems. The paper concludes by considering the policy relevance of diffusion research and suggesting issues with which future research might productively be concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of Paul T. David on the paper related to competition in air transport written by Kent T. Healy. According to David, the first half of Healy's paper is an analysis in terms of input-output factors, while the second is concerned mainly with geographic patterns, homogeneity of markets geographically, and the question of the optimum number of competing carriers in a single market. This order of analysis might possibly have been reversed with some advantage, since the input-output factors acquire competitive importance mainly within the framework of geographic relationships. Commenting on professor Healy's paper, he says that he found it most stimulating. He was particularly glad to see the emphasis upon the need for a sufficient number of air transport enterprises to provide full scope for innovation and fresh talent. The tendency abroad has been in the opposite direction. For this and other reasons, the problem of establishing workable conditions of competition on the international air routes is full of special complexities and will continue to present major difficulties.

The article presents the paper on analyzing questions of social control and direction of the technological and scientific revolution which was discussed at the conference titled "The Control of Science for Civil Needs" at a Northwestern University Colloquium on April 12-13, 1971. The paper focuses on the ability of engineers to take control of the technological innovation and scientific revolution. The author points out that the mind of man augmented by machines has capabilities of far more than has yet been accomplished, given adequate financial and moral encouragement.

The article presents the paper on analyzing questions of social control and direction of the technological and scientific revolution which was discussed at the conference titled "The Control of Science for Civil Needs" at a Northwestern University Colloquium on April 12-13, 1971. The paper focuses on the leadership issues on technological innovations and scientific revolution. The author points out that the discussion of technology assessment needs to be broadened to consider the subject of control of technology.

The article presents the paper on analyzing questions of social control and direction of the technological and scientific revolution which was discussed at the conference titled "The Control of Science for Civil Needs" at a Northwestern University Colloquium on April 12-13, 1971. The paper focuses on the application of science in the society. The author points out that science-based technology is one of the great creative form of the generation. The author argues that a basic research is a natural resource, just as agriculture and mineral deposits are, and as important to the public concern as military security, education and the management of the economy.

Substantial organizational modifications are taking place in a number of areas of process related industries where, as in steel production, many features of the newer technologies are incorporated. This paper reports on some of the managerial manpower implications arising out of a series of innovations and improvements in a steel production unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important developments on the industrial scene in the past decade has been the advancement in information technology. Probably no other time in history has been characterized by such a rapid rate of technological progress in information processing as that observed during this period. Today, there are more than 15,500 electronic data processing systems of various sizes operating in the United States, and continuous installations in business firms of more electronic computers are expected in the future. The wide-spread application of electronic data processing has made an impact upon many phases of management organizations. In many concerns operational procedures, the organizational structure, the flow of managerial information, the distribution of manpower, and the work content of jobs have been radically changed or altered in some manner. This paper reports a study on one of these areas of change, namely, the effects of the newer information technology upon the distribution of clerical and managerial manpower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of articles related to the history and trends of marketing appearing in various periodicals. Articles abstracted include "Marketing Innovations: Inventions, Techniques, Institutions," by Paul D. Converse, appearing in the June 1965 issue of "New Directions in Marketing," "Innovation in Marketing Research," by A. B. Blankenship, appearing in the June 1965 issue of "New Directions in Marketing," and "The Stanford Report Analyzes the Marketplace of the Future," by Margaret Edin, appearing in the September 27, 1965 issue of "Merchandising Week."

In this article, the author presents a reply to the criticism of his paper "Usher and Schumpeter on Invention, Innovation, and Technological Change," published in the November 1959 issue of "Quarterly Journal of Economics." Researcher Paul R. Schweitzer calls for a broader concept of technological change in his comment on the author's paper. He argues that to define technological change in terms of a change in the coefficients of a production function excludes most of the changes in productive techniques actually occurring. The author argues that the term technology refers to the body or stock of techniques, procedures, or ways of conducting economic activity. The level of technology can be conceptualized in terms of a production surface or meta-production function. Technological change can then be viewed as a change in one or more parameters of this surface resulting from the addition of new production techniques to the existing stock. Even in the absence of technological change a shift toward equilibrium factor and product combinations will result in a rise in output per unit of input while a shift away from the equilibrium combination will result in a decline in output per unit of input.

The subject of automation in business has had extended coverage in the business press during recent months. Electronics has also captured the imagination of marketing men, but the areas for automation have not been clearly defined. This article answers some important questions and gives specific results that have been obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with conceptual and empirical aspects of (a) the magnitude of resource flows between the agricultural and nonagricultural sectors under various conditions of economic growth; (b) the changing role of economic and institutional devices in transferring resources among sectors; and (c) the relationship between such resource flows and technological change in the agricultural sector. Detailed comparisons are made for Taiwan and India, while brief note is taken of the experience of Japan, Britain, and France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the organizational problems that are inherent in the integration of innovation-producing activities come to light in the form of difficulties experienced in achieving implementation of output. Such difficulties are common not only in operations research but in most forms of innovative activity, among them R&D. Growing out of the work that has been pursued at Northwestern in research programs on both the R&D process and the management of operations research/management science (OR/MS) activities, this paper examines the systemic causes of such implementation problems. We have hypothesized that the environment in which innovative activity is carried on is an important determinant of the mode and effectiveness of project implementations. Specifically, we have considered how goal operationality differences, such as may be found between government and business organizations, will influence the strategic behavior of the managers of innovative groups. The data in this paper come primarily from our OR/MS studies in approximately one hundred United States business and government organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the adequacy of natural resource supplies to support an indefinite continuation of high rates of economic growth in advanced industrial economies. This paper is inspired by a recent spate of apocalyptic literature purporting to show that natural resource constraints impose an insuperable obstacle to such growth. The author suggests that this extreme pessimism is unwarranted because it attaches insufficient weight to an impressive array of adaptive mechanisms through which a market economy responds to shifting patterns of resource scarcity. Most important, he argues that technological change is, in the long run, the most powerful mechanism of response. The purpose of the author's recourse to history is to provide some insight into the manner in which economies possessed of a high degree of technological versatility have adapted to changing patterns of resource scarcities. The author notes that arguments drawn from the past history of countries which have demonstrated a high degree of technological innovativeness are not likely to be directly applicable to countries where such skills and talents have been notably lacking. The author believes that history can an insuperable obstacle to such growth.

This article focuses on a paper by economist Joseph S. Berliner. Berliner has constructed several indices which he uses to compare the efficiency of the Soviet Union relative to the U.S. However, it may be misleading to refer to these measures as indices of relative efficiency, since what they measure is already well known in the context of time series analysis as the difference in total productivity. This measure of relative efficiency throws little light on the question of traditional allocative efficiency. Improved resource allocation may have the same effect as improved technology on the productivity of inputs, but the measure does not allow to separate the effects of resource allocation from other influences on the quality of inputs, including the embodiment of technology. Finally, turning to the topic of static efficiency, it is worth while considering how one might measure the extent of resource misallocation in the Soviet Union. Efficient allocation implies the adjustment of all factors to underlying rates of return, net of differences in risk, so the measurement of resource misallocation involves measuring the extent to which observed factor returns exhibit persistent differences from average returns as well as estimating the amount of reallocation which would be required to bring these returns to equality.

This paper concentrates on the role of the industrial sector. The growth of industrial employment opportunities and output depends mainly on the strength of two forces, capital accumulation and technological change. The greater the rate of capital accumulation, the greater the rate of expansion of industrial employment and output. Moreover, in an economy with substantial surplus labor, innovations can also make significant contributions in the same directions, especially if they are sufficiently strong and are biased in the labor using direction thus making possible maximum use of the relatively abundant factor. If the combined forces of capital accumulation and innovation yield a rate of labor reallocation in excess of the rate of population growth, the economy may be considered to be successful in the development effort in the sense that the center of gravity is continuously shifted towards the industrial sector. As this process continues, the underdeveloped economy will sooner or later exhaust its surplus labor and reach a significant turning point in the development process. The aim of this paper is to examine carefully the role of industrial capital accumulation and technological change during the development process.

The article highlights that there are few areas of economic statistics in which progress is needed more and would be more valuable than in the measurement of capital. Capital measures are essential for analysis of investment demand, factor prices and inputs, production functions, and productivity. They are thus requisite to empirical study of economic fluctuations and growth generally and as a background for stabilization policy and development planning. The article focuses on various aspects of capital theory that are relevant to capital measurement. It also critically examines the false paths that have been taken in the direction of quantification. In an annexure to this paper are set forth some positive suggestions for solution of several of the major problems confronting the statistician who seeks to measure capital as a weighted aggregate stock. The alternative measures discussed in the paper show that the same rates of change in a hypothetical state of competitive equilibrium exists, with perfect knowledge, with technology and tastes constant, assuming proportionate and steady growth of the real capital stock and labor force. As soon as technological progress is introduced, the measures diverge.

The article presents a critical discussion by the author on two papers by Irving H. Seigel and W. Rupert Maclaurin about technological progress and it measurement. The author warns the reader about Maclaurin's potentially dangerous assertion that technological progressiveness cannot be correlated directly with monopoly or bigness. Maclaurin concedes that some degree of monopoly is essential to technological progress. Maclaurin's paper is a signal contribution to the study of innovation in selected industries. It is a commendable venture into an essentially unexplored field. The author's main criticism of the paper is its de-emphasis of policy considerations. In microeconomics there has been in the past, too much emphasis on price competition, for in the absence of technological change there are very, very narrow numerical limits to price reduction by the firms. By contrast, as a consequence of process innovation, the reduction of unit cost and price may be numerically very large indeed.

The article presents discussions by economists on some papers that are published in the May 1, 1953 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author in this article discusses economist Yale Brozen's paper, which covered many aspects of the study of the direction of technological change. The author states that his systematic presentation set the matter in clear perspective. The blend of economic analysis with supporting illustrative data, presented by Brozen, is convincing. The author also states that his remarks largely involve qualifications that he would add to the discussion or matters on which he would place a somewhat different emphasis. The author's comments cover three principal points. The first of these concern Brozen's conclusion that technological change is largely endogenous within the economic system and that, perhaps, economists should incorporate technological change as an endogenous variable in their models. This conclusion could come, in part, from the use of a concept of technological change, which includes both the introduction of known but previously unused techniques when factor supplies become favorable and the development of entirely new techniques. The selection of the best combination of factors from the production function in the light of relative factor costs is, of course, entirely an economic matter and as Brozen implies, has for a long time been a part of economic models.

The present paper reports tests of several propositions linking the degree of urbanization, the division of labor, the dispersion of objects of consumption, and the level of technological development. The propositions provide a basis for deducing a direct relationship between urbanization and dispersion of objects of consumption. The propositions were tested with data for 45 countries. The percentage of the population residing in metropolitan areas was used as a measure of urbanization, an original measure of the diversification of industry was used as a gauge of division of labor, the per capital consumption of energy was taken as a measure of technological development, and an original measure of the dispersion of external resources was utilized. The degree of relationship was measured by the coefficient of rank-difference correlation. Positive results were obtained for all tests of the propositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents discussions on the economic effects of war worldwide. Professor John U. Nef presented papers on the effects of war on technology. According to him, the years of peace in the late fifteenth century were especially rich in technological achievements in Italy, the Low Countries and above all in the Rhineland, Germany, and Central Europe. This was a barren period for technological improvement in England, where the bitterly fought Wars of the Roses lasted from 1455 to 1485. The late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries were a time of bitter and almost continuous warfare on the continent, a time of virtually complete domestic peace in Great Britain. Professor Wesley C. Mitchell discussed the effects of the Civil War on prices, wages, and the distribution of income. According to him, the American dollar lost two-thirds of its value in gold within two and a half years under the greenback standard and then climbed unsteadily back to gold parity over a period of fourteen and a half years. The Civil War gave Americans for seventeen years a dollar exceedingly unstable in relation to gold.

The rapid rate of technological development and the growing complexity of society in recent years have brought renewed awareness of the importance of higher education. The rapid expansion of higher education, both in size and quality, requires systematic approaches and dynamic planning for efficient resource allocation on the part of the university administrators. This paper presents a goal programming model for an optimum allocation of resources in an institution of higher learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent papers have introduced specific input variables in unrestricted Cobb-Douglas functions to define production relationships and obtain measures of technological change for industries and sector classifications. In a similar manner this paper incorporates the engineering, economic, and time aspects of the production process for the computer industry in several statistical models. The purpose of the study is to illustrate that technological change can be accounted for by specific innovations of the industry and that these measures can serve as measures of capital embodied technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a report of a study of innovation of consumer nondurable products. A simple hypothesis about consumer behavior in short run, nonequilibrium situations is presented. Following classical economic methodology, the behavior of individuals is then aggregated. This aggregate equation form is tested and shown to be not rejected by the data. The effect of marketing actions of the firm upon consumer behavior is also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the abstracts of several papers on economics published in the March-April 1965 issue of the journal "Revue d'É conomie Politique." The first paper of the journal "Research in Industry," by Michèle Fardeau, studies the outstanding features of Research and Development performed in France in 1963, by public and private enterprises. The second article of the journal is "Relative Impacts of Final Demand and of Technological Change on the Disparities of Growth Between Sectors in France Between 1950 and 1963," by Pierre Maillet. It opines that the disparities of growth between sectors are the results of two factors: change of structure of final demand and change of technology. Using the matrix of the technical coefficients of 1959 for France, and the structure of final demand for 1950 and 1963, the effect of change of this structure on the growth of each sector was computed under the assumption of fixed technology. The third article of the journal is "Financial and Accounting Aspects of Research in Firms," by G. Depallens.

This section presents abstracts of studies on economics which were published in the 1964 volume 74, issue 2, of Revue D'Economie Politique. The paper titled Liquidity, the Rate of Interest and the Saving-Investment-Liquidity-Decisions, by Emil. M. Claassen, shows that the liquidity calcul in connection with the rate of interest operates on the margin as well as the household's liquidity and saving decisions as of the firm's liquidity and investment decisions. The paper titled Technical Progress and Decentralization, by Louis Reboud, defines technological progress as being indicative of the progress of productivity and shows that decentralization comprises the decentralization of economic activity and also the power of decision-making.

The article provides information about a paper that reports on an empirical and theoretical study of the determinants of innovation in the machine tool industry in the U.S. as of August 1957. The hypothesis developed in this paper is that both the introduction of new machine tools and the timing of their introduction can be understood as a planned attempt on the part of the machine tool firm to increase demand for its product. Because of the importance of the existing stock of machine tools on the demand for machine tools, the machine tool firm can influence the demand for its own product primarily by introducing new designs in an attempt to render existing machines obsolete. The article suggests that there is a most profitable rate of introduction of new designs. It informs that the American machine tool industry is a relatively small industry. Seldom has the total annual value of shipments been greater than one month's sales. Only in periods of war or cold war have shipments been greater than a billion dollars. In 1950 shipments of machine tools were valued at only $305 million.