Search results

W. Ross Ashby’s elementary non-trivial machine, known in the cybernetic literature as the “Ashby Box,” has been described as the prototypical example of a black box system. As far as it can be ascertained from Ashby’s journal, the intended purpose of this device may have been to exemplify the environment where an “artificial brain” may operate. This paper describes the construction of an elementary observer/controller for the class of systems exemplified by the Ashby Box – variable structure black box systems with parallel input.

Starting from a formalization of the second-order assumptions implicit in the design of the Ashby Box, the observer/controller system is synthesized from the ground up, in a strictly system-theoretic setting, without recourse to disciplinary metaphors or current theories of learning and cognition, based mainly on guidance from Heinz von Foerster’s theory of self-organizing systems and W. Ross Ashby’s own insights into adaptive systems.

Achieving and maintaining control of the Ashby Box requires a non-trivial observer system able to use the results of its interactions with the non-trivial machine to autonomously construct, deconstruct and reconstruct its own function. The algorithm and the dynamical model of the Ashby Box observer developed in this paper define the basic specifications of a general purpose, unsupervised learning architecture able to accomplish this task.

The problem exemplified by the Ashby Box is fundamental and goes to the roots of cybernetic theory; second-order cybernetics offers an adequate foundation for the mathematical modeling of this problem.

Foreign divestment (FD) has often different roles such as being a corporate diversification strategy, and of such divestment may have effects on a company’s image and reputation. Ongoing businesses trends including internationalization, deregulation and diversification have forced executives to exploit image and reputation as strategic corporate resources, which make them the target of a firm’s active management. The paper aims at developing the understanding of the framing techniques of discursive legitimation and of the strategies used by companies when signalizing their FD decision.

To examine the framing strategies used by companies to legitimize their FD decisions, the authors used the case study methodology using a critical discursive analysis. Using companies’ press releases regarding FD of Western multinational companies (MNCs), the authors examined for the specific frame used in each release. After identification through initial coding, the dominant frames were recognized by recording patterns in technique, content, themes, patterns of keywords, quotes and semantic method.

This study demonstrated that legitimation is an integral part of framing press release. Companies framing of their FD decisions can be interpreted as an attempt to not only prevent negative repercussion from stakeholders but also to legitimize the FD decisions to protect the company’s image and reputation.

By examining the elements of FD press releases, the authors uncovered the microelements of the framing techniques used by MNCs to legitimize their decision.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the role of informal economic relations (IER) in the day-to-day working of organizations, thereby opening a way to theorizing and informed practice. The authors will present and discuss about the manifestation of informality in “everyday” reality of Soviet and transformation economies. Informed by Cultural theory and in particular the work of Gerald Mars, the authors are taking account ontologically and methodologically of Labour process theory.

Through presentation of ethnographic data of detailed accounts and case vignettes in production and retail in the Soviet period of the late 1970s and 1980s and from the construction sector in contemporary Russia, with a focus on the labour process, the authors inform and discuss key processes in the informal working of organizations.

In the Soviet system the informal economy co-existed in symbiosis with the formal command economy, implicitly adopting a “live and let live” attitude. In addition, informal relations were essential to the working of work organizations, sustaining workers’ “negative control” and bargaining power. contemporary Russian capitalism, while embracing informal economic activities, a legacy of the Soviet period, advocates an “each to his own” approach which retains the flexibility but not the bargaining space for employees. That facilitates exploitation, particularly of the most vulnerable workers, with dire consequences for the work process.

The paper provides a platform for theorizing about the role and place of IER in organizations. Of importance to managerial practice, the paper informs on those aspects of the work routine that remain hidden from view and are often excluded from academic discourse. The social implications are profound, shedding light on central issues such as recruitment, income distribution, health and safety and deregulated forms of employment.

The paper examines economic behaviour under different economic-political regimes demonstrating continuities and changes during a fundamental social-economic reorientation of an important regional economy, through close observation at the micro and meso-level of, respectively, the workplace, organizations and industry, outlining theoretical, practical and social implications.