Search results

The issue of accountability in the federal government’s acquisition process has been the topic of much discussion and investigation. While few argue that accountability is unimportant, it remains largely unexplored in the context of the acquisition process. This paper seeks to examine the acquisition process in some detail, and analyze the role of accountability in that process. We conclude with some broader observations about accountability in federal acquisition, and directions for future research.

Some of Lou Pondy′s closest colleagues were invited to submit letters and articles, as a starting point for this special issue. Many letters were received from leading scholars at some of the most respected institutions in the world, capturing Lou′s human qualities and his unique analytic style. A selection of these letters are included here.

Despite over two decades of crack use in the UK, there is little UK‐focused research and little understanding of the social context of crack use and health‐related risks. This is of concern because research in the UK suggests that service provision for crack users is inadequate. Research also suggests that there are high attrition rates of crack users in drug support services. Based on data collected in 2004/2005, this paper will examine how crack cocaine users start using crack, what happens over time, and where they end up as a consequence ‐ the crack scene. Many become mistrustful because of the manipulative and violent interactions that take place in these spaces. This is not helped when crack users reflect on past mistakes, which only results in increased crack use. As practical and health issues become too problematic, ways out, too, become more difficult. In addition, many find it difficult to place trust in welfare and drug support services because of negative past experiences, and feel ashamed about past failures in treatment. Taken together, I will also show how this is not helped by the configuration of drug support services.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Espouses the Web with regard to the media and all its areas of relevance. Encourages and supports multinational forms of production as new but admits they may be no more sympathetic to social need and democratic practice than previous commercial media. Charts the market and the Web’s changes for commercial business.

Studies highlighting negative behavioral influences of Machiavellians are plentiful; however, those prescribing their management are scarce. Machiavellians are intelligent, adaptable and resourceful people with negative, self-serving and unethical persona traits. Their abundance in organizations poses a challenge for managers in minimizing negative consequences of Machiavellian's manipulative behaviors and tap into their true potential. Leadership can play a crucial role in this regard. This purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effects of transformational leadership (TFL) versus transactional leadership (TSL) styles on the relationship between subordinates' Machiavellianism and their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). The aim was to highlight the style that better adept in managing high-Mach subordinates.

This cross-sectional study used multiple surveys administered to 90 managers and their 269 subordinates from 56 organizations. Multiple regression was used for testing and hypothesize linear and supplementary nonlinear relationships between the study variables.

After a detailed data analysis, authors posit that, as compared to TFL, the TSL style is better suited for managing Machiavellian subordinates.

By employing transactional tactics, leaders can reign in the divergent behavior of Machiavellians, thus, transforming them into useful organizational assets.

This study expands on limited body of knowledge on managing Machiavellians. It advocates using TSL for improving the OCB of Machiavellians while countering their CWBs. Furthermore, this study contributes to transactional/transformational theories as it lends credence to the situational theory of leadership.

Strategic option generation is a fundamental step in strategy formulation. Several lenses have been proposed to explain its foundations, including the microeconomics positioning school, and the resource and capabilities based view of the firm. These approaches are largely based on inductive and deductive logics, which are not the logics that provide strategic options that are potentially novel, profitable, and largely differentiated from competitive offerings. In this chapter, we propose a unifying framework of the cognitive foundations of strategic option generation. Building on five fundamental cognitive acts – imitation, framing, analogical reasoning, abductive reasoning, and mental simulation, this proposed model both synthesizes the extant literature and provides guidance about promising avenues for future theoretical and empirical research.

Daring to challenge the status quo impacts innovation. Yet, successful outcomes depend on individual risk-taking and choice to influence others to support new ideas. This Challenging the Status Quo exercise illustrates how leaders use power and influencing tactics to challenge norms by analyzing Donald Trump’s journey as the 45^th U.S. President to defy experts and successfully influence followers to support his non-traditional candidacy: businessman lacking political experience becoming leader of the free world. Through integrating videoclips and polls, instructors make power visible, relevant, and thought-provoking as students apply power theory and influencing tactics perspectives to analyze (a) how leaders impact followers’ perceptions, (b) students mutual-influencing strategies, (c) power’s relationship with social identity and privilege, and (d) social impact on innovation via activism and free speech.

The history of economics has often been described as the “history of economic thought.” In this essay, I explore an alternative perspective that builds on the French tradition of historical epistemology and treats economics as a social practice. I argue that a practice-based view provides a more philosophically robust conception of historiography and a richer field of investigation for historians of economics.