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Business process re‐engineering (BPR) promises to transform organizations by fundamentally altering their core processes, thereby achieving radical improvements in performance. As the number of actual re‐engineering projects increases, the rhetoric surrounding BPR has shifted to reflect greater cynicism and discomfort over its claims. In the absence of compelling and trustworthy evidence about the success of BPR projects, critics have exposed logical contradictions within BPR’s “manifesto” for revolutionary change and insinuated that BPR’s utopian rhetoric masks political motives. This paper contributes to this discussion in three ways. First we examine two difficulties affecting the evaluation of BPR programmes: defining what process re‐engineering really is, and determining whether BPR has been applied successfully. Second, we examine four fundamental contradictions inherent in BPR’s analysis of organizations: the fallacy of its “clean‐slate” assumption, the paradox of information technology’s role as an enabler of organizational change, the hypocrisy of employee empowerment, and the irony of employee commitment. Third we propose that such contradictions be addressed in both research and practice by employing theoretical perspectives that are prepared to accommodate contradictory phenomena, in contrast to the simplistic, deterministic logic guiding current investigations of BPR’s effectiveness. We suggest theories of organizational learning and organizational politics to understand and resolve the contradictions embedded within BPR.

This article applies ideas drawn from the work of Archer and Wuthnow to strategic and organizational change in the UK brewing industry from 1950 to 1990. Changes to the management of public houses formed part of the ideology of a group of ‘modernizers’ linked to broader discourses. However, these changes brought in their trail logical entailments that were seized upon by other actors to foster the growth of managerial trade unionism. From Archer are drawn ideas about contradictions between ideas at the level of what she terms the ‘cultural system’ and their relationship to conflict at the sociocultural level. From Wuthnow is taken a focus on processes of the production of culture. These ideas can contribute to broader institutionalist approaches by, in particular, helping to deepen the ‘cultural turn’ and by providing an alternative to the focus on institutional entrepreneurship.

In 1988, Donald Cressey published a previously overlooked article. According to Cressey, there was a lack in the agenda of corporate crime research concerning theory and conceptual precision of what exactly the scientific object was and how it could reinforce the understanding of white-collar criminality. Cressey stated the idea that a fictitious person, such as a corporation, upon which were bestowed properties such as a will of its own (intentions and motivations) and a consciousness to act morally and ethically have a responsibility to follow the order of law, leds to a fundamental theoretical problem in terms of discovering the causes of crimes committed by such a fictitious person. I follow this line of thought about the arguments made by representatives of corporate crime. Specifically, I follow the concept of “decoupling,” by using various techniques of formal logic. The conclusion is that the concept of corporate crime is a logical contradiction (an eternal false statement), but the research has one analytical point which must be incorporated into the research of white-collar criminality: how structural conditions of a corporation’s policy and strategy “produce” or influence the individuals within the corporation to make decisions. The aim of the paper is to prove on logical grounds that the direction of research on corporate crime is on the wrong track to find the truth (basic elements and mechanisms) about white-collar crime.

Using formal logic, specifically modal logic.

The concept “corporate crime” is a logical contradiction.

Concerning the conclusion, the implications has to be that corporate crime is a misleading concept in the research agenda of white-collar crime.

The authors have to reconsider the whole research field of corporate crime research.

To best of my knowledge, no one has before done a critic of corporate crime concept by formal logic.

Kōzō Uno (1897–1977) was a unique Marxist economist in Japan. The Uno's three-stage theory of the capitalist economy, in a certain sense, was a typical framework in the system of Marxist economic theory. But the method in Uno's Principles of Political Economy (“Principles”) is different from Marx's method in “Capital” and systematic critique of political economy. Since Uno rejected a methodological character of “capital in general” in Marx, Uno's “Principles” was a closed system in a circle. The stage theory of capitalistic development, therefore, had no connection with his general theory (“Principles”). Sekisuke Mita (1906–1975) was a severe critic of Uno's methodology. Mita, a Hegelian philosopher, criticized Uno that the methodology of his “Principles” was Hegelism, and pointed out that the method of Uno's stage theory was positivism. Mita not only criticized Uno, but also criticized orthodox views of Marxian economists who had been influenced by Stalinist views. Mita asserted that the rational dialectic in the logic of “Capital” was founded on the analytical method. The central problem is a methodological meaning of the relationship between the universal and the particular. This article describes the points of rational dialectic in the methodology of Marxian political economy, overcoming Hegelism and positivism.

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.

In 1988, Donald Cressey published a previously overlooked article. According to Cressey, there was a lack in the agenda of corporate crime research concerning theory and conceptual precision of what exactly the scientific object was and how it could reinforce our understanding of white-collar criminality. Cressey stated the idea that a fictitious person, like a corporation, upon which were bestowed properties such as a will of its own (intentions and motivations) and a consciousness to act morally and ethically have a responsibility to follow the order of law, leads to a fundamental theoretical problem in terms of discovering the causes of crimes committed by such a fictitious person. I follow this line of thought about the arguments made by representatives of corporate crime. Specifically, I follow the concept of “decoupling”, by using various techniques of formal logic. The conclusion is that the concept of corporate crime is a logical contradiction (an eternal false statement), but the research has one analytical point which must be incorporated into the research of white-collar criminality: how structural conditions of a corporation’s policy and strategy “produce” or influence the individuals within the corporation to make decisions.

This paper is a research paper based on the technic of formal logic. The design of this research is sentence and modal logic.

The concept of corporate crime is logically a contradiction. Thereby it has no value in the research agenda of white-collar criminality.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, no one has done a formal logical analysis based on modal logic to investigate the consistence of the concept corporate crime.

Questions whether the planned European Monetary Union is capable of solving the social economic challenges of our time. Examines the economic and financial history of modern times; explains the formulation of the impossibility theorem in practice, suggesting the equation of unified knowledge as a solution to the problem of economic calculation; and constructs a plan for a free and stable European Monetary and Economic Union. Looks at the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty (1992) questioning its ability to solve the basic problems of the member states of the European Union. Addresses a number of issues contained within the Treaty: acceptable socially beneficial goals; unacceptable socially harmful, adverse anti‐equilibrium means, policies, reforms and regulations; and the phenomenon of physics’ ‘chain reaction’ within economics. Gives a synopsis of anti‐equilibrium elements and forces in the Treaty of Maastricht, debating what needs to be done to ensure that European Monetary and Economic Union can become an immediate and lasting success.

In section II.1, “The Three Dimensions of Space”, it was argued that logical space comprised a “thought unit” of three dimensions, and it was then shown why natural space should consist of three dimensions as well. The attempt to provide a logically complete definition for the concept of time indicated that this too was to be viewed as a logical space of three dimensions. This raises the question of “how natural space and time are to be conceptually united in order to become intuitively perceptible from an operationist point of view”.

The purpose of this chapter is to develop a new perspective model of well-balanced information economy.

The methodological tools of this work are based on application of the method of comparative analysis for comparing the old and the new model of information economy, modeling of socio-economic systems, simplex-method as an algorithm for solving the optimization task of linear programming, related to improvement of the conceptual model of information economy, and the method of formalization for graphical presentation of a new model of information economy.

The developed and presented author’s perspective model of information economy envisages balancing in four main directions: infrastructural possibilities and readiness for their practical usage by society and business; state regulation and market self-management; existing and new information; and external information exchange. Despite the clarity and strictness of conceptual settings, the new model is peculiar for increased flexibility and adaptation to the peculiarities of the socio-economic practice of economic system. Thus, the new model of well-balanced information economy allows overcoming all drawbacks – logical mismatches and contradictions – of the existing (old) model of information economy.

Due to optimization of the conceptual model, its practical implementation in economic activities of modern socio-economic systems becomes possible – as a result of which, with accumulation of experience, it will be possible to assess true value of the idea of information economy’s formation for humanity and the global economic system.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.