T0Morrow@aol.com wrote:
> Tastes differ. I read the first two books for the Mars trilogy and--a rarity,
> for me--decided against reading the last. While I enjoyed the hard sci-fi
> approach to the mega-scale engineering issues, I found Robinson's grasp of
> social institutions utterly implausible. In particular, his weakness in
> matters economic fairly well ruined the story line for me. A planet-wide
> barter system? One based on gifting? Feh. Perhaps not every sci-fi author
> needs to master the basics of economics, but those who, like Robinson, tackle
> the topic need to get it right.
Feh on yourself too and while you're at it beware of this much:
I have not read Robinson and so don't know why you feel he needs to fill in such mundane basics that us other real world plodders have to deal with, but as one who wrote and developed amongst the best J.I.T. (MRP-II) systems in the world during the 70s & 80s for many companies like General Electric, General Mills, etc., I regard myself as an expert in these areas which you seek to obfuscate. However, not only do I now consider money in all its guises to have too many socially problematic properties but can hardly remember using it even back then for planning purposes.
In laying claim to the concept that economics does not ultimately have to revolve around the simplicities of price as exists in the present day malthusian monetary systems, I am now actively planning to introduce ubiquitous transaction automatacapsids which will include subjective valuations and which may be optionally used instead of money for those that wish so to do. Peoples' right to transact using these plasticized neural nets will likely continue so long as their components aren't irreparably destabilized. Scandinavian countries look to be among the first to adopt these types of analytic network tools and are initially providing for non authoritarian government behavior as shown in the following abstract from a colleague of mine who shares these mutual interests in work science.
If you subject all government and opposition voices and ideology to a arbitrary medium such as Ingrid analysis software, governments won't waste resources in time time wasting confrontation. For example in Scandinavia, governments manage an extensive social and economic program which results in world beating growth by subjecting both government and opposition policy to Ingrid style software.
Combining Qualitative Interviews and Repertory Grid-technique in Leadership Studies
Introduction and objective. Organizational culture can be viewed as the construction and deconstruction of mutual meanings. Since actors in asymmetric power relations have unequal possibilities to influence how reality is defined, it is of interest to relate organizational culture to power and leadership (1). The objective of this paper is to describe a combination of methods, which can be used as an alternative approach to the traditional leadership research. A research area which has been criticised for being dominated by positivistic and neo-positivistic assumptions and a concentration on rules and procedures (1).The alternative research approach, being situational and reflexive, is well suited for revealing the rationalities, which according to Eriksen (2), are especially important for the understanding of leadership in public sector organizations.
Method. Possible advantages are outlined, regarding different combinations of qualitative interviews and Repertory Grid-technique (4) (5), in order to enable insight in managers social constructions (3) and personal constructs (4) related to leadership and organizations. The salient features for these methods are: 1) Qualitative interviews are used in order to obtain deep and varied descriptions of phenomena in the organisation from the managers, their interpretation of these phenomena in relation to the existing structures in the organisation and their descriptions of their own actions in relation to these interpretations. 2) Repertory Grid-techniques are used for obtaining either the managers or, which can be of particular interest when conducting a Grounded Theory study, the researchers (5) personal constructs.
Discussion and Conclusions. It is suggested that a combined use of qualitative interviews and Repertory Grid-techniques (7) might be fruitful in leadership studies, to enable the formulating of an interpretative, local and non-authoritarian theory, where qualitative rigor is possible to obtain through an interpreting, as well as, theoretical awareness and sensitivity.