The Science of "Muddling Through"

The Science of Author: Charles E. Lindblom
Publisher: Irvington Publishers
ISBN: 9780829035049
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description

The Science of "Muddling Through"

The Science of Author: Charles E. Lindblom
Publisher: Irvington Publishers
ISBN: 9780829035049
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description


Muddling Through

Muddling Through PDF Author: Michael Fortun
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1887178481
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Messy. Clumsy. Volatile. Exciting. These words are not often associated with the sciences, which for most people still connote exactitude, elegance, reliability, and a rather plodding certainty. But the real story is something quite different. The sciences are less about the ability to know and to control than they are about the unleashing of new forces, new capacities for changing the world. The sciences as practiced exist not in some pristine world of “objectivity,” but in what Mike Fortun and Herb Bernstein call “the muddled middle.” This book explores the way science makes sense of the world and how the world makes sense of science. It is also about politics and culture--how these forces shape the sciences and are shaped by it in turn. Think of Muddling Through as the basic text for a new kind of literacy project, a project to re-imagine the sciences as complex operations of language, action, and thought--as attempts, trials, limited experiments. The sciences provide us with the images and metaphors we apply to myriad situations and phenomena, and create the blueprints we use to make and legitimate crucial social decisions. If democracies are to meet the challenge of the ever more critical world-making role of the sciences, they must fundamentally shift their attention and their attitudes. The quest for social or political mastery of the sciences will have to end; the new journey will begin with a trip to the muddled middle. Travel then, with historian Fortun and physicist Bernstein from the workshops of fifteenth-century England to a present-day quantum physics laboratory. Stop at a military toxic waste dump, a courtroom, a colony of baboons. Along the way you might shed your faith in pure inquiry, see the limits of value-free rationality, and breath the fresh air of change.

No More Muddling Through

No More Muddling Through PDF Author: Rainer Züst
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402050186
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Sustainable solutions require the integration of social and ecological aspects in every planning and decision-making process. This book explains the most important principles and elements of Systems Engineering and three planning cases demonstrate the practical application. It provides an understandable guide with questions and recommendations, and offers a clear structure of the problem solving process.

Informal Coalitions

Informal Coalitions PDF Author: C. Rodgers
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230625215
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This book places everyday talk and role-modelling interactions at the forefront of an alternative change-leadership agenda, and introduces a number of practical approaches to help line managers and organizational specialists deliver this agenda more successfully. It is essential reading for organizational practitioners at all levels.

The Wiggly World of Organization

The Wiggly World of Organization PDF Author: Chris Rodgers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000367401
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The well-ordered, fully aligned view of organization and management practice, with its unfailingly positive results, bears little relationship to the world that managers and others experience every day. This straight-line, ‘do this and you’ll get that’ idealization is far removed from the wiggly reality. Despite this, the former continues to dominate the ways in which management is spoken about and judged in formal organizational arenas and wider society. This creates unrealistic expectations of what managers (from CEO to the front line) can sensibly achieve independently of the actions of others. Crucially, too, it distorts the ways in which they and others account formally for their actions. And so, the fantasy continues. Against this background, the book offers a radically different way of thinking about, and engaging with, the irreducible complexity of organization and management practice. Using straightforward language throughout, it sets out to help managers and others to become consciously aware of what they already know deep down about how organization works and what they – and everyone else – are actually doing in practice. It then offers a practical approach to everyday practice that takes complexity seriously. Armed with these new insights, readers will be better placed to apply their innate understanding and practical judgement to the demands that they and others face day to day. Whether these arise from their roles as managers, other practitioners, policy makers, regulatory authorities, or participants more generally.

Obliquity

Obliquity PDF Author: John Kay
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847651852
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
If you want to go in one direction, the best route may involve going in another. This is the concept of 'obliquity': paradoxical as it sounds, many goals are more likely to be achieved when pursued indirectly. The richest men and women are not the most materialistic; the happiest people are not necessarily those who focus on happiness, and the most profitable companies are not always the most profit-oriented as the recent financial crisis showed us. Whether overcoming geographical obstacles, winning decisive battles or meeting sales targets, history shows that oblique approaches are the most successful, especially in difficult terrain. John Kay applies his provocative, universal theory to everything from international business to town planning and from football to managing forest fire.

Science at the Bar

Science at the Bar PDF Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674039122
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Issues spawned by the headlong pace of developments in science and technology fill the courts. How should we deal with frozen embryos and leaky implants, dangerous chemicals, DNA fingerprints, and genetically engineered animals? The realm of the law, to which beleaguered people look for answers, is sometimes at a loss—constrained by its own assumptions and practices, Sheila Jasanoff suggests. This book exposes American law’s long-standing involvement in constructing, propagating, and perpetuating a variety of myths about science and technology. Science at the Bar is the first book to examine in detail how two powerful American institutions—both seekers after truth—interact with each other. Looking at cases involving product liability, medical malpractice, toxic torts, genetic engineering, and life and death, Jasanoff argues that the courts do not simply depend on scientific findings for guidance—they actually influence the production of science and technology at many different levels. Research is conducted and interpreted to answer legal questions. Experts are selected to be credible on the witness stand. Products are redesigned to reduce the risk of lawsuits. At the same time the courts emerge here as democratizing agents in disputes over the control and deployment of new technologies, advancing and sustaining a public dialogue about the limits of expertise. Jasanoff shows how positivistic views of science and the law often prevent courts from realizing their full potential as centers for a progressive critique of science and technology. With its lucid analysis of both scientific and legal modes of reasoning, and its recommendations for scholars and policymakers, this book will be an indispensable resource for anyone who hopes to understand the changing configurations of science, technology, and the law in our litigious society.

The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Public Policy and Administration

The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Public Policy and Administration PDF Author: Steven J. Balla
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0199646139
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 673

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Book Description
This Handbook brings together a collection of leading international authors to reflect on the influence of central contributions, or classics, that have shaped the development of the field of public policy and administration. The Handbook reflects on a wide range of key contributions to the field, selected on the basis of their international and wider disciplinary impact. Focusing on classics that contributed significantly to the field over the second half of the 20th century, it offers insights into works that have explored aspects of the policy process, of particular features of bureaucracy, and of administrative and policy reforms. Each classic is discussed by a leading international scholars. They offer unique insights into the ways in which individual classics have been received in scholarly debates and disciplines, how classics have shaped evolving research agendas, and how the individual classics continue to shape contemporary scholarly debates. In doing so, this volume offers a novel approach towards considering the various central contributions to the field. The Handbook offers students of public policy and administration state-of-the-art insights into the enduring impact of key contributions to the field.

Classic Readings in Urban Planning

Classic Readings in Urban Planning PDF Author: Jay Stein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135117780X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 762

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Book Description
This new edition of "the best anthology in planning" includes 33 selections by many of the profession's most respected thinkers and eloquent writers. Returning editor Jay M. Stein chose the articles, about half of them new to this edition, based on suggestions from colleagues and students who used the first edition, recommendations from planning scholars, awards for writing in the field of planning, and his own review of recent planning literature. Classic Readings in Urban Planning offers an unparalleled depth of coverage and range of perspectives on traditional aspects of planning as well as on important contemporary issues. This is an exceptional main or supplementary textbook for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level students in urban and regional planning. As a general overview of the field of urban planning, it is also an excellent choice for planning commissioners, practicing planners, and professionals in related fields such as environmental and land use law, architecture, and government. An abstract introduces each reading, and each section includes suggestions for additional readings suitable for more extensive study. Many of these are also "classics" that could not be included as a main selection.

The Relevance of Political Science

The Relevance of Political Science PDF Author: Gerry Stoker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137506601
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
What does political science tell us about important real-world problems and issues? And to what extent does and can political analysis contribute to solutions? Debates about the funding, impact and relevance of political science in contemporary democracies have made this a vital and hotly contested topic of discussion, and in this original text authors from around the world respond to the challenge. A robust defence is offered of the achievements of political science research, but the book is not overly sanguine given its sustained recognition of the need for improvement in the way that political science is done. New insights are provided into the general issues raised by relevance, into blockages to relevance, and into the contributions that the different subfields of political science can and do make. The book concludes with a new manifesto for relevance that seeks to combine a commitment to rigour with a commitment to engagement.