Thomas N. Gladwin

An Environmentally-oriented Mode of Industrial Project Planning

Recent research has shown that many industrial projects are not being designed with the environment in mind. The intellectual exercise of thinking ‘what impact does this project have on the environment?’ has not yet been made an integral part of industrial project-planning. More thoughtful and informed planning is needed, for reasons of both sound environmental management and, increasingly, sound project economics. An environmentally-oriented mode of planning, in which inputs and means related to environmental concerns are carefully taken into account during the planning, is discussed. This mode represents a tentative summary statement of an emerging consensus. Its objective is to facilitate informed and socially desirable choice among alternative actions in such a manner that adverse environmental consequences will be avoided or at least minimized. Environmentally-oriented planning requires that a new methodology, that of impact assessment, be fully integrated into the very fabric of planning. Impact assessment consists of three analytical functions: description, prediction, and evaluation. These functions can be translated into a series of tasks, which in their entirety constitute the full process of impact assessment. The process can be achieved operationally by incorporating environmental considerations into planning via five dimensions: multidisciplinary professional involvement, broad public participation, holistic thinking, systematic analysis, and continuous integration. Adoption and application of the process can be encouraged and/or facilitated by a number of internal organizational adjustments, or by external public-policy adjustments.

Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values

The article reviews the book “Cultures Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values,” by Geert Hofstede.

Multinational Enterprise and the Nation-State in an Interdependent World

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the literature on international investment activity and the spread of multinational enterprise (mne) was preoccupied with questions of the effects on national and international welfare. Attention was infrequently paid to the consequences of the emergence of a new important actor in world affairs the mne for the traditional basis of political organization the nation-state. Many of those who addressed this matter simplistically assumed that the growing economic impact of the mne would translate into political power, while governments would be unable to design policies appropriate to manage and control the new reality, with the consequent diminishing of the role of the nation-state.1 More recently, others have suggested that the growth of the mne and the loss of control over domestic affairs have led governments to strive to assert that control.2