STAKEHOLDER (Rhieman, Ackoff): Concept in a socially oriented
open-systems interpretation of the organization. Stakeholders are all
those claimants inside and outside the firm who have a vested interest
in the organization or any of its specific problems and solutions.
(Mason and Mittrof, 1981)
STALEMATE IN TECHNOLOGY (Das technologische Patt, 1975/79) Title
of a book by G.O.Mensch; suggests a long-term cyclical nature of
technological innovation and the arrival of another stagnation.
Systems Thinking
The last of Senge's five learning disciplines of his learning
organization: "A way of thinking about, and a language for describing and
understanding, the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior
of systems... helps us to see how to change systems more effectively, and
to act more in tune with the larger processes of the natural and economic
world."
(Senge et al., Fieldbook, p.6)
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Econ&Bus Geog
TASK ENVIRONMENT: Those elements or inputs in an organization's
environment which bear potential ly on goal setting and on goal
attainment within an organization . [William Dill, 1962]
Team Learning
One of Senge's five learning disciplines for his "learning organization":
transforming conversational and collective thinking skills, so that groups
of people can reliably develop intelligence and ability greater than the
sum of individual members' talents." (Senge et al., Fieldbook, p.6)
Technology Multipliers
Certain "classes of technological innovation can induce a matrix
of change and progress in other sectors that are thousand times the
Keynesian multipliers of the investment in the original innovation...
Relatively tiny investments in innovating the first microprocessors,
radios, spreadsheets, hybrid corns, personal computers (PCs), antibiotics,
the Internet, and scientific selective breeding have created economic
multipliers millions of times greater than their original investments."
(Quinn et al., Innovation Explosion, p.37)
TECHNOLOGICAL PARADIGM: Model and a pattern of solution of selected
technological problems, based on selected principles derived from
natural sciences and on selected material technologies (Dosi/Thomas);
also used: "technological regime" (Nelson & Winter); "technological
imperatives" (Rosenberg);
TECHNOLOGICAL TRAJECTORY: The movement of multi- dimensional
trade-offs among technological variables that the paradigm defines as
relevant. Progress can be defined as an improvement of these trade-offs.
One could imagine the trajectory as a 'cylinder' in a multidimensional
space (Dosi); or: a pattern of "normal " problem- solving activity
within a technological paradigm . (Thomas) Individual firms tend to
have their own PATHWAY within this aggregate trajectory (Thomas);
"natural trajectory" Nelson and Winter, 1982; "focussing device",
Rosenberg, 1982.
TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSITION: A state in which firms may find themselves
"whose technology has begun to be constrained by its practical limits
and whose rate of economic performance consequently begins to slow down.
Such firms, if they focus their R&D activities completely on improving
the performance of current technology, may face disaster. . . " (Thomas)
Teleport
The centerpiece of wired-city planning. Teleports, in general, "include an
international communications "gateway", a metropolitan area network for
distributing advanced information services and surrounding 'intelligent'
building complexes."
(Hepworth, p.197)
THIRD ITALY: Central and northeast Italy -- in the the vicinity of
Bologna, Florence, Ancona and Venice -- symbol for new industrial
dynamism, a decentralized network of small firms located in small and
medium-size cities has managed to innovate and develop products that
compete successfully with those of northern European producers . (in
contrast to the old Milan-Turin-Genoa industrial area and the less
developed South) [Niles Hansen, in McKee and Bennett, eds.,
Structural Change in an Urban Industrial Region, 1987, p.19]
Third Sector
"also known as the independent or volunteer sector, is the realm in which
fiduciary arrangements give way to community bonds, and where the giving
of one's time to others takes the place of artificially imposed market
relationships based on selling oneself and one's services to others."
(Rifkin, End of Work, p.239)
Threshold Firm
In the Canadian context, a medium-sized, Canadian-owned firm which is
potentially or actually in transition between the state of a small-medium
enterprise (SME) and a large enterprise. It is the target of policies for
science, technology and industry... and (in Canada) likely to belong
to the electronics, machinery, chemical, transport equipment or petroleum
and coal products industries.... (Steed, Guy P.F. Threshold Firms: Backing
Canada's Winners. Science Council of Canada, 1982, p.20)
TRANSACTION COSTS: The lower the transaction costs associated
with a particular contractual assembly of inputs, the more likely
self-interested individuals will choose that method of organizing
production. (K.Leffler). The limited success of the transaction costs
approach may be due to the amorphous nature of these costs (Leffler, 1989)
Treuhandanstalt
Privatisation Agency selling off East German companies between 1990 and
1995. In order to
attract investors it paid for some or all of the costs of
restructuring and environmental clean-up. Often the price of companies
sold was reduced considerably in exchange for job
and investment guarantees. By September 1994 the Treuhandanstalt had
accumulated debts worth DM 183bn. As of the
beginning of 1995 these debts were taken over by the Erblasttilgungsfond.
These debts are not included in the official federal
budget deficit figures.
Trickle-down Technology
"the Notion that the dramatic benefits brought by advances in technology
and improvements in productivity eventually filter down to the mass of
workers in the form of cheaper goods, greater purchasing power, and more
jobs..." (Rifkin, End of Work, p.15)
TRUNCATION: Concept associated with DEPENDENCE in a branch plant
economy (see Dicken, Global Shift, pp.376ff . also in Hayter, in Area,
1982, pp.277ff.) A term first given widespread currency with the
Canadian Gray Report, in which "subsidiaries and branch plants, which
rely on their foreign based parent company for various services and
functions and whose autonomy is circumscribed by head-office dictates,
were declared to be truncated firms." ( Hayter )
TURBULENT ENVIRONMENTS: Organizational environments in which there
are dynamic processes arising from the field itself which create
significant variances for the component systems. Such dynamic field
processes may emerge , e . g ., as an unplanned consequence of the
actions of the constituent systems [erosion, overfishing, overcutting].
These fields are so complex so richly textured, that is difficult to see
how individual systems can, by their own efforts, successfully adapt to
them. [Emery and Trist]
Value Chain
refers to a business as a "collection of interdependent activities, which
in turn, form part of a continuous system that stretches back to suppliers
and forward to channels and customers... Using the value chain framework,
Porter suggests advantage can be captured through ... improvement or
reorganization of these value activities." (van den Bosch & de Man, eds.,
p.10)
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: Two adjacent production stages are said to be
vertical ly integrated when they are brought under common ownership and
control. "Under vertical integration, the intermediate product is traded
within the firm. If the two stages share the same production site than
the integration occurs within the plant; otherwise it occurs between
plants. When adjacent stages are located in different countries, vertical
integration leads to international, intra-firm trade. " (M. Casson, 1986)
Vertical Mixing
"ensures a variety of different ages, experience sets, and skills on
design teams" (Quinn et al, Innovation Explosion, p.164)
X-Efficiency / X-Inefficiency (Leibenstein): Managers are merely
x-efficient due, to (1) selective rationality; (2) individual
inadequacies; (3) discretionary effort; (4) pervasive inertia; (5)
organizational entropy; see Leibenstein, JEL June 1979, pp .484ff .
