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The economics of research and technology
Book Reviews Edited
by Harry
Jones
The Economics of Research aad Technology, by KEITH NORRIS and JOHN VAIZEY. George Allen 6: Unwin. London (1973). 172 pp. f3.70 thardback I and f2.00 (softback I. Economists in their search for models to describe industrial performance have long sought to establish causal relationships between invesrments in technology and economic benefit at both the national and company level. Norris and Vaizey, like their many predecessors, have been defeated by the complexities of the interrelationships and the long period between investment and the receipt of any return from it. No meaningful correlation can be found and perhaps one day economists will cease searching for it. In the meantime we shall continue to be bombarded with research studies that raise vital questions, but eventually deposit the reader who stayed the course back where he started. This book is no exception. It does. however, have the merit that it draws extensively upon a wider ranging survey of research in the field, albeit largely confined to the work of the economists. Should long-range planners read this book? Yes. but only if they suffer from the delusion that it is possible to establish simple relationships to guide the levd of investment in R & D. After reading this work they should be left in no doubt that there is really no substitute for judgement (or is it just faith?) when making these decisions. Without doubt the most useful chapter is that which deals with the diffusion rates of innovation where the authors draw upon research into innovations as widely different as hybrid corn and new techniques for steel manufacture. BRIAN C. TWISS The Management Bradford
Centre
.4 Brief Introduction to Technology Forecasting: Concepts and Exercises, by JAMES R. BRIGHT, Permaquid Press, Texas (1972t. f5.00 tsoftbackk James Bright is a well known tutor in technological forecasting on both sides of the .Atlantic. His preparation of this collection of exercises is invaluable to those who are offering courses and programmes on an ever-increasing scale. For the readers of LONG RANGE PLANNING who are not actually involved in technological forecasting. it can also act as a ia\cinating work book. Bright begins with an introduction to T.F., explaining how it has artsen so rapidly in Importance in the past decade. He then sets forward exercises in Delphi: Trend Extrapolation ‘some nine exercises here); Normative (goal orIented) Forecasting which utilises the relevance tree approach: Monitoring: Dynamic Modelhng: Scenarios: and Cross Impact Analysis. This is the only collectton of exercises so far available on T.F. and as such must command sunport. It certainly merits support also despite
4PRIL.
1974
the fact that experienced T.F. teachers will be familiar with some of the cases already. GORDON WILLS Cranfield School of Management Cranfield
British Factory-Japanese Factory, by RONALD DIRE, George Allen d: Unwin, London (1973), 432 pp. fS.OO (hardback) and f2.15 (paperback). This is not a book about planning, yet it isor should be-of vital interest to anyone attempting a wider and longer-term perspective of policies for employment and industrial relations. (And. unfortunately the number of policy-makers countenancing such a perspective are very probably all too few. Industrial relations demands rather less naive strategies than the traditional one: avoiding a row so as to let managers get on with the “real” job of meeting financial targets.) Dore’s book is the first real report of a major research project designed to explain differences in the policies for employing people which have been adopted by a sample of Japanese and British companies. The book is readable, and well set out with chapter summaries. It is covering, for example, essentially practical, recruitment, training. wages, authority, and unions in terms of perceived policies in such fields; yet in so doing, the book remains well founded upon relevant research literature. It is a book from which new strategies for organizational employment policies-in the widest sense of the phrase--could be designed by managements and unions prepared to seek a new future direction: one other than the dreary annual wage bargain to which we have become accustomed. The book is not a blueprint of the ideal way to employ people. It simply described an employment system-the Japanese one-different in its basic concept from our own and thus whose familar features have a fundamentally different slant. None-wage rewards damned as welfare paternalism in the U.K. are seen as “welfare rights-‘-a difference less of substance than of ethos, but of real importance in maintaining dignity and independence. The practical impact of an apparently philosophical theory is in attitudes to work and to their employees‘ employer, This may be of even greater importance to the British who, apparently. value individualism and independence more highly than the Japanese. The British system of industrial relations is, by comparison with Japan, a legacy of Britain’s slow progression from a feudal agricultural society to an industrialized society. Being slow. this allowed labour to be treated economically as a market (cheap initially). exploited accordingly. and for hardened attitudes to develop now that the counteravailing power of unionization has industrialized significantly developed. Japan rapidly, jumping from a feudal system directly
to a modern form of enterprise corporatism, retaining the rights and obligations of feudalism. And it is Britain who is out of step internationally rather than Japan, if only because Britain was the first industrial nation. Dore’s analysis could well highlight, and in practical terms for decisions at grass roots. the true British disease. B. R. MORRIS The institute of Manpower Sussex
Studies
How to Use Management Ratios, by C. A. London (1973). WESTWICK, Gower Press, 288 pp. f6.50 (hardback). Even in these days f6.50 is quite a lot to pay for a book. This one is worth every penny. What the author has done is to set out clearly and simply (and even humorously at times) where, when and why management ratios are useful and how they should be used by whom. Thus, if you are a finance director you read chapters 1, 2. 3 and 8; if you are a corporate planner you read chapters 1, 2, 3, 4. ? and l2and whatever role you play in your company Westwick has a bundle of ratios ready to help you do your job. The layout is good, the tables and diagrams fully compliment and reinforce the text, the quality of the printing is high (I only spotted one misprint) and there is a number of useful lists on sources of further information. Although Westwick is obviously an enthusiast for management ratios he does not oversell and his pages are littered with warnings against misuse. His ten basic principles of ratio selection, for example, warn against pseudo-ratios such as sales per production employee for a company which factors as well as manufacturers the goods it sells. Given care and attention to the pitfalls that he warns us about, one cannot avoid agreeing with the author that management information “is more useful if it is in the form of a ratio rather than an absolute figure”. This reviewer has only one reservation. It is that all Westwick’s definitions of such financial ratios as PiE. dividend cover and so on, have been rendered obsolete by the Imputation Taxan odd and somewhat damaging anachronism in a book that was first published in 1973. JOHK ARGENTI
Woodbridge Suffolk
The Future is Tomorrow. Part 2 of General Prospective Studies under the general title of EUROPE 2000. MARTINIUS NIJHOFF. The Hague. pp. 311-585. 65 guilders for Parts I and 2 (both softbackl. The second volume now reviewed, completes the anthology of papers on Prospective Studies sponsored by the European Cultural Foundation
75
by Harry
Jones
The Economics of Research aad Technology, by KEITH NORRIS and JOHN VAIZEY. George Allen 6: Unwin. London (1973). 172 pp. f3.70 thardback I and f2.00 (softback I. Economists in their search for models to describe industrial performance have long sought to establish causal relationships between invesrments in technology and economic benefit at both the national and company level. Norris and Vaizey, like their many predecessors, have been defeated by the complexities of the interrelationships and the long period between investment and the receipt of any return from it. No meaningful correlation can be found and perhaps one day economists will cease searching for it. In the meantime we shall continue to be bombarded with research studies that raise vital questions, but eventually deposit the reader who stayed the course back where he started. This book is no exception. It does. however, have the merit that it draws extensively upon a wider ranging survey of research in the field, albeit largely confined to the work of the economists. Should long-range planners read this book? Yes. but only if they suffer from the delusion that it is possible to establish simple relationships to guide the levd of investment in R & D. After reading this work they should be left in no doubt that there is really no substitute for judgement (or is it just faith?) when making these decisions. Without doubt the most useful chapter is that which deals with the diffusion rates of innovation where the authors draw upon research into innovations as widely different as hybrid corn and new techniques for steel manufacture. BRIAN C. TWISS The Management Bradford
Centre
.4 Brief Introduction to Technology Forecasting: Concepts and Exercises, by JAMES R. BRIGHT, Permaquid Press, Texas (1972t. f5.00 tsoftbackk James Bright is a well known tutor in technological forecasting on both sides of the .Atlantic. His preparation of this collection of exercises is invaluable to those who are offering courses and programmes on an ever-increasing scale. For the readers of LONG RANGE PLANNING who are not actually involved in technological forecasting. it can also act as a ia\cinating work book. Bright begins with an introduction to T.F., explaining how it has artsen so rapidly in Importance in the past decade. He then sets forward exercises in Delphi: Trend Extrapolation ‘some nine exercises here); Normative (goal orIented) Forecasting which utilises the relevance tree approach: Monitoring: Dynamic Modelhng: Scenarios: and Cross Impact Analysis. This is the only collectton of exercises so far available on T.F. and as such must command sunport. It certainly merits support also despite
4PRIL.
1974
the fact that experienced T.F. teachers will be familiar with some of the cases already. GORDON WILLS Cranfield School of Management Cranfield
British Factory-Japanese Factory, by RONALD DIRE, George Allen d: Unwin, London (1973), 432 pp. fS.OO (hardback) and f2.15 (paperback). This is not a book about planning, yet it isor should be-of vital interest to anyone attempting a wider and longer-term perspective of policies for employment and industrial relations. (And. unfortunately the number of policy-makers countenancing such a perspective are very probably all too few. Industrial relations demands rather less naive strategies than the traditional one: avoiding a row so as to let managers get on with the “real” job of meeting financial targets.) Dore’s book is the first real report of a major research project designed to explain differences in the policies for employing people which have been adopted by a sample of Japanese and British companies. The book is readable, and well set out with chapter summaries. It is covering, for example, essentially practical, recruitment, training. wages, authority, and unions in terms of perceived policies in such fields; yet in so doing, the book remains well founded upon relevant research literature. It is a book from which new strategies for organizational employment policies-in the widest sense of the phrase--could be designed by managements and unions prepared to seek a new future direction: one other than the dreary annual wage bargain to which we have become accustomed. The book is not a blueprint of the ideal way to employ people. It simply described an employment system-the Japanese one-different in its basic concept from our own and thus whose familar features have a fundamentally different slant. None-wage rewards damned as welfare paternalism in the U.K. are seen as “welfare rights-‘-a difference less of substance than of ethos, but of real importance in maintaining dignity and independence. The practical impact of an apparently philosophical theory is in attitudes to work and to their employees‘ employer, This may be of even greater importance to the British who, apparently. value individualism and independence more highly than the Japanese. The British system of industrial relations is, by comparison with Japan, a legacy of Britain’s slow progression from a feudal agricultural society to an industrialized society. Being slow. this allowed labour to be treated economically as a market (cheap initially). exploited accordingly. and for hardened attitudes to develop now that the counteravailing power of unionization has industrialized significantly developed. Japan rapidly, jumping from a feudal system directly
to a modern form of enterprise corporatism, retaining the rights and obligations of feudalism. And it is Britain who is out of step internationally rather than Japan, if only because Britain was the first industrial nation. Dore’s analysis could well highlight, and in practical terms for decisions at grass roots. the true British disease. B. R. MORRIS The institute of Manpower Sussex
Studies
How to Use Management Ratios, by C. A. London (1973). WESTWICK, Gower Press, 288 pp. f6.50 (hardback). Even in these days f6.50 is quite a lot to pay for a book. This one is worth every penny. What the author has done is to set out clearly and simply (and even humorously at times) where, when and why management ratios are useful and how they should be used by whom. Thus, if you are a finance director you read chapters 1, 2. 3 and 8; if you are a corporate planner you read chapters 1, 2, 3, 4. ? and l2and whatever role you play in your company Westwick has a bundle of ratios ready to help you do your job. The layout is good, the tables and diagrams fully compliment and reinforce the text, the quality of the printing is high (I only spotted one misprint) and there is a number of useful lists on sources of further information. Although Westwick is obviously an enthusiast for management ratios he does not oversell and his pages are littered with warnings against misuse. His ten basic principles of ratio selection, for example, warn against pseudo-ratios such as sales per production employee for a company which factors as well as manufacturers the goods it sells. Given care and attention to the pitfalls that he warns us about, one cannot avoid agreeing with the author that management information “is more useful if it is in the form of a ratio rather than an absolute figure”. This reviewer has only one reservation. It is that all Westwick’s definitions of such financial ratios as PiE. dividend cover and so on, have been rendered obsolete by the Imputation Taxan odd and somewhat damaging anachronism in a book that was first published in 1973. JOHK ARGENTI
Woodbridge Suffolk
The Future is Tomorrow. Part 2 of General Prospective Studies under the general title of EUROPE 2000. MARTINIUS NIJHOFF. The Hague. pp. 311-585. 65 guilders for Parts I and 2 (both softbackl. The second volume now reviewed, completes the anthology of papers on Prospective Studies sponsored by the European Cultural Foundation
75