Milan Zeleny’s research while affiliated with Fordham University and other places

The self-service technologies(SSTs) are fast changing the conventional way of transacting business by business organisations. The rapid innovation of self-service technologies and its adoption and usages in all facets of human systems is acclaimed to be fast rendering low skilled workers jobless. The major sectors of the economy in advanced economies have reached their peaks and can no longer provide new employment due to an increase in the productivity growth rate as a result of technology advances. These SSTs have in no small measure brought about an increase in productivity growth rate, cost reduction and anincrease in the speed of service delivery to customers. This paper examines if self-service technologies truly are the cause of persistent unemployment through a study of the long term metamorphosis of the major economic sectors in advanced economies. This study revealed that the SSTs presents both risks and opportunities.

In this paper the author presents the inception of Integrated Knowledge Management (IKM). Knowledge management is entering its new stage, after the delays of its “definitionless”, IT-based period, when knowledge got confused with information, losing thus two decades of fruitful development. Although there now is a significant information overload, killing productivity, creativity and innovation, there can never be any knowledge overload. Knowledge is fundamentally different from information. The integration of data, information, knowledge and wisdom into a coherent and unified management support is necessary for effective transformational IKM support systems. The author draws the necessary distinction between information and knowledge and show that although it is difficult to measure the value of information, the value of knowledge can be measured simply and effectively: by the metric of added value. Several quantitative examples of knowledge measurement are also given. Once people learn how to measure knowledge, the value of the inputs of data and information can be derived. The space is thus opened for integrated knowledge management. Integrating data mining, information processing, knowledge management and wisdom attainment into a unified support system is a prerequisite for effective management in the post-crisis era of socio-economic transformation.

I reaffirm and extend the notion of social autopoiesis away from mere labels and descriptions to acting physical components of social systems and societies, ranging from subcellular to biological and human. All self-producing biological organisms are essentially societies of interacting components and therefore notions of autopoiesis and social systems are fundamentally, if not definitionally, interrelated. Some examples of real-life applications of social autopoiesis are also given. Future generations of scientists might even find the qualifier "social" redundant because there is no other autopoiesis than "social."

The main purpose of this paper is to identify current trends and practices that have been influencing Japanese business environment and their consequences to corporate world by conducting a review of existing empirical evidence on this topic. An in-depth review of more than 1,600 articles published in high-quality academic journals in the areas of Business Management, Accounting, Social Sciences, Engineering, Economics, Econometrics, Operations Research Management Science, Psychology, Public Administration, Finance and Decision Sciences was pursued following a multiple-step process. Furthermore, the trends were classified into six categories based on their occurrence frequency and described in detail. These trends involve: reformulating strategic management principles, less lifelong employment orientation and change of traditional HRM practices, raising labour force participation, female participation in management and improving education, use of non-financial performance indicators, decomposition of a large organization into smaller units and opening up to outside influence. Each of the categories contained specific practices that interacted with each other, shaping and giving strength to each individual category. Finally, the insights extracted from the literature review were synthesized and directions to future research were provided.

The article deals with an effective strategic action within a company in the 21st century-the ability to cope with changing demands without losing focus and anticipating changes before they arise. It aims to create a dynamic performance framework based on the utilization of synergy effects of selected European and Asian management systems (Bata Management System, Japanese Management System and Amoeba Management System). The framework integrates basic elements that enable every aspect of the company (people, processes and systems, innovations, finance, social responsibility and ecology) to be monitored. Special emphasis is put on customers and innovations as a fundamental basis of competitiveness for firms while continually improving the quality of processes and products. Mutual synergy effects of these elements shall ensure fast communication, build lasting value not only for the company, but also for customers and employees and improve corporate performance and efficiency. All perspectives are fully integrated with each other and create a framework that is periodical, dynamic and competitive and that is able to withstand irrelevant disturbances and that is at the same time responsive to relevant changes.

In the post-crisis era, new concepts are emerging, while some old and dysfunctional ones are being discarded. Strategy is about making series of decisions that drive corporate action under specific coupling with company?s environment and context. Because decisions are actions, the strategy itself is action, not just a description of action. In the world of traditional strategy, descriptions (information) have replaced action (knowledge), and talk has replaced walk. We start from the premise that strategy is what company does, and what company does is its strategy. One cannot run a company just on descriptions and framed mission statements. The role of customers is crucial: the customer shapes strategy and triggers corporate action. Without respecting the customer, there is no viable strategy. This is why we label the action-based strategic thinking as ?Anti-Porter?: consumers do not want tradeoffs and thus truly effective strategy cannot be rooted in Porter?s tradeoffs.

Advanced and mature societies are undergoing a fundamental transformation of their economic, political, technological and social lives. Developing countries are rapidly catching on and accelerating their participation in the transformation which is equally rapidly becoming global. Yet, at the same time, the process of globalization itself is exhibiting signs of a reversal towards relocalization, i.e. rebounding after the strong global outbound of the past fifty years. The change of paradigms and change of dominant business models accompany such transformations. Yet, transformations get naturally confounded with ongoing recessions and crises. Disentangling the phenomena of crisis from those of transformation remains a challenge, especially for politicians. In this paper we primarily address the issues of unemployment and the changing nature of employment in mature economies.

In the post-crisis era, new concepts are emerging, while some old and dysfunctional ones are being discarded. Strategy is about making series of decisions that drive corporate action under specific coupling with company’s environment and context. Because decisions are actions, the strategy itself is action, not just a description of action. In the world of traditional strategy, descriptions (information) have replaced action (knowledge), and talk has replaced walk. We start from the premise that strategy is what company does, and what company does is its strategy. One cannot run a company just on descriptions and framed mission statements. The role of customers is crucial: the customer shapes strategy and triggers corporate action. Without respecting the customer, there is no viable strategy. This is why we label the action-based strategic thinking as “Anti-Porter”: consumers do not want tradeoffs and thus truly effective strategy cannot be rooted in Porter’s tradeoffs.

The field of MCDM has come of age. It is not sufficient to continue improving or refining old concepts and paradigms: we are now facing diminishing marginal returns. It is time for change. In order to assure MCDM future we cannot continue doing the old things better; we have to start doing things differently and, more importantly, doing different things.

Because trade‐offs (Pareto optimal, non‐dominated or efficient sets) are not properties of criteria or objectives, but of sets of feasible alternatives, the proper task of decision making is to work on designing proper sets of alternatives rather than assuming them to be fixed and given a priori . In fact, decision making takes place only when multiple criteria and trade‐offs are present. All the rest (single criteria, aggregates or utilities) are simply analysis, measurement and search, not decision making. Similarly, optimization must involve design of the configuration or ‘shape’ of sets of alternatives because no given and fixed system can be optimized. Traditional ‘optimization’ is therefore measurement and search, or just computation. Anything given and fixed a priori cannot be optimized. Multiple criteria or objectives can never be conflicting per se because their properties emerge only when applied to different sets of alternatives. Criteria are only ‘measure tapes’ and no trade‐offs can exist among them. Because decision making is incompatible with a single criterion, all decision making involves multiple criteria: thus, Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) becomes a redundant designation. These and similar insights and conclusions call for MCDM paradigm re‐assessment: is it about decision making , or about analysis, measurement and search (explication) through computation? Eight different concepts of optimality are presented, as well as theories and models of trade‐offs elimination, conflict dissolution, optimal system design, de novo programming, theory of the displaced ideal and other advances related to feasible set optimal re‐design and re‐configuration. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.