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A. DOWNS' SPATIAL MODEL OF POLITICS PROVIDES AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF POLITICAL PROCESSES IN COLOMBIA. TWO MAIN DIMENSIONS OF VARIATION APPEAR: LEFT-RIGHT AND PRO-ANTI GOVERNMENT. THE RESUMPTION OF VIOLENCE BETWEEN PARTIES, ENDED BY THE NATIONAL FRONT, IS RELATIVELY UNLIKELY, SINCE THE TRADITIONAL PARTIES VIS A VIS EMERGING NEW COALITIONS ARE IN A PRECARIOUS POSITION.

AbstractThe process‐structure approach of Living Systems Theory (LST) provides a more robust explanation of life than did the earlier explanations based on the concept of sense‐response. Three aspects of LST, however, provide less robust explanations than those that generally characterize the theory. They are the concept of dispersed critical sub‐systems, the relative neglect of emergence and the neglect of the pervasive influence of conceptual systems on LST defined information systems. This paper suggests an entity‐systems approach that may strengthen those aspects of the theory of life systems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractRecent economic events may be forcing the current system of public disclosure of financial information to an evolutionary cusp. The current system of disclosure has been developing over the last seven decades. It was born in an effort to introduce governance to markets without interfering with their useful processes. A choice was made against government regulation and for required public disclosure backed by an independent auditor function. The realization of the degree of auditor independence envisioned and needed has been evasive. It now seems necessary to enhance the disclosure aspect of the system to offset the weakness of achievable auditor independence. This article suggests that fairly minor changes in currently used accounting information systems can support public disclosure of the actual measurements taken by accountants on economic processes. These values should be disclosed to support the accountant‐adjusted values, much like a physician's disclosure of medical test results supports his or her diagnosis. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractThe identification of basic principles that apply to all aspects of the knowledge domain of a discipline is important. Such fundamentals define the discipline and instruct its development. This process, nevertheless, may be pursued too narrowly—and schools of management thought often do so. These schools of thought generally seek principles and methods that apply equally in all different kinds of organizations. In doing so, they ignore an important aspect of the objects they observe, that organizations are part of a highly dynamic, currently ongoing, evolutionary process. Relatively recent emergents, exchange‐based societies are composed of organizations competing for survival with dynamic, ever‐changing internal purposes and external goals. The competition itself is management and unique management patterns emerge in different organizations. Management science needs a conceptual framework that instructs the development of organization‐specific management theories. Management observation and communication theory (MOCT) is one step in this direction.MOCT is essentially an integration of linguistic–mathematical theory (L‐M theory) and living systems theory (LST). L‐M theory is a pure system—defined by the interrelationships of its own elements, and thus does not depend on any particular empirical element. LST views existence in the context of concrete systems and particularly from the vantage of living systems. By integrating these general systems theories, MOCT instructs the discovery and development of internal purposes and external goals unique to particular organizations. L‐M theory synthesizes information about an organization's internal processes into general statements of purposes and connects those statements to similarly general statements of external goals. LST focuses MOCT on the processes and structures managers control and in which they compete.This paper overviews the central ideas and methods of MOCT. Some examples of methods suggested by the theory are given to illustrate how MOCT is applied. Copyright © 2001 International Society for the Systems Sciences.