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Presents an analytic framework for processing planning in industries where fixed batch sizes are common. The overall optimum processing plan is shown to be located on an envelope between the optimum JIT plan and the optimum level plan. These concepts provide the framework for understanding the overall optimum plan, and the framework leads to an efficient heuristic. The approach is practical, illustrated by a case study from the food industry, which shows the place of overall optimum planning within the company's planning system and its implications for company performance.

"The object of this article is to identify in clear analytic terms pervasive problems that could threaten the political authority of Western governments today. The first section defines the concept of political authority and distinguishes those problems that are central to authority. The next two sections consider whether in contemporary circumstances perennial problems of allocating resources and government organization raise new challenges to political authority. Question of political consent are considered in sections that deal with value conflict, and with civic indifference. The concluding section speculates about the chief meta-problem of political authority today: whether challenges to the effectivness of government undermine political consent as well?" (author's abstract)

Ziel dieses Beitrages ist es, die Probleme zu identifizieren, denen die politischen Autoritäten der westlichen Regierungen heute gegenüberstehen. Im ersten Abschnitt werden das Konzept der politischen Autorität definiert und jene Probleme herausgearbeitet, die für die Autoritäten zentral sind. In den nächsten beiden Abschnitten erfolgt eine Betrachtung der Frage, ob aus den unter den gegenwärtigen Umständen andauernden Problemen der Mittelzuweisung und der Regierungsorganisation neue Herausforderungen für die politischen Autoritäten erwachsen. Fragen der politischen Zustimmung werden in den beiden Abschnitten betrachtet, die sich mit Wertkonflikten und mit behördlicher Gleichgültigkeit befassen. In dem abschließenden Abschnitt wird über das zentrale Metaproblem der politischen Autoritäten nachgedacht: Untergraben die Herausforderungen an die Wirksamkeit der Regierung die politische Zustimmung? (RW)

This article enquires into how parenting support, as concept, policy and provision, has penetrated the English social policy landscape, and critically considers why it has proved so popular with policy makers. It first outlines the existing policy configuration. The second section identifies some key factors precipitating the roll-out of parenting support and the third section takes an overview of the significance of the developments from a social and family policy perspective. The argument advanced is that the growth and expansion of parenting support is explained by a coming together of a set of political exigencies around 'risk' and the healthy child, and a set of policy 'solutions' which are seen to have high promise. In particular, parenting support has the advantage of being relatively easily generalisable (especially in the form of programmes) and aligns with several current developments of the welfare state, towards activation, provision of support through services and an interest in localism.

This discussion forwards a political economy framework for the analysis of the role and impact of political intervention on the process and outcome of environmental conflicts. The proposed analytic approach, advocated by the class‐centric state perspective, focuses on the economic roots of political action in conflict situations. The paper provides a critique of the existing analytic approaches to conflict analysis. The paper also offers a brief account of Hawaii's land use policy and history of land‐related environmental conflicts to illustrate the potential of the political economy approach.

Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) are entities or institutions that interpose themselves between workers and firms to facilitate, inform, or regulate how workers are matched to firms, how work is accomplished, and how conflicts are resolved. This paper offers a conceptual foundation for analyzing the economic role played by these understudied institutions, and to develop a qualitative and, in some cases, quantitative sense of their significance to market operation and welfare. Though heterogeneous, I argue that LMIs share a common function, which is to redress - and in some cases exploit - a set of endemic departures of labor market operation from the efficient neoclassical benchmark. At a rudimentary level, LMIs such as online job boards reduce search frictions by aggregating and reselling disparate information at a cost below which workers and firms could obtain themselves. Beyond passively supplying information, a set of LMIs forcibly redress adverse selection problems in labor markets by compelling workers and firms to reveal normally hidden credentials, such as criminal background, academic standing, or financial integrity. At their most forceful, LMIs such as labor unions and centralized job matching clearinghouses resolve coordination and collective action failures in markets by tightly controlling - even monopolizing - the process by which workers and firms meet, match and negotiate. A unifying observation of the analytic framework is that participation in the activities of a given LMI are typically voluntary for one side of the market and compulsory for the other; workers cannot, for example, elect to suppress their criminal records and firms cannot opt out of collective bargaining. I argue that the nature of participation in an LMI's activities - voluntary or compulsory, and for which parties - is dictated by the market imperfection that it addresses and thus tells us much about its economic function.