How and where do we write the history of state socialism? Some preliminary reflections

The paper addresses the question of why we should continue to study state socialism. In view of the rise of China and the resurgence of economic nationalism pursued by illiberal and populist governments in East-Central Europe, questions of state-led development have become topical again. Today, few authors would subscribe to Francis Fukuyama's excessively optimistic prediction of the "end of history," when the Cold War ended with what seemed at that time to be an unqualified triumph of the West. In the formerly socialist countries, history neither ended in 1989 nor when they joined the European Union. In the following section three temporal and spatial contexts in which state socialism can make sense will be discussed, by asking: (1) what is state socialism's place in the longue durée of Eastern Europe's historical legacies; (2) how does state socialism relate to general European history; and (3) what is state socialism’s place in global history - and vice versa

Building Ships and Surviving Late Socialism: The Shipyard "Uljanik" in Pula in the 1970s and 1980s

This paper analyses business strategies to survive the economic crisis of late socialism in Yugoslavia. It takes one of Yugoslavia’s flagship exporter enterprises, the shipyard "Uljanik" in Pula as a case study. It argues that the most widespread response to growing economic difficulties in the 1970s and 1980s was a strategy of muddling-through. Yugoslavia, while aiming to become an exporter of industrial goods, never actually managed to adapt its domestic economic institutions to that goal. "Uljanik", like the other shipbuilders in Yugoslavia, produced mostly for export yet failed to earn profits. Domestic conditions and the political over-determination of industry prevented the implementation of measures to increase efficiency. "Uljanik", for example, expanded capacity and hired new workers even at a time when the global demand for ships was depressed after the 1974 oil-price shock. Employment and other social functions turned out to be more salient than any business rationale. Since the mid-1970s this made "Uljanik" dependent on customers, such as the Soviet Union or Third World countries that did not pay in hard currency, or did not pay at all. Frequent illiquidity was the consequence. The paper present the ship-building industry as a case in point for the increasing tensions between Yugoslavia’s institutional set-up and its integration in the international economy, and for the unwillingness of policy-makers to affect structural change. The country failed to build resilience for mediating the outfall of global economic crisis

How Top-Down AI Introduction Leads to Incremental Business Improvement

Artificial intelligence offers the opportunity for radical improvements such as completely new business solutions. It also enables the improvement of existing business. This paper reports on a case study that tests two strategies to identify AI use cases: top-down and bottom-up. The use cases are differentiated according to whether they promise incremental or radical business improvements and whether they are realizable in the short or long term. The top-down strategy identifies use cases that promise short-term but incremental improvements. They relate to existing business, but no disruptive ideas emerge. The bottom-up strategy allows for a broader understanding of AI’s potentials to improve business. Completely new and disruptive ideas emerge, but require huge upfront effort. Organizations best start with AI pilot projects that are feasible in the short term: Either by first applying a bottom-up strategy that is supplemented and evaluated with the top-down strategy, or top-down only

Topological properties of asymptotic invariants and universal volume bounds

In this thesis, we prove that many asymptotic invariants of closed manifolds depend only on the image of the fundamental class under the classifying map of the universal covering. Examples include numerical invariants that reflect the asymptotic behaviour of the universal covering, like the minimal volume entropy and the spherical volume, as well as properties that are qualitative measures for the largeness of a manifold and its coverings, like enlargeability and hypersphericity. Another important class of invariants that share the above invariance property originates from universal volume bounds. The main example is the systolic constant, which encodes the relation between short noncontractible loops and the volume of a manifold. Further interesting examples are provided by the optimal constants in Gromov's filling inequalities, for which we show that they depend only on the dimension and orientability. Considering higher-dimensional generalizations of the systolic constant, a complete answer to the question about the existence of stable systolic inequalities is given. In the spirit of the results mentioned already, we also prove that the stable systolic constant depends only on the image of the fundamental class in a suitable Eilenberg-Mac Lane space.In dieser Arbeit wird gezeigt, dass viele asymptotische Invarianten geschlossener Mannigfaltigkeiten nur vom Bild der Fundamentalklasse unter der klassifizierenden Abbildung der universellen Überlagerung abhängen. Hierzu zählen sowohl numerische Invarianten, die das asymptotische Verhalten der universellen Überlagerung widerspiegeln, wie die minimale Volumenentropie und das sphärische Volumen, als auch Eigenschaften, die qualitative Maße für die Größe einer Mannigfaltigkeit und ihrer Überlagerungen darstellen, wie Vergrößerbarkeit und Hypersphärizität. Eine weitere wichtige Klasse von Invarianten, die die obige Invarianzeigenschaft teilen, erhält man aus universellen Volumenschranken. Das wichtigste Beispiel hierfür ist die systolische Konstante, die das Verhältnis zwischen kurzen nichtzusammenziehbaren Schleifen und dem Volumen einer Mannigfaltigkeit wiedergibt. Weitere interessante Beispiele werden durch die optimalen Konstanten in Gromovs Filling-Ungleichungen gegeben, von denen gezeigt wird, dass sie nur von der Dimension und der Orientierbarkeit abhängen. Bei der Betrachtung höher-dimensionaler Verallgemeinerungen der systolischen Konstante wird eine vollständige Antwort auf die Frage nach der Existenz stabiler systolischer Ungleichungen gefunden. In Analogie zu den oben erwähnten Ergebnissen wird bewiesen, dass die stabile systolische Konstante nur vom Bild der Fundamentalklasse in einem passenden Eilenberg-MacLane-Raum abhängt