Urbanization and economic development

Los documentos del Seminario fueron publicados por UNESCO en 1961 con el título: La urbanización en América Latina/Urbanization in Latin Americ

Transcultural Foundations of Success in Joint Ventures: The Best-Practice Case of MABE-GE

Effective management of transnational joint ventures requires understanding of two major trends rooted in our globalizing information economy. Businesses are becoming ever more knowledge-centered; and they find themselves thrust into ever more transcultural environments. The MABE-GE joint venture is a best-practice case that offers important insights for coping successfully with both of these trends. Over the past twelve years an alliance with GE has transformed MABE from a dynamic but traditional Mexican firm with its share of traditional problems, into an autonomous transnational powerhouse expanding rapidly into South America. This has been made possible by the synergy between MABE's markedly transcultural orientation from its founding on, and GE's exemplary mentoring practices that transmitted GE's advanced corporate culture without undermining MABE's autonomy or national and corporate identity. GE's own rapid culture change, its minority (48%) holding in the joint venture, and its fortunate choice of the manager in charge of relations with MABE were key factors in this outcome. The study offers insights into the bridging of gaps between national, corporate, and functional/professional cultures, the choice of joint-venture partners, culture transfer, human resource development, and management training.Transcultural_Foundations_of_SuccessWP96_12.pdf: 4081 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

The Meaning of Social Efficiency

Policy implementation calls for efficiency. But because policy concerns range over broad social and political-economic areas, the efficient pursuit of one particular goal may conflict with the realization of some other, equally important social interest. Hence, efficiency for its own sake cannot be a policy goal. Giving special attention to the development process, the paper discusses the problems and contradictions that arise when policymakers working in a framework of neoclassical economic theory attempt to deal with issues of equity, stabilization, markets and trade. Starting with the limitations of market efficiency when conventional requirements of social welfare as well as social and environmental sustainability are taken into account, it is argued that a more meaningful concept of social efficiency can be obtained with the help of the human development indicators elaborated by the United Nations Development Program, augmented by the sustainability indicators developed by the European Union and others during the last decade.

Connecting People and Place Prosperity: Workforce Development and Urban Planning in Scholarship and Practice

In recent years, the field of workforce development has emerged as a distinct area of policy and practice. While planning scholars have begun to engage with the workforce development field, its relevance and points of connection to planning scholarship remain underexplored. This article attempts to define the workforce development field by articulating its core concerns as well as its domains of practice and scholarship outside the planning field. The article locates workforce development within three stands of planning scholarship, concluding that workforce development represents an important bridge for planners between “place” and “people” prosperity within communities