DOCSLIB.ORG

The Computer in the Garbage Can: Air- Defense Systems in the Organization of US Nuclear Command and Control, 1940-1960

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Computer in the Garbage Can: Air- Defense Systems in the Organization of US Nuclear Command and Control, 1940-1960 The Computer in the Garbage Can: Air- Defense Systems in the Organization of US Nuclear Command and Control, 1940-1960 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Volmar, Daniel. 2019. The Computer in the Garbage Can: Air- Defense Systems in the Organization of US Nuclear Command and Control, 1940-1960. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41121266 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Computer in the Garbage Can: Air-Defense Systems in the Organization of US Nuclear Command and Control, 1940–1960 A dissertation presented by Daniel Volmar to The Department of the History of Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History of Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts November 2018 © 2018 Daniel Volmar. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of the license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ . Dissertation Adviser: Peter Galison Daniel Volmar The Computer in the Garbage Can: Air-Defense Systems in the Organization of US Nuclear Command and Control, 1940–1960 ABSTRACT During the late 1950s, the United States Air Force initiated development on nearly two- dozen military “command and control systems.” What they shared in common was a novel application of digital electronics to the problem of nuclear warfare. Most of these systems descended, in some fashion, from a program called “SAGE,” the Semiautomatic Ground Environment, which gathered data from a network of radar stations for processing at large Air Defense Direction Centers, where digital computers assisted human operators in tracking, identifying, and, potentially, intercepting and destroying hostile aircraft. Although histories of SAGE have been written before, they have tended to stress digital computing as a rationalist response to the threat of mass raids by nuclear-armed Soviet bombers. Nevertheless, organizational sociology suggests that large bureaucratic organiza- tions, such as the United States Air Force, often defy our intuition that decisions, technolog- ical or otherwise, must follow a perceived problem to its potential solution. According to the so-called “garbage-can model of organizational choice,” problems and solutions may, in certain circumstances, arise independently and join together unpredictably, because the basic social phenomena do not conform to bureaucratic ideals. This dissertation argues that SAGE, and indeed, the entire Cold War project of nuclear- and-command, can be understood as a sequence of “garbage-can-like” decisions, resulting in a conglomeration of independent systems whose behavior appeared reasonable from the perspective of the using organization, but which nonetheless failed to cohere against the far greater danger of a global thermonuclear exchange. They did, however, succeed at satisfying the government’s need to act by projecting uncomfortable questions of political organization onto popular technology programs. iii The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare [ein Alp] on the brains of the living. Karl Marx, Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, 1852 iv Acknowledgments The longer the list of acknowledgments grows, the greater the risk of unintentionally neglecting someone with as justifiable a claim to acknowledgment as another named herein. Therefore, in the interest of brevity, and in recognition of the fact that no one is likely to ever read this page anyway, the following list has been limited only to those most directly involved in the project. As my primary adviser throughout this ordeal, I should first extend my gratitude to Peter Galison, though Dave Kaiser, it should be mentioned, has also participated generously from beginning to end. While Matt Hersch joined the committee at a later stage, I have found his comments pointed and constructive, helping greatly to fill the void left by Heidi Voskuhl, whose guidance proved indispensable at the outset. For any strengths contained in the final manuscript, and none of its flaws, I credit Suzanne Smith. Gwen issure to be embarrassed if mentioned last, thereby implying that her contributions exceeded all others, in hours, forms, and capacities, so I will be certain to imply as much now. Hopefully, she does not notice. v Contents Title i Abstract iii Epigraph iv Acknowledgments v Contents vi Introduction 1 Air-Defense Systems in the Organization of Command-and-Control 1 The computer in the garbage can .......................................... 5 2 The organization of nuclear command-and-control ....................... 22 3 Synopsis ................................................................... 28 1 Remember Opana Point 35 Command, Control, and Organizational Technology 1 Organizational systems and technological control......................... 37 2 The first Air Defense Command ........................................... 41 3 The air defense of the Hawaiian Islands ................................... 55 4 Conclusion: Models for command-and-control............................ 63 2 Atomic Pearl Harbor 68 Conceiving a Continental Air-Defense System 1 Air-defense systems and the meaning of “integration” .................... 72 2 The second Air Defense Command ........................................ 76 3 The radar fence ............................................................ 87 4 Conclusion: A nucleus for command-and-control ......................... 105 3 Holes in the Sky 110 Air-Defense Operations Before Automation 1 A system-in-being.......................................................... 114 2 Postwar air-defense organization and exercises ........................... 116 3 System as simulation ...................................................... 141 4 Conclusion: Assessing command-and-control ............................. 161 vi Contents 4 Laboratories at War 170 Watson, Cambridge, and the Origins of Air-Defense Automation 1 Engineering the science of control ........................................ 174 2 Recovering the Radiation Laboratory...................................... 180 3 The normalization of automatic control ................................... 207 4 Conclusion: Research for command-and-control.......................... 221 5 “The Maginot Line Boys from MIT” 224 Air-Defense Automation and the Rise of the Cambridge Lobby 1 The national-security science labyrinth ................................... 228 2 Air defense as bureaucratic proxy war ..................................... 234 3 Breaking the political stalemate ........................................... 255 4 Building the continental-defense network ................................. 275 5 Conclusion: Selling command-and-control ................................ 291 6 Crisis in Command 294 Computer Automation and the Maximization of Choice 1 The new dialectic of systems integration .................................. 299 2 The Rome–Michigan proposal ............................................. 304 3 The trouble with Cambridge ............................................... 318 4 The integration of cross-organizational systems ........................... 349 5 Conclusion: The beginning of command-and-control ..................... 377 Conclusion 383 The organization of technology and the technology of organization 1 The Power of the Atom .................................................... 385 2 Bureaucracy and the bomb ................................................ 392 3 Managing the unmanageable .............................................. 401 Notes on Sources 405 Bibliography 412 vii Introduction Air-Defense Systems in the Organization of Command-and-Control The rules of decision making…may be much more preoccupied with the problem of assigning outcomes their legitimate history than with the question of deciding before the actual occasion of choice the conditions under which one, among a set of alternative possible courses of action, will be elected.1 Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, 1967 During the 1960s, America’s postwar ambitions for continental air-defense simultaneously reached their fulfillment and lapsed into decrepitude. The decline was evident in the number of projects canceled, outposts shuttered, squadrons deactivated, and officers reassigned, as well as in reduced funding and personnel levels overall.2 Yet it was the curtailment of the Semiautomatic Ground Environment, or SAGE, that most strongly attested the retrenchment of the continental air-defense program. The technological centerpiece of plans devised only a few years earlier, SAGE achieved the dubious distinction of not only rapidly diminishing in scope prior to its deployment, but actually being withdrawn from service while that deployment was still in progress. According to the schedule drawn up in December 1955, 46 SAGE “direction centers,” each housing two 21,000-square-foot AN/FSQ-7 computers—one active, and the other on standby— 1. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, 114. 2. Figures tabulated in Historical Data of the Aerospace Defense Command, 1946–1973,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Karen Bradley Clay Curriculum Vitae July 2018
    Karen Bradley Clay Curriculum Vitae July 2018 Contact Information Heinz School of Public Policy and Management Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 412-268-4197 (office) [email protected] http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~kclay/ Citizenship: United States, Canada Research Interests Environmental Economics, Energy Economics, Economic History, Health Economics Education Ph.D. Economics, Stanford University, 1994. B.A. with Highest Honors, Economics, University of Virginia, 1988. Professional Experience 2016-present Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, Tepper School of Business (courtesy), and Engineering and Public Policy (courtesy), Carnegie Mellon University 2008-2016 Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Heinz School of Public Policy and Management and Tepper School of Business (courtesy), Carnegie Mellon University 2018-present Senior Fellow, Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, Carnegie Mellon University 2012-present National Bureau for Economic Research, Research Associate, Development of the American Economy (Faculty Research Fellow, 2010-2012.) Research Associate, Energy and Environmental Economics, 2015-present 2011-present Affiliated Faculty, University of Pittsburgh Law School 2008-2009 Visiting Scholar, Stanford Law School 1999-2008 Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Heinz School of Public Policy and Management and Tepper School of Business (courtesy), Carnegie Mellon University 1998-1999 Visiting Assistant Professor, Heinz School
    [Show full text]
  • A Selected Bibliography of Publications By, and About, J
    A Selected Bibliography of Publications by, and about, J. Robert Oppenheimer Nelson H. F. Beebe University of Utah Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB 155 S 1400 E RM 233 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090 USA Tel: +1 801 581 5254 FAX: +1 801 581 4148 E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] (Internet) WWW URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ 17 March 2021 Version 1.47 Title word cross-reference $1 [Duf46]. $12.95 [Edg91]. $13.50 [Tho03]. $14.00 [Hug07]. $15.95 [Hen81]. $16.00 [RS06]. $16.95 [RS06]. $17.50 [Hen81]. $2.50 [Opp28g]. $20.00 [Hen81, Jor80]. $24.95 [Fra01]. $25.00 [Ger06]. $26.95 [Wol05]. $27.95 [Ger06]. $29.95 [Goo09]. $30.00 [Kev03, Kle07]. $32.50 [Edg91]. $35 [Wol05]. $35.00 [Bed06]. $37.50 [Hug09, Pol07, Dys13]. $39.50 [Edg91]. $39.95 [Bad95]. $8.95 [Edg91]. α [Opp27a, Rut27]. γ [LO34]. -particles [Opp27a]. -rays [Rut27]. -Teilchen [Opp27a]. 0-226-79845-3 [Guy07, Hug09]. 0-8014-8661-0 [Tho03]. 0-8047-1713-3 [Edg91]. 0-8047-1714-1 [Edg91]. 0-8047-1721-4 [Edg91]. 0-8047-1722-2 [Edg91]. 0-9672617-3-2 [Bro06, Hug07]. 1 [Opp57f]. 109 [Con05, Mur05, Nas07, Sap05a, Wol05, Kru07]. 112 [FW07]. 1 2 14.99/$25.00 [Ber04a]. 16 [GHK+96]. 1890-1960 [McG02]. 1911 [Meh75]. 1945 [GHK+96, Gow81, Haw61, Bad95, Gol95a, Hew66, She82, HBP94]. 1945-47 [Hew66]. 1950 [Ano50]. 1954 [Ano01b, GM54, SZC54]. 1960s [Sch08a]. 1963 [Kuh63]. 1967 [Bet67a, Bet97, Pun67, RB67]. 1976 [Sag79a, Sag79b]. 1981 [Ano81]. 20 [Goe88]. 2005 [Dre07]. 20th [Opp65a, Anoxx, Kai02].
    [Show full text]
  • Universities and Innovation Ecosystems: a Dynamic Capabilities Perspective Sohvi Heaton,1,* Donald S
    Industrial and Corporate Change, 2019, 1–19 doi: 10.1093/icc/dtz038 Original article Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/icc/dtz038/5526923 by Loyola Marymount University user on 08 July 2019 Universities and innovation ecosystems: a dynamic capabilities perspective Sohvi Heaton,1,* Donald S. Siegel,2 and David J. Teece3 1College of Business, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA 90045-2659, USA. e-mail: [email protected], 2School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ 85004-0687, USA. e-mail: [email protected] and 3Institute for Business Innovation, Haas School of Business, U.C. Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1234, USA. e-mail: [email protected] *Main author for correspondence. Abstract Universities play an important role in innovation ecosystems. In addition to developing human capital and advancing technology, they are increasingly expected to participate as economic development partners with industry and local, state, and national governments. Models such as the “Triple Helix” have been advanced to frame the assessment of interactions among academia, industry, and govern- ments that may foster economic development. Such models highlight the boundary-spanning roles of universities and provide a predetermined list of actions universities could take to strengthen their eco- system. Unfortunately, the flexible and entrepreneurial management of universities required to make this model work has virtually been ignored in the academic literature. We propose the dynamic capa- bilities framework to guide how universities might manage their innovation ecosystems. We use this framework to analyze the role of the university throughout the ecosystem lifecycle.
    [Show full text]
  • History and Organization Table of Contents
    History and Organization Table of Contents History and Organization Carnegie Mellon University History Carnegie Mellon Colleges, Branch Campuses, and Institute Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley Software Engineering Institute Research Centers and Institutes Accreditations by College and Department Carnegie Mellon University History Introduction The story of Carnegie Mellon University is unique and remarkable. After its founding in 1900 as the Carnegie Technical Schools, serving workers and young men and women of the Pittsburgh area, it became the degree-granting Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912. “Carnegie Tech,” as it was known, merged with the Mellon Institute to become Carnegie Mellon University in 1967. Carnegie Mellon has since soared to national and international leadership in higher education—and it continues to be known for solving real-world problems, interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovation. The story of the university’s famous founder—Andrew Carnegie—is also remarkable. A self-described “working-boy” with an “intense longing” for books, Andrew Carnegie emigrated from Scotland with his family in 1848 and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He became a self-educated entrepreneur, whose Carnegie Steel Company grew to be the world’s largest producer of steel by the end of the nineteenth century. On November 15, 1900, Andrew Carnegie formally announced: “For many years I have nursed the pleasing thought that I might be the fortunate giver of a Technical Institute to our City, fashioned upon the best models, for I know of no institution which Pittsburgh, as an industrial centre, so much needs.” He concluded with the words “My heart is in the work,” which would become the university’s official motto.
    [Show full text]
  • Transaction Cost Economics: the Natural Progression†
    American Economic Review 100 (June 2010): 673–690 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi 10.1257/aer.100.3.673 = Transaction Cost Economics: The Natural Progression† By Oliver E. Williamson* The research program on which I and others have been working has been variously described as the “economics of governance,” the “economics of organization,” and “transaction cost eco- nomics.” As discussed in Section I, governance is the overarching concept and transaction cost economics is the means by which to breathe operational content into governance and organization. The specific issue that drew me into this research project was the puzzle posed by Ronald Coase in 1937: What efficiency factors determine when a firm produces a good or service to its own needs rather than outsource? As described in Section II, my 1971 paper on “The Vertical Integration of Production” made headway with this issue and invited follow-on research that would eventually come to be referred to as transaction cost economics. The rudiments of transaction cost economics are set out in Section III. Puzzles and challenges that arose and would require “pushing the logic of efficient governance to completion” are examined briefly in Section IV. Concluding remarks follow. I. An Overview For economists, if not more generally, governance and organization are important if and as these are made susceptible to analysis. As described here, breathing operational content into the concept of governance would entail examining economic organization through the lens of con- tract rather than the neoclassical lens of choice , recognizing that this was an interdisciplinary ( ) project where economics and organization theory and, later, aspects of the law were joined, and ( ) introducing hitherto neglected transaction costs into the analysis.
    [Show full text]
  • The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer
    The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer JAMES A. HIJIYA Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth The essential idea in the reply which Krishna offered to Arjuna was that through the discharge of the duties of one’s station without thought of fruit one was on the way to salvation. —John McKenzie, Hindu Ethics (1922)1 NE OF THE MOST-CITED and least-interpreted quotations from the history of the atomic age is what J. Robert Oppen- heimer claimed to have thought when he witnessed the world’s O 2 first nuclear explosion: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Shortly after Oppenheimer, director of the laboratory that developed the atomic bomb, saw the fireball glowing over the New Mexico desert at the Trinity test site on 16 July 1945, those words derived from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad-Gita came to his mind. The quotation appears throughout the literature on nuclear weap- ons, often in a slightly different form: “I am become Death, the shat- terer of worlds.”3 Destroyer or shatterer, the fatal image has appeared in such widely read recent books as Roger Shattuck’s Forbidden Knowl- 1 McKenzie, Hindu Ethics: A Historical and Critical Essay (Oxford: Oxford University, 1922), 125. 2 The television documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb, prod. Fred Freed, broadcast as an NBC White Paper in 1965, recorded Oppenheimer speaking these words. In this interview almost twenty years after the Trinity test, Oppenheimer mistakenly attributes the quotation to Vishnu, of whom Krishna is the eighth avatar. An offshoot from this documentary is Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed’s book, The Decision to Drop the Bomb (New York: Coward McCann, 1965), which on p.
    [Show full text]
  • A Selected Bibliography of Publications By, and About, Niels Bohr
    A Selected Bibliography of Publications by, and about, Niels Bohr Nelson H. F. Beebe University of Utah Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB 155 S 1400 E RM 233 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090 USA Tel: +1 801 581 5254 FAX: +1 801 581 4148 E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] (Internet) WWW URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ 09 June 2021 Version 1.308 Title word cross-reference + [VIR+08]. $1 [Duf46]. $1.00 [N.38, Bal39]. $105.95 [Dor79]. $11.95 [Bus20]. $12.00 [Kra07, Lan08]. $189 [Tan09]. $21.95 [Hub14]. $24.95 [RS07]. $29.95 [Gor17]. $32.00 [RS07]. $35.00 [Par06]. $47.50 [Kri91]. $6.95 [Sha67]. $61 [Kra16b]. $9 [Jam67]. − [VIR+08]. 238 [Tur46a, Tur46b]. ◦ [Fra55]. 2 [Som18]. β [Gau14]. c [Dar92d, Gam39]. G [Gam39]. h [Gam39]. q [Dar92d]. × [wB90]. -numbers [Dar92d]. /Hasse [KZN+88]. /Rath [GRE+01]. 0 [wB90, Hub14, Tur06]. 0-19-852049-2 [Ano93a, Red93, Seg93]. 0-19-853977-0 [Hub14]. 0-521-35366-1 [Kri91]. 0-674-01519-3 [Tur06]. 0-85224-458-4 [Hen86a]. 0-9672617-2-4 [Kra07, Lan08]. 1 2 1.5 [GRE+01]. 100-˚aret [BR+85]. 100th [BR+85, KRW05, Sch13, vM02]. 110th [Rub97a]. 121 [Boh87a]. 153 [MP97]. 16 [SE13]. 17 [Boh55a, KRBR62]. 175 [Bad83]. 18.11.1962 [Hei63a]. 1911 [Meh75]. 1915 [SE13]. 1915/16 [SE13, SE13]. 1918 [Boh21a]. 1920s [PP16]. 1922 [Boh22a]. 1923 [Ros18]. 1925 [Cla13, Bor13, Jan17, Sho13]. 1927 [Ano28]. 1929 [HEB+80, HvMW79, Pye81]. 1930 [Lin81, Whe81]. 1930/41 [Fer68, Fer71]. 1930s [Aas85b, Stu79]. 1933 [CCJ+34].
    [Show full text]
  • Chain Reaction: the Tragedy of Atomic Governance
    UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations 1-1-1998 Chain reaction: The tragedy of atomic governance Mary Dawn Wammack University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/rtds Repository Citation Wammack, Mary Dawn, "Chain reaction: The tragedy of atomic governance" (1998). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 1033. http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/deig-t3pk This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted.
    [Show full text]
  • A Conversation with Stephen E. Fienberg 3
    Statistical Science 2013, Vol. 28, No. 3, 447–463 DOI: 10.1214/12-STS411 c Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2013 A Conversation with Stephen E. Fienberg Miron L. Straf and Judith M. Tanur Abstract. Stephen E. Fienberg is Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Science at Carnegie Mellon University, with appointments in the Department of Statistics, the Machine Learning Department and the Heinz College. He is the Carnegie Mellon co-director of the Living Analytics Research Centre, a joint center between Carnegie Mellon University and Singapore Management University. Fienberg received his hon. B.Sc. in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Toronto (1964), and his A.M. (1965) and Ph.D. (1968) degrees in Statistics at Harvard University. He has served as Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon and as Vice President for Academic Affairs at York University in Toronto, Canada, as well as on the faculties of the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota. He was founding co-editor of Chance and served as the Coordinating and Applications Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association. He is one of the founding editors of the Annals of Applied Statistics, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the new online Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality and founding editor of the new Annual Review of Statistics and its Application. He has been Vice President of the American Statistical Association and President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. His research includes the development of statistical methods, especially tools for categorical data analysis and the analysis of network data, algebraic statistics, causal inference, statistics and the law, machine learning and the history of statistics.
    [Show full text]
  • Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University
    Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University About This Guide The Clear Admit team has prepared this reference guide to the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University (“Tepper”) to assist you in your research of this program. Our comments are designed to be of use to individuals in all stages of the admissions process, providing information relevant to those who are determining whether to apply to this program, looking for in-depth information for a planned application to Tepper, preparing for an interview or deciding whether to attend. The guide is unique in that it not only addresses many aspects of life as a Tepper MBA student and alumnus, covering school- specific programs in depth, but also compares Tepper to other leading business schools across a range of criteria based on data from the schools, the scholarly and popular presses, and Clear Admit’s conversations with current MBA students, alum- ni, faculty and school administrators. We have normalized the data offered by each business school to allow for easy side- by-side comparisons of multiple programs. www.clearadmit.com © 2006-2014 Clear Admit, LLC. All rights reserved. Applying to business school? Learn more from Clear Admit! The Leading Independent Resource for Top-tier MBA Candidates Visit our website: www.clearadmit.com Stay up-to-date with the latest news on the world’s best business schools and sharpen your approach to your applications with insider advice on MBA admissions Want this information--and more exclusive content--delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for our Newsletter Check out our unique offerings to guide you through every step of the admissions process..
    [Show full text]
  • Transaction Cost Economics: an Overview Oliver E. Williamson
    Transaction cost economics: an overview Oliver E. Williamson1 This overview of transaction cost economics differs from prior overviews to which I have contributed in two respects: it is especially oriented at students who are new to but curious about the transaction cost economics (hereafter TCE) literature; and it is organized around the ‘Carnegie Triple’ – be disciplined; be interdisciplinary; have an active mind. It is partly autobiographical on the latter account.2 Section 1 discusses the Carnegie Triple and sets out five key quotations that anchor the transaction cost economics project. Sections 2 through 4 describe how TCE implements each element in the triple. Section 5 discusses operationalization. The conclusions follow in Section 6. Introduction The Carnegie triple It was my privilege to have been a graduate student at the Graduate School of Industrial Management at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie-Mellon University) from 1960 through 1963. Those were halcyon years for GSIA.3 The small but accomplished faculty included Herbert Simon, Franco Modigliani, Merton Miller, Richard Cyert, James March, John Muth, Allan Meltzer, and William Cooper, the first three being subsequently awarded Nobel Laureates in Economics. The graduate program was in three parts: economics, organization theory, and operations research. All of the graduate students took core courses in all three and subsequently specialized in one. My major was in economics, but I drew continuously on my training in organization theory (and selectively on operations research). The research atmosphere at Carnegie was exhilarating. Old issues were revisited and new issues were opened up.
    [Show full text]
  • History, Mission, and Organization Table of Contents
    History, Mission, and Organization Table of Contents History, Mission, and Organization University Vision, Mission, and Values Carnegie Mellon University History Carnegie Mellon Colleges, Branch Campuses, and Institute Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley Software Engineering Institute Research Centers and Institutes Accreditations by College and Department University Administration Board of Trustees University Vision, Mission, and Values Vision Carnegie Mellon will meet the changing needs of society by building on its traditions of innovation, problem solving, and interdisciplinarity. Mission To create and disseminate knowledge and art through research and creative inquiry, teaching, and learning, and to transfer our intellectual and artistic product to enhance society in meaningful and sustainable ways. To serve our students by teaching them problem solving, leadership and teamwork skills, and the value of a commitment to quality, ethical behavior, and respect for others. To achieve these ends by pursuing the advantages of a diverse and relatively small university community, open to the exchange of ideas, where discovery, creativity, and personal and professional development can flourish. Values Dedication, as exemplified by our commitment to the critical issues of society and our uncompromising work ethic. Collaboration, as exemplified by our interdisciplinarity, our external partnerships, and our capacity to create new fields of inquiry. Measuring excellence by impact, as exemplified by our focus on issues critical to regional development, national interest, and global welfare. Entrepreneurship, as exemplified by openness to new ideas, prudent use of resources, and readiness to act. Depth driving breadth, as exemplified by our issue-driven research, our context-based general education initiatives, and our focus on problem solving and creative production at all levels.
    [Show full text]