scholarly journals A historical analysis of the traditional Japanese decision-making process in contrast with the U.S. system and implications for intercultural deliberations

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shoji Mitarai
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
The U.S

A Dialogue-Centric Approach to Environmental-Remediation Decision-Making

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurel Boucher ◽  
James F. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Department Of Defense ◽  
Environmental Remediation ◽  
Leadership Skills ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Remediation Plan ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Poor Management ◽  
Responsible Party

This paper outlines a multi-step approach to streamline and enhance the decision-making process that guides environmental remediation. The inability of the responsible party and the various stakeholders to reach agreement on the remediation plan can delay the remediation, result in financial penalties, and lead to the development of an adversarial stance that inhibits the ability of the parties to work together in a creative and constructive manner. The approach presented by the authors is designed to expand dialogue in a way that moves it beyond technical or fiscal matters by addressing what the authors describe as the “hidden barriers” to productive dialogue. These “hidden barriers” include: self-interests, the perception as to how people are being treated, a lack of clarity or poor management of responsibilities and accountabilities, unclear or convoluted communication protocols, and an underlying tone of conflict and cynicism. A key element of the multi-step approach outlined in this paper is the process of uncovering these “hidden barriers” and addressing them in a way that turns discourse into collaboration. The paper describes a model the authors have used to streamline and enhance the process of creating sustainable agreements both for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management as well as the U.S. Department of Defense for a variety of environmental remediation projects. The results of this approach include the acceleration of an environmental clean-up from a projected 19 years to 11 years, the development of innovative technical strategies, the reduction of a major backlog of environmental proposals requiring review and comment, and the distinction accorded one group of being recognized as a model of effective partnering. The approach described has widespread implications not only because its use can be expanded to include a multitude of decision-making applications but also because of the impact it creates by expanding both the management and leadership skills of those who use it.

Restoring Public Trust While Tearing Down Site in Rural Ohio

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Schneider ◽  
Jeffrey Wagner ◽  
Judy Connell
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Action Plans ◽  
Remedial Action ◽  
Remedial Action Plans ◽  
Stakeholder Consensus ◽  
The U.S

In the mid-1980s, the impact of three decades of uranium processing near rural Fernald, Ohio, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, became the centre of national public controversy. When a series of incidents at the uranium foundry brought to light the years of contamination to the environment and surrounding farmland communities, local citizens’ groups united and demanded a role in determining the plans for cleaning up the site. One citizens’ group, Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH), formed in 1984 following reports that nearly 300 pounds of enriched uranium oxide had been released from a dust-collector system, and three off-property wells south of the site were contaminated with uranium. For 22 years, FRESH monitored activities at Fernald and participated in the decision-making process with management and regulators. The job of FRESH ended on 19 January this year when the U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson — flanked by local, state, and national elected officials, and citizen-led environmental watchdog groups including FRESH — officially declared the Fernald Site clean of all nuclear contamination and open to public access. It marked the end of a remarkable turnaround in public confidence and trust that had attracted critical reports from around the world: the Cincinnati Enquirer; U.S. national news programs 60 Minutes, 20/20, Nightline, and 48 Hours; worldwide media outlets from the British Broadcasting Company and Canadian Broadcasting Company; Japanese newspapers; and German reporters. When personnel from Fluor arrived in 1992, the management team thought it understood the issues and concerns of each stakeholder group, and was determined to implement the decommissioning scope of work aggressively, confident that stakeholders would agree with its plans. This approach resulted in strained relationships with opinion leaders during the early months of Fluor’s contract. To forge better relationships, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who owns the site, and Fluor embarked on three new strategies based on engaging citizens and interested stakeholder groups in the decision-making process. The first strategy was opening communication channels with site leadership, technical staff, and regulators. This strategy combined a strong public-information program with two-way communications between management and the community, soliciting and encouraging stakeholder participation early in the decision-making process. Fluor’s public-participation strategy exceeded the “check-the-box” approach common within the nuclear-weapons complex, and set a national standard that stands alone today. The second stakeholder-engagement strategy sprang from mending fences with the regulators and the community. The approach for dispositioning low-level waste was a 25-year plan to ship it off the site. Working with stakeholders, DOE and Fluor were able to convince the community to accept a plan to safely store waste permanently on site, which would save 15 years of cleanup and millions of dollars in cost. The third strategy addressed the potentially long delays in finalizing remedial action plans due to formal public comment periods and State and Federal regulatory approvals. Working closely with the U.S. and Ohio Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA) and other stakeholders, DOE and Fluor were able to secure approvals of five Records of Decision on time – a first for the DOE complex. Developing open and honest relationships with union leaders, the workforce, regulators and community groups played a major role in DOE and Fluor cleaning up and closing the site. Using lessons learned at Fernald, DOE was able to resolve challenges at other sites, including worker transition, labour disputes, and damaged relationships with regulators and the community. It took significant time early in the project to convince the workforce that their future lay in cleanup, not in holding out hope for production to resume. It took more time to repair relationships with Ohio regulators and the local community. Developing these relationships over the years required constant, open communications between site decision makers and stakeholders to identify issues and to overcome potential barriers. Fluor’s open public-participation strategy resulted in stakeholder consensus of five remedial-action plans that directed Fernald cleanup. This strategy included establishing a public-participation program that emphasized a shared-decision making process and abandoned the government’s traditional, non-participatory “Decide, Announce, Defend” approach. Fernald’s program became a model within the DOE complex for effective public participation. Fluor led the formation of the first DOE site-specific advisory board dedicated to remediation and closure. The board was successful at building consensus on critical issues affecting long-term site remediation, such as cleanup levels, waste disposal and final land use. Fluor created innovative public outreach tools, such as “Cleanopoly,” based on the Monopoly game, to help illustrate complex concepts, including risk levels, remediation techniques, and associated costs. These innovative tools helped DOE and Fluor gain stakeholder consensus on all cleanup plans. To commemorate the outstanding commitment of Fernald stakeholders to this massive environmental-restoration project, Fluor donated $20,000 to build the Weapons to Wetlands Grove overlooking the former 136-acre production area. The grove contains 24 trees, each dedicated to “[a] leader(s) behind the Fernald cleanup.” Over the years, Fluor, through the Fluor Foundation, also invested in educational and humanitarian projects, contributing nearly $2 million to communities in southwestern Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Further, to help offset the economic impact of the site’s closing to the community, DOE and Fluor promoted economic development in the region by donating excess equipment and property to local schools and townships. This paper discusses the details of the public-involvement program — from inception through maturity — and presents some lessons learned that can be applied to other similar projects.

Party Responsibility in Britain and the United States

1967 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Jorgen S. Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Institutional Differences ◽  
British Experience ◽  
The Many ◽  
The U.S

Political parties in representative democracies have, as two of their most significant functions, to facilitate popular participation in the decision-making process and to implement, through control of governmental organs, those policies which are popularly favoured. Judged by these criteria, American parties are dysfunctional—so one critical school argues. American parties, they charge, are responsible neither to their members nor voters and are so organized and operated that they fail to govern effectively. When, in the early 1950s, this case against American parties had its greatest acceptance in the discipline, a number of critics contrasted American parties unfavourably with British parties. As an earlier generation of political scientists had urged Americans to adopt British institutions of government, so the critics of American parties favoured reforms which they thought were characteristic of British parties. If American parties became more like British parties, they argued, those parties would be more responsible and effective. Defenders of American parties refuted the critics' diagnosis and prescription by emphasizing the many environmental and institutional differences between Britain and the United States. British experience simply was not applicable in the U.S., they maintained. As study of British parties progressed an even more devastating rejoinder to critics of American parties emerged. Various findings began to suggest that although British parties obviously were much more cohesive in the legislature than were American parties, they were not nearly as responsible as the critics had assumed.

scholarly journals Film and Video Censorship in New Zealand, 1976-1994

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Duncan Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Serial Killer ◽  
Media Policy ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Film Censorship

<p>This thesis is an historical analysis of cinema and video censorship in New Zealand focusing on the period from 1976 to 1994. This is bookended by two significant changes in censorship legislation: the introduction of the concept of “injurious to the public good” as the guiding principle for film censorship in 1976, and the consolidation of censorship of film, video and other publications under one censorship authority in 1993 legislation (which came into force in 1994). My theoretical approach can be broadly classified as institutionalist political economy. The emphasis is on what Des Freedman regards as the “deeply political” nature of media policy development and implementation¹, as well as the role of many key actors, including politicians and civil servants, but also lobbyists and pressure groups, and “the importance of informal as well as formal modes of policy behaviour”.² Also, rather than simply looking at censorship decisions as the work of individuals, I have examined the way in which, as B. Guy Peters notes, “structures persist while individual members of those structures come and go”, and that “structures (institutions) create more regularity of human behaviour than would otherwise exist”.³ Rather than attempting to provide an exhaustive narrative of film censorship during this period, the focus is on detailed case studies of individual films which were the subject of censorship controversy in New Zealand, including Last Tango in Paris, Mad Max, Life of Brian, I Spit on Your Grave, Hail Mary and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. As these were contentious decisions, with a number of different voices competing for discursive legitimacy, they help to illustrate what Annette Kuhn describes as the idea of censorship as “a matter of relations…a process, not an object”, emphasising “the interactions between the various institutional practices involved….the relations between them, the ensemble of practices condensed in any one instance of film censorship”.⁴ These case studies also provide significant insight into the decision-making process of the film censors, demonstrating that this goes far beyond “objective” judgements about the manifest content of the films, and into more contentious and subjective areas such as the perceived tone of films (how they present certain content, rather than simply the content itself), views on media effects, the imagined audience, and the wider societal context. The decisions made by the censors depend very much on how these various factors are weighed, and which are given the most importance in the decision-making process. I have also examined the operation of formal home video censorship in New Zealand, which was introduced in 1987, taking a broader approach rather than focusing on individual film case studies, as no individual videos resulted in the level of controversy or media coverage as the film case studies.  ¹ Des Freedman, The Politics of Media Policy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 1. ² Ibid., 217. ³ B. Guy Peters, “Institutional theory: problems and prospects.” In Debating institutionalism, edited by Jon Pierre, B. Guy Peters and Gerry Stoker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 6. ⁴ Annette Kuhn, Cinema, censorship, and sexuality, 1909-1925 (London: Routledge, 1988), 127.</p>

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