Word: bettering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Jimmy Carter pondered the barbs from Mexico's President José López Portillo a few days ago, and momentarily wondered if he should respond. Then in a fraction of a second he decided that the better part of wisdom and the greater part of courage for the leader of a superpower was to sit calmly and quietly. In Mexico there was some grudging appreciation. In America, beset by too many inner doubts, there was plenty of criticism...
...emphasis on improving management is important. But I wonder -will encouraging competition among managers lead to more efficient Government, or simply to more and better empire building? No new standards for what constitutes good management have been laid down, and in their absence, it's fair to assume that the bureaucrats will continue to respond to old ones...
...answer is obvious: the pressure toward mediocrity is simply too enormous to resist. To stand out one need perform only slightly better than the prevailing level of incompetence. To do much more is to play the fool-doing others' work -and invites the hostility of coworkers...
...second road to glory-and mediocrity-is to join the rank of management. This is typically accomplished by building a small empire. For lack of a better index, one's importance, and thus one's grade, is ultimately determined by the number of employees supervised, the number of publications issued, the number of projects undertaken. This of course leads to the creation of unnecessary work...
...that Viet Nam has come off much better. Hanoi's expansion into Laos and its invasion of Cambodia did much to demolish Viet Nam's widespread image in the Third World as a brave anticolonial underdog and show it up more as an Oriental 20th century Sparta intent on becoming gendarme and ruler of all it can grasp. One mystery: How do the Vietnamese maintain that martial impulse after more than 30 years of constant warfare? Part of the answer derives from who has the upper hand in the collective leadership that succeeded Ho Chi Minh. The eleven-man Politburo...