California Management Review

Brain child of management consultants called in to integrate the Polaris program, PERT, now a fixture in defense contracts, is invading civilian management fields and introducing new concepts such as critical path analysis to replace standard bar charts and old-line production techniques. Will it live up to its initial promise? This article outlines some of the advantages and limitations of this new technique.

Here are five steps which will help make your firm's long-range plans pay off. They are described by a writer with practical experience in the field who takes the mystery and statistical double talk out of the subject and presents LRP as the useful, moneysaving tool for business decision making that it is.

Even a production-oriented new industry must soon become market-minded and organize its distributive staff accordingly if it is to survive in today's sales jungle, this article declares, using as its case in point a study of what is happening right now in the semiconductor industry.

Can the business community afford lower taxes, particularly state and local taxes? The answer is yes only if it and the public at large are willing to give up many free services and forego the often hefty subsidies they now enjoy in the form of below-cost charges for the use of many public facilities. While consumption of local and state government services has doubled in the past decade, tax revenues have not. Where is the money coming from? Federal subsidies, also derived from taxes, are one answer. Another, outlined here, is to make the public, including business, pay for services it gets from government.

Would uniform reserve requirements for all deposit institutions significantly increase the effectiveness of the Federal Reserve policy and end adverse discrimination against commercial bank deposits? This article says it's not likely and shows why.

One cardinal way to speed up America's economic growth is for government to underwrite scientific research and education, particularly in the realm of pure science where corporation-supported R & D often cannot afford to venture resources because of time lag and the chancy nature of a payoff. Government support, this article claims, could free science and many scientists from the bread and butter demands of technology so that they can make the big discoveries upon which tomorrow's productivity must inevitably be based.