Thirty years of lax budget policy (the Trente Dispendieuses) marked by soaring public spending in the 1980’s, the happy-go-lucky attitude of the 1990… - Éric Pichet

In the developed world taxation is always a political construct, a living organism that is always changing due to endless modifications imposed by lawmakers who are themselves sensitive to the public mood and to changes in social ideology. This is a haphazard scaffolding without an architect that lacks rationality and coherency, with tax and social expenditures- referred to here as social and tax expenditures - constituting a superstructure that is all the more complex given its roots in a tax system whose benchmark standards are subject to innumerable exceptions.

Misapprehensions about the crucial question of whether Management constitutes a scientific discipline stem, in my view, from the multiplicity of perspectives involved: theoretical; normative; technical/educational; and practical. This makes is far too easy for critics to deride practical advice developed in this field, something they assimilate far too readily (and erroneously) with ready-made solutions, ignoring the epistemological vision underlying all management studies.

Common wisdom holds that the most complicated thing in the universe (asides fom the universe itself) is the human brain. In actual fact, however, other objects are even more complex – starting with human society, especially today’s hypermodern society, a product of thousands and even billions of human brains; not to forget globalisation and the Internet.