A quick look at one of Leda Cosmides’s answers during an interview for El Mecurio (Chile), on the idea of environmental determinism.

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For Friday, here’s “Seven Distinct Paths of Decision and Action” by Warren Kinston and Jimmy Algie from 1989. This paper describes the seven different approaches to decision-making, but note that it’s really about action.

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The New York Times reports Sunday that the US Army has created its own aerial surveillance unit because they weren’t able to get the service levels they wanted out of the unmanned Predator operations run by the US Air Force. It’s happening because the new unmanned systems have changed where the discretion for the [...]

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Besides a new appointment at the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago, I’ve been busy trying to get my mind wrapped around Warren Kinston’s materials. And parent a colicky baby, of course.
Current reading list (for my tracking purposes):

Warren Kinson, 1994. Strengthening the Management Culture (available as a PDF download from the GO Society). The [...]

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Claudio Ciborra, who unfortunately died too early recently, left a rich quantity and breadth of writings on information systems from a sociological perspective. Here I look at one of thisClaudio Ciborra. 2002. “Design, Kairos and Affection“. From Managing as Designing: Position Papers [?], Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University.
… if speed is the main characteristic of [...]

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Hanseth, Ole and Braa, Kristin. 2001. “For the Treasure at the End of the Rainbow: Standardizing Corporate IT Infrastructure”. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 10:261–292.
Hanseth and Braa, both of the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo, examined a desktop standards project done within Norsk Hydro. The company had grown substantially over a period [...]

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Reviewed: John Sterman, Nelson Repenning, and Fred Kofman. “Unanticipated Side Effects of Successful Quality Programs: Exploring a Paradox of Organizational Improvement”. Management Science, 43(4), April 1997. Available online.
Sterman et al. show how a fairly basic model can show the results of a TQM implementation at a largish company. They also discuss the problems inherent in [...]

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One with perspective brings a broader, patient, more long-range view to his or her leadership responsibilities which enables the sorting of trivial from important events and outcomes and the determining of worth…. In a recent Wall Street Journal-Gallup poll, for example, integrity was the factor considered most important for advancement by chief executives of 282 [...]

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That’s not you controlling your business through SAP but SAP running you. From Ron May’s excellent email newsletter, The May Report, of 2006-Jan-17:

The best interview I conducted was with a guy from Kellogg who explained how Kellogg was somewhat boxed into the decision to go with SAP because Keebler already had it and they had [...]

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HR.com recently had an interview with Karen Stephenson, the professorial founder of NetForm and the leading thinker in social network analysis.
Dr. Stephenson notoriously doesn’t publish anything, preferring to patent her ideas. I think that she has combined hierarchy and social network into something more powerful. Jaques & Co. always needed something to counterbalance the [...]

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