Here’s a repost from 2006 that didn’t make it over. It describes a set of studies that so disturb the basic religion of MBA that it required replication across the world to get published. With minor revisions. American business rewards competitiveness. That may seem like a know-nothing statement. Markets reward people with the best product. Most people in America believe …
"How To Make a Madoff"
Ben Levisohn, “How To Make A Madoff“, Business Week, December 16, 2008. You don’t have to do anything to get a Madoff. They are always with us, like the poor. The question is whether or not you will create the social structures that detect them early. In evolutionary psychology, this is called cheater detection and it makes up a major …
Why Is Career Advice So Useless?
eWeek, a leading rag in the corporate IT industry, has a new article by Rich Milgram on “How to Ensure IT Job Security Despite an Economic Meltdown“. It’s a great example of useless career advice. And you don’t even have to be in IT to see that. Here are his four points, if you can call them that: Provide meaningful …
ASSOCHAM: Indian Firms May Fire 25%
ASSOCHAM threatens that Indian firms may lay off 25% of their workers in the next 10 days, according to Expressindia. This seems a bit excessive even by my apparently ghoulish attitude to the current recession/collapse. I’m not sure what this means or if it is simply posturing by Industry. A quarter of your workforce is a large number, especially if …
Crisis Week: Price the Placebo Appropriately
Reuters, the global english news service, reports on this months Ig Nobel Prize awards: the award for Medicine goes to a team “who showed that high-priced placebos work better than cheap fake medicine.” This has implications for pricing your services during the Crisis.
Cosmides on the Dangers of "Anyone Can Be Shaped Into Anything"
A quick look at one of Leda Cosmides’s answers during an interview for El Mecurio (Chile), on the idea of environmental determinism.
Restoring Discretion: The Reason for the US Army's New Air Reconnaissance Unit
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 reconn should lie. From NYT: In …
Latest Reading, or what’s keeping me busy
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 Sigma Centre, London. …
Structured Process vs. Drift: A Question of Worklevel?
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 this activity, then in …
How Standardization Creates Dis-Order
What happens when you move to standardization? In IT, we’re pushed to do single server loads, unified single-sign on systems, international PKI based Role Based Access Control, and all types of other forms of simplifying, rationalizing and standardizing. But no one ever stops to ask, Does standardizing in IT really make life easier? Not “no one” exactly. Because two researchers …