A tricky problem in business research is understanding the role of fairness concerns. It is pretty obvious from just a cursory look at social interactions (of which business relations are a special type) that fairness matters to a lot of people a lot of the time. Often consumers and workers complain about lack of fairness….
Category: Management Theory
Logical Problems
Logic is a challenge for all of us. To get through life we make a lot of leaps that are probably not justified. That said it is helpful to sit back and think through the leaps we are making. Bo Bennett has put together a compilation of logical fallacies. These range from some classic ones…
Problems In Academic Research
Writing in the Journal of International Business Studies Klaus Meyer and his colleagues outline some problems in academic research. The authors tell us how they suggest dealing with the problem. Familiar Problems In Academic Research The problems they outline will be quite familiar to anyone following recent controversies in academia. The file drawer problem is…
Machine Learning And The End Of The World
This week I have a second (and last) post on Agrawal, Gans and Golfarb’s Prediction Machines. This interesting books discusses the difference between machine learning and traditional statistics. The idea being machine learning is more functional, more concerned with a useful result than a precisely accurate one. The challenge is that machine learning predicts not…
Marketing Response To Stock Market Pressure
What is the marketing response to stock market pressure? Myopic Management Myopic management/marketing is the tendency to focus on short-term gains at the expense of long-term profits. It can occur for a number of reasons. Yet, at its heart, pressure from Wall Street appears to drive myopia for public companies. Certainly, many scholars subscribe to…
A Holmesian Dual Process Model
Dual system approaches are all the rage in psychology. A popular book suggests a Holmesian dual process model. Dual Process Models The idea is that our brains use two separate processes to come to decisions. I don’t think anyone literally thinks there are just two separate systems as such. The brain is massively complex with…
Do Facts Matter To Persuasion?
One of the major debates in marketing is: Do Facts Matter To Persuasion? The good news is that it will never be finished. Sometimes they do, sometimes less so is probably the answer. Still, it generates debate. Understanding People Who Don’t Think Like Us I really wanted to like Scott Adams’ Win Bigly. What was…
Research And Popular Advice
Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind is a curious book. It is highly influenced by academic research (the author is an academic). Yet, I wouldn’t say it was an academic book. It tells us something about research and popular advice and how they mix. Academic Self-Help Levitin’s doesn’t read like the standard academic book: “here —…
Character And Impacting Politics From Retirement
David Brooks’ book The Social Animal was fascinating. We saw a Conservative commentator engaging well with social science. The Road to Character is a rather different book. What then does Brooks tell us about character and impacting politics from retirement? Brooks As Biographer It is a collection of biographies designed to encourage more moral behavior….
Big Data And Understanding Human Behavior
What do we know about big data and understanding human behavior? New Data, New Insights The premise in Everybody Lies seems sound to me. Here we have an entirely new dataset that reveals things about people that they are not willing to reveal. Advice: don’t listen to the audiobook in the car with kids. It…
