I’m not a fan of doomsday cults. It always seems so arrogant to think that of all the people who have been born, and will be born, you will happen to have secured a seat at doomsday. It seems unlikely. Remember, the guy running the cult in your hometown isn’t going to usher in the…
Category: Management Theory
Learn About Business Before Discussing Business
Businesspeople can often think they know more about the world than they do. CEOs share their barely coherent thoughts on current affairs. It is annoying. People involved in sustainability are right to be irritated when they hear such nonsense. Yet, the opposite is also true. If you don’t know anything about business, it is not…
Teaching About Climate Change
Teaching about climate change is a significant problem in modern universities. Ahmed Afzaal has a book that addresses university professors who are teaching, in what he calls, our Predicament. The title, Teaching at Twilight, suggested a more downbeat view of the world than I have but that is an excellent reason to read a book….
Hiding Their Good Works
There is plenty of bad environmental news and even worse news about environmental policy. (And not just in the US but that is the epicenter). Still, there are reasons for optimism which are often worth holding onto and sharing. Andrew Winston, a prolific writer on sustainable business, gave his views on 2025’s Climate Week in…
Information Is Key To Recognizing Progress
Hannah Ritchie’s Clearing The Air is a must read for anyone interested in the challenge of greenhouse gases. She answers fifty common questions about how the world can make progress addressing climate change. Almost everyone can learn something from the book. You may have been able to answer some of the questions, but few people…
Applying The Genetic Fallacy To The Carbon Footprint
I have just finished Hannah Ritchie’s Clearing the Air. More on that later — spoiler, it is a great book. As such, I was interested to see what a review that appeared in The Guardian newspaper had to say about it. The writer overall liked the book, which makes sense. But he didn’t stop there….
Explaining The Economy
Kyla Scanlon has a book explaining the economy. There are some nice parts, and some things I wasn’t too sure about. (At least one graph seemed really odd as did a couple of comments but, being a popular book, the references were a bit too limited to check properly). Mostly she does a good job…
Considering Stakeholder Psychology
An important book in the world of sustainable business is Leveraging Corporate Responsibility by CB Bhattacharya, Sankar Sen, and Daniel Korschun. It was published in 2011, so things have moved on, not least the terminology. In 2025 they might well have decided to use the term sustainable business rather than corporate responsibility. Still, their basic…
Is Devolving Or Centralizing Power Better?
Is devolving or centralizing power better? This is a central question at the heart of Marc Dunkelman’s book, Why Nothing Works. Dunkelman worries that those people in the US who believe in the power of government to make the world better, basically the center and left, have set the rules to prevent themselves from achieving…
Academics Can Be Biased Too
Academics are human beings. Pick a human flaw and they have it. Of course, human beings are better at seeing the flaws in arguments that they don’t approve of than those they nod along to. This holds for academics. After all academics can be biased too. Allen Mendenhall and Daniel Stutter, two senior scholars one…
