Blog

Category: Management Theory

  • The Perils Of Status

    Most people worry about being low status. That makes sense. It really isn’t great to be low status. Academia is so status-obsessed it often makes me laugh. Doctor this, and professor that. I’m just waiting for carpets that non-doctors can’t walk on and we’ll have gone full-on House of Lords. This reminds me of the…

  • Progress Exists And Is A Good Thing

    Matt Ridley is an interesting writer. A popular science/ideas writer he gives you his thoughts on a wide variety of subjects. I do admire his willingness to adopt an overarching narrative. To be honest, at times it can seem a bit too much for my tastes. His libertarian-esque views tend to see him damning a…

  • Use Of Humor In Business

    I must confess to being a bit jealous of Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas. They get to teach a course on the use of humor in business. It seems like they have a great time doing it. They meet a lot of fun people and do a lot of interesting activities. (As well as doing…

  • Anecdotal Evidence Is Problematic In Justifying Arguments

    Jerry Muller’s book on The Tyranny of Metrics argues that metrics are overused. (I have discussed other frustrations with the book here). Muller, however, very neatly illustrates the problem with his approach. Anecdotal evidence, by this here I mean stories not rigorously detailed, is problematic in justifying an argument. Basically he throws some numbers into…

  • Frequency Dependence And Strategy

    Here I’ll highlight an idea from evolutionary biology that has profond implications for strategy. This is the idea of frequency dependence. I think people overlook thais concept, a lot. Whenever you see, “10 tips for success”, or even stronger claims like “the five things you must do” remember whoever is saying this is either a)…

  • Improving Political Management; Some Of It Is A Bit Dark Ages

    A co-author of mine, Jennifer Lees-Marshment, is a world expert on political marketing, (crudely put winning elections). In recent years she has turned her attention to improving political management. E.g., what politicians and their staffs have to do after they have won. Her new book, Political Management, is the result of years of painstaking work…

  • The Practitioner-Research Divide Beyond Marketing

    Neil Anderson and his colleagues have given a lot of thought to the divide between research and practice. They focus on this in Industrial, Work and Organizational (IWO) Psychology. I don’t know much about this discipline. Still, a lot of the problems seem quite familiar. As such, they highlight the practitioner-research divide beyond marketing. In…

  • Pareto Efficiency In Markets

    A key idea when analyzing markets is Pareto efficiency. This is also called Pareto optimality. Despite the name it is a simple idea. We see Pareto efficiency in markets whenever you can’t make anyone better off without making someone else worse off. There is thus a number of optimal points. Each point involves a different…

  • Stereotyping And Market Entry Strategy

    I have a paper just published in Customer Needs and Solutions on stereotyping and market entry strategy. This paper has quite a history, with early versions arising from my dissertation (13 years ago). It was quite a journey. The final paper looks nothing like where it started. (For example, it contains a minor nod to…

  • Governing The Commons

    Elinor Ostrom had a profound impact on research about institutions. She got the Nobel Prize in Economics. This was for her work thinking about how social affairs could be governed: Governing The Commons. Common Pool Resoruces This goes much wider than corporate governance. It speaks to how communities deal with the control of their valuable…

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