Blog

Category: Management Theory

  • What American Football Can Tell Us About Management

    One problem in studying managerial behavior is that firms aren’t very open about their failures. Still, a scholar trying to show that managers make mistakes won’t have many volunteers to serve as examples. This can, therefore, leave the perception that most organizations run smoothly. This has always seemed improbable to me. I’ve worked in several fields. I’ve encountered numerous committed, hardworking people…

  • How Managers Decide

    My second delve into Richard Thaler’s Misbehaving concerns managerial decision making. How managers decide is a massively important topic. Equilibrium Conditions Don’t Describe Any Point In Time Economic models often study equilibrium conditions. These apply where no manager will want to change their decision. Given they model this some academics seem to think that this describes…

  • The Gauntlet Of Attacks On Behavioral Economics

    Richard Thaler’s Misbehaving may be one of my favorite academic books. The author packed the book with interesting thoughts, covers numerous important ideas, and even is amusingly candid about his colleagues. Over the coming months, I’ll occasionally cover his key points (see here and here). In this post I’ll discuss “the gauntlet”; a list of predictable…

  • Confusion About Individual Rationality and Market Outcomes

    Amongst marketing scholars there is a lot of confusion regarding individual rationality and market outcomes. There is also plenty of blame to go around for the confusion. Marketing’s Two Groups Who Politely Ignore One Another In marketing we have bifurcated into two groups. Psychologically trained scholars often suggest that economically trained scholars all believe in…

  • Evolutionary Metaphors

    In his 2003 HBR article Tihamer von Ghyczy discussed the use of metaphors in strategic planning. (Full disclosure in 2003 I took his course at Darden.) Specifically, he is most interested in the use of evolutionary metaphors. How we might describe business ideas in biological terms. Evolutionary Metaphors Aren’t ‘Correct’ One overarching point he makes…

  • Social Influence And German Soccer Referees

    One of the most interesting aspects of social life is how crowds influence us. We may even end up doing something that isn’t in our best interests. To examine this Thomas Dohmen looked at social influence and German soccer referees. Referees Want To Be Impartial Dohmen suggests, reasonably enough, that referees really do want to…

  • Competitor Orientation And The Evolution of Business Markets

    My first major article was on Competitor Orientation And The Evolution of Business Markets. I think it is a fun one. Even though it took years and years to publish. Some may have agreed. it was fun That said, it is a bit mathy at times. Aiming To, Is Not Maximizing Profits When people envisage…

  • The Flutie Effect

    Brand building advertising invests money into creating goodwill with a customer. Without further spending such goodwill declines. There are other ways to create goodwill. For example, US universities do so through the funding of sports. Such funding has its payoff through things like the Flutie effect. The Flutie Effect Doug Chung looked at the impact…

  • Emulating Alexander The Great

    It is popular to gain “advice” from historical characters about management. The logic seems to be that the higher the body count of the historical character the more wisdom they have to impart. There are various approaches, Robert’s take on Attila the Hun goes for humor. Leandro Martino’s book on Alexander the Great takes a…

  • Attila’s Leadership Secrets

    Wess Roberts’ Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun was a great idea. Too many management writers seem to think boring is the way to go. A good message wrapped in an interesting package is likely to have more impact than the same message conveyed in turgid prose and indecipherable acronyms. As such, I’ll confess to…

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