Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson wrote “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” just over a decade ago. It is a great book. Admittedly they don’t really need my opinion given they were given the Nobel Prize for their work, so I doubt that they were sitting around worrying what I thought about…
Category: Management Theory
Does Doing Good Generate Loyalty?
One of the big questions in sustainable business is whether doing good can actually pay. This is often really tricky to establish. In an ideal world, we can run an experiment where we randomly assign some companies to do bad stuff and other identical companies to do good stuff and see what happens. Obviously, we…
Do You Really Need A Dodgy Historical Example?
I initially trained as a historian (my Master of Arts is in Hellenistic Studies — the period just after Alexander the Great). As such, I’m fascinated by appeals to history to justify ideas in modern life. They can often be fun to read about; after all there are some great stories in history. The challenge…
Limits And Self-Limits
Giorgos Kallis, a proponent of Degrowth has a paper on limits. He links this to the work of Malthus (see here). Indeed, to my mind, one way to see Kallis’ work is an attempt to distance ecologists from Malthus. I don’t blame him for that aim. Kallis also investigates the nature of limits. He rejects…
Effective And Strategic Altruism
A few years ago William MacAskill was all the rage. His effective altruism movement was riding high. Many of the rich and powerful endorsed his views. Things have gone off the boil a bit since. So, with an eye for being behind the trend today I’ll look his Doing Good Better ideas. I’ll also set…
Win-Wins Are Good For Stakeholders
A theme I see in some writing about sustainable business is that we need to get beyond win-wins. Although I get the point — business cases won’t deliver everything — I worry that this isn’t the right message. Win-wins are good for stakeholders, and we haven’t found all the win-wins yet. As such, I’m not…
Mapping Corporate Sustainability Research
How has marketing strategy research focused on sustainability changed over time? This is an important question for researchers that also matters for those who use academic research but aren’t academics themselves. (Often there are not as many of these non-academic users of research as we’d like but one can always hope). To better understand marketing…
A History Of Conservation
Michelle Nijhuis has written a history of conservation, Beloved Beasts. There are 1) many interesting characters and 2) fascinating ideas concerning species and their preservation. Unfortunately, these two features of the book seemed to conflict to my mind. The stories of the colorful characters’ lives kept getting interrupted by digressions about ideas. Still, none of…
Owners Often Care About Beer, Housing, God, And National Identity
Milton Friedman’s idea that owners of, and managers at, companies should only care about the owner’s wealth is pretty odd when you think about it. Owners have long cared about much more because they are human beings. A book on the Guinness family suggests owners often care about beer, housing, God, and national identity. What…
Being Fair To People You Don’t Agree With
Being fair to people you don’t agree with is a really challenging task. After all, from your viewpoint, they are wrong. It can be pretty easy to see the holes in their arguments. Indeed, we can be really great at that. Although we are generally not so talented at taking apart our own arguments. When…
