There is a cottage industry of people writing about business using the lessons of Alexander the Great. I have only one question: What’s with the Alexander Stuff? The Macedonian king was a terrible bloke, and there are plenty of easier, and much more novel, ways to illustrate business situations. Business As War: Not Really Business…
Category: Management Theory
Signaling And Education
Why do people pursue academic courses that in no way set them up with the skills needed for their future careers? One obvious answer might be because they enjoy the topic they study. Education is a good thing in itself. I’m all for that. Yet, that seems to be far from a complete explanation. Maybe…
Solving Problems Upstream
Dan Heath has a book on solving problems upstream. The central idea is that it is better to solve a problem nearer its source than try and solve the problem once it has fully manifested. Heath’s hard-to-disagree with advice is that it is better to stop the horror movie monster being conjured rather than having…
Don’t Expect Perfect, Go For Better
I have written before about B Corp. Today I am looking at the B Corp Handbook. This is a how-to (and why-to) guide to getting registered as a B Corporation. The authors have a number of suggestions that could prove useful. One of the most important should be shown in big lights whenever people discuss…
Measuring Performance In Multistakeholder Firms
Jonathan Knowles and Tom Hunsaker have an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review that considers the change in thinking needed when a firm is managed for multiple stakeholders. How then to go about measuring performance in multistakeholder firms? When Money Is All that Matters For the past generation or two firms have often been…
CEOs And Sustainability
Alan Murray (CEO of Fortune Media) has a book on how business is engaging more with social issues. There are a lot of good points in there that help to illustrate business in 2022. So what can he tell us about CEOs and Sustainability? First, The Bad Points Broadly speaking I am on board with…
Ideology, Persuasion, And Going Green
A major challenge is persuading members of the public with very different worldviews to take actions aimed at the common good, such as recycling. An appeal that works for a conservative might not work on a liberal, and vice versa. What then do we know about ideology, persuasion, and going green? People Differ In What…
The Limits Of Math Models
The Limits To Growth is a fascinating piece of scientific history. It was a 1972 report by the Club Of Rome. Yes, they did seem to actively want to fuel conspiracy theorists’ fantasies with their enigmatic name. (They still exist by the way and seemed to have moved to Switzerland, which seems a little odd…
Tipping And Discrimination
In the US servers’ tips are often treated as part of their pay. Although technically voluntary the servers rely on the tips so one needs an astonishingly good reason not to tip. Despite it being a social obligation different servers do get different levels of tips so what do we know about tipping and discrimination?…
Sustainable Corporate Responsibility
Caroline Ditlev-Simonsen has a guide to Sustainable Corporate Responsibility. This covers much of what anyone could hope to read as a summary/introduction to the topic. The author covers the ethics of sustainability, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, stakeholder management, and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) reporting amongst other things. There is a lot of interesting…
