At what point does something become obsolete? The photograph on the left, of a trader using an abacus in Hong Kong, was taken as recently as 2013. So if the abacus is still in use today, how could it be deemed to be already obsolete? Obsolescence is not about usage, per se, it is about […]
The Financial Times has been grappling with questions of corporate responsibility for some time now and the advent of ESG investing has forced it to produce its own version of what “Responsible Business Education” should look like. Here are a few choice quotes: “The term the professor used was ‘frame-breaking change’. And what I saw […]
Part 6 in our continuing series on the implications of ‘BRT’– see parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Critical observers have been monitoring the seismic tremors underneath business education for many years. Now, the high salaries for MBA alumni are even more questionable, since the Business Roundtable shifted the American capitalist paradigm, away from shareholders and quarterly profit figures, […]
MBA education providers have been under increasing pressure since the crash of 2008 to demonstrate how their curricula are responding to the changing expectations of capitalism. An FT piece today entitled ‘MBAs need to stay relevant with life-long learning‘ adds the question that has applied to medical practitioners for many years – are your methods […]
“…concepts such as ‘balanced scorecards’, ‘triple bottom lines’ and ‘corporate social responsibility’ all recognise some of the symptoms of the malaise – but they are not a cure. They reflect the serious disquiet, expressed in many quarters, that the very essence of business today conflicts with the planet’s environment and the legitimate expectations of its inhabitants. […]
MI is very pleased to announce its latest project to create the tertiary education sector within OMINDEX by incorporating OMRs (organizational maturity ratings) for Universities from across the world. Funding and enrolments at universities across the globe are expanding significantly – but so is student debt ($1.45 trillion in US alone). Of course, the sector […]
Ten years after the crash of 2008, banks today might be more solvent but we still cannot trust them. Their underlying culture, where profit conflicts with societal value, has not changed. They persist in trying to justify their profit-driven behaviour with a wilful misinterpretation of the words of a Nobel prize winning economist from nearly […]
The HR department has always had a bad press. I should know, I’ve been working in the field for nearly forty years and have had to suffer the flawed diagnoses and simplistic prescriptions from writers who have never worked in the field. In 1996 Thomas Stewart, management writer (and subsequent Editor-in-Chief at Harvard Business Review), […]
How long does it take for mature thinking in HR to take hold?  Let’s consider this question in relation to how the problematic topic of performance management has fared over the last 20 years or so.  Back in 2000, I wrote in my book “Measuring and managing employee performance” (Financial Times Executive Briefings series) – […]
The Puritan Gift – Reclaiming the American Dream Amidst Global Financial Chaos – Kenneth Hopper & William Hopper, 2010 (I.B.Taurus) An investigative, business journalist calls me for an interview. He is in the closing stages of writing his “definitive” account of the downfall of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The last stone he wants to turn […]
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