Professor Gary Hamel’s new book is ‘What Matters Now: how to win in a world of relentless change, ferocious competition, and unstoppable innovation’. Hamel is a breathless optimist. He sees the world changing and he encourages and motivates managers to achieve near impossible ends. He believes in the potential greatness and goodness of industry and [...]
A news item on budget day, commanding all of two column inches on an inside page of some of the national press, was of far greater importance than anything Mr Osborne had to say. It reported the completion of Glencore’s acquisition of Viterra, Canada’s largest grain handling company. Glencore, the world’s largest by far commodity [...]
All sorts of hares are set loose in the run up to the budget: removal of the 50% income tax rate, ending of national pay settlements in the public sector, imposition of a mansion tax, a clamp down on stamp duty avoidance, and so on, not to mention the various stimulus–austerity alternatives. Debate centres around [...]
The Prime Minister used the word ‘snobbery’ to deride what he referred to as anti-business rhetoric: the argument that business ‘has no inherent moral worth’, that it ‘isn’t really to be trusted’, and that it had ‘no social concerns’ but was solely to do with ‘making money that pays the taxes’. He was addressing the [...]
The trouble with the provision of public services such as health, education and the police by private for-profit companies is pretty obvious. Successive governments from Thatcher on, have pursued this flawed policy which derives from a hopelessly simplistic ideology. Private providers, who are subject to the discipline of the market, are held to be more [...]
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