Unilever’s Paul Polman must be a Chief Executive in a million. Or more. In his interview with Guardian Sustainable Business, Polman calls on business leaders, politicians and NGOs to recognise they cannot deal with the world’s environmental and social challenges by pursuit of Milton Friedman’s target of maximising shareholder wealth. Polman names a few other [...]
Keynes referred to them as the ‘madmen in authority’, referring to the policy makers and top financial and business executives, who rule our world. Maybe ‘madmen’ doesn’t quite capture their essential characteristics today. After all, mainstream economists would argue they are not mad, but wholly rational in their unwavering pursuit of self-interest without regard to [...]
Management scholar, Sumantra Ghoshal, accused mainstream business schools and university departments of teaching ‘bad management theories’ that were ‘destroying good management practices’. His arguments were persuasive, both as to how bad the theories were and how effective they had been in destroying good management practice. The bad theory was that management had no other social [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
There is quite a catalogue of actual and potential man-made disasters. They include the risk of Greece defaulting on its debts, followed by Portugal, Ireland and the collapse of the Eurozone, the hollowing out of real economy firms particularly in the UK and to a slightly lesser extent the US, the explosion in inequality of [...]
As announced this week, the John Lewis partnership is raising £50m to finance further expansion by issuing a savings bond to its ‘partners’ and customers. If it succeeds it would make a lot of expensive City activity seem rather unnecessary, and its success is not seriously in doubt. The bond will return 4.5% gross plus [...]
The almost universal acceptance of neoclassical economic theory, at least in Britain and the United States, has resulted in much destruction of professional management practice. The so simplistic dogma leads to a set of mindless clichés which have not only severely damaged enterprise management practice, but, also the wider management of the real economy, as [...]
Eras of rapid change come and go. Schumpeter, Kondratiev, Piatier and others, studied waves of fundamental innovations. We are in the middle of the 4th wave at the moment (comprising ICT, electronics, internet, biotechnology, molecular engineering and the applications of quantum mechanics, etc), still with new innovations being developed, some still growing, some already maturing [...]
The pattern of technological progress has been found to be surprisingly consistent. New technology has to clear various hurdles before attracting funds for its commercial development. A successful project that gets fully exploited grows fast, all the time getting detailed improvements and added features. Eventually, progress begins to slow, returns from further R&D diminish and [...]
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