SubscribeWhy is there so much humbug in management literature?
The Horizon of Reason
Exploring the boundaries of logic and perception
Category: Management
Strategic Management and Serendipity
Life is unpredictable and much of human culture is in essence a means to deal with the unpredictable. We can not know whether the next harvest will fail, whether we still have a job next year or when we will die. Ancient systems, such as astrology and other forms of divination were developed to reduce [...]
Environmental Responsibility for Managers
Ethical analysis of the environmental responsibility of managers.
Getting the employees you deserve
“Management gets the employees it deserves”, Carl snarlingly uttered as he returned to his desk. Natasha, with whom he had shared a cubicle for longer than they cared to remember, turned around. “What makes you say that? What happened?” Carl was obviously still upset as he threw his hands in the air. “This new guy [...]
Is Management a science?
On the train from Hanoi to Sapa I shared a cabin with two English women. One was completing her PhD studies in corporate social responsibility and lamented the amount of work it takes to promote.
One professor of the Graduate School of Management of La Trobe university once tried to convice some students to continue with [...]
A night out with the Vietnamese students
The expedition is now in full swing and we have spoken to several organisations and met some very interesting people in different organisations around Hanoi.
Yesterday we visited our fellow MBA students at Hanoi University who were attending a lecture about Frederick Taylor.
Taylor is the founder of management as a science. I sometimes lovingly refer to [...]
The Vietnamese Way
Our researc topic for our expedition to Vietnam is Human Resource Management. As we are narrowing the topic down we found that local managers and academics are very interested in human resource management theories that are based in Western thinking.
They indicated that there is no Vietnamese human resource management theory and that they translate foreign [...]
Networking
Last night the Graduate School hosted a dinner for all students on the expedition and we met some staff from Hanoi university and some businesses in Hanoi that are participating in the research projects.
We met somebody from a large company in Vietnam who is doint research on human resource management. Somehow the conversation moved to [...]
The Essence of Entrepreneurship
The common notion of the entrepreneur as a unique individual is influenced by public figures such as Henry Ford, Richard Branson, Dick Smith and Donald Trump. They have achieved celebrity status, giving rise to many ‘myths’ about entrepreneurship, such as the idea that it is an innate ability that can not be acquired and that [...]
The customer is always right
One of the adages often proclaimed in marketing is: “the customer is always right”. An often heard objection against this is that bowing to every whim of customers would make it very hard to achieve organisational goals, i.e. to make a decent profit.
To find out what this actually means, this statement needs to be unpacked [...]
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