The Horizon of Reason

Exploring the boundaries of logic and perception

Tag: MBA

Nothing more practical than a good theory

Why is there so much humbug in management literature?

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.

The rat race

After several months of essay writing I finally have some time to reflect. I do enjoy studying the MBA, but sometimes it does makes me wonder why I do this. When I studied philosophy I decided to put my career on hold. Now that I am finishing this MBA I feel like I need to [...]

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 [...]

First day of the Tour of Duty

We arrived in Hanoi yesterday afternoon and it feels great to be back in Asia after so many years. In a manner, Vietnam is a mythical place in contemporary culture. It is the place where the Vietnam War took place and the sage of many great products of contemporary culture, such as Full Metal Jacket, [...]