Category: Management Theory
-
Greenhushing By Private And Public Companies
It is easy to conclude that companies totally changed with the election of Donald Trump. I’m pleased to say that isn’t true though as Neil Hawkins and Kelly Cooper, writing last fall in the Harvard Business Review, showed late last year. Of course, some business leaders abandoned what were previously said to be deeply held…
-
Beyond the Bottom Line
Why Your Performance Metrics Might Be Measuring the Wrong Thing We have a problem in business. We talk about purpose, stakeholder value, and long-term thinking—but when it comes to measuring success, we default to the same old financial metrics. It’s like saying you care about health while only ever stepping on a scale. The issue…
-
The Inevitable Transition To EVs
Mike Colias’ book, Inevitable, tracks the rise of EVs (electric vehicles). Unsurprisingly given the title his theme is very much, the inevitable transition to EVs. In the US, you could be forgiven for thinking that EVs are in trouble, but that requires thinking that a clearly superior technology, which is only getting better, will fail…
-
Understanding The World
Hans Rosling was truly admirable. He started as a doctor but moved to being a public figure who worked on driving greater understand of the world, especially related to health. His Gapminder Institute has some excellent resources for teaching. Indeed, they are useful for everyone whether you are in education or not. His aim was…
-
Explaining The Economy
Kyla Scanlon has a book explaining the economy. There are some nice parts, and some things I wasn’t too sure about. (At least one graph seemed really odd as did a couple of comments but, being a popular book, the references were a bit too limited to check properly). Mostly she does a good job…
-
Considering Stakeholder Psychology
An important book in the world of sustainable business is Leveraging Corporate Responsibility by CB Bhattacharya, Sankar Sen, and Daniel Korschun. It was published in 2011, so things have moved on, not least the terminology. In 2025 they might well have decided to use the term sustainable business rather than corporate responsibility. Still, their basic…
-
Academics Can Be Biased Too
Academics are human beings. Pick a human flaw and they have it. Of course, human beings are better at seeing the flaws in arguments that they don’t approve of than those they nod along to. This holds for academics. After all academics can be biased too. Allen Mendenhall and Daniel Stutter, two senior scholars one…
-
What Market Research Can Teach Politics
Polling and market research are twin disciplines. Polling is a crucial way of understanding what the public thinks. This is obviously central to developing any strategy to give the voters what they want. Yet, we all know that asking people questions can be tricky. We need to get questions right or else we risk supplying…
-
Lower Cost Is Not Always Better
One of the big challenges for sustainable business is that sometimes it costs more. Although higher costs driven by sustainable decision-making is not always the case, if you are providing higher quality, paying your workers or suppliers more, or reducing pollution from your products then sometimes this costs more. While it is beneficial to ensure…
-
Leapfrogging Towards A Better World
One concern that people who care about the environment typically have is that developed nations tend to create massive harm to the planet and life on it. That concern is often hard to argue with. A valid concern has led some — let us call them the shitty wing of environmentalism represented by Paul Ehrlich…
