As I have been exploring various pathways of my "business detox" investigations, a number of colleagues have suggested that I really needed to read Michael Porter and Mark Kramer's (apparently provocative) HBR article entitled "The Big Idea: Creating ... [Continue Reading]
“Corporate Social Responsibility” is a fundamentally flawed concept
The vast majority of business practitioners that I have met and worked with throughout my career are caring, honest people who one would generally regard as striving to be morally and ethically responsible. They don’t particularly want to run ... [Continue Reading]
Paying for externalities?
Great article here from Chris McDonald's business ethic blog about companies voluntarily paying for externalities and how this should be interpreted -- as hush money or doing the right thing... The basic idea is, I believe, sound (no pun intended if ... [Continue Reading]
How to detoxify your business
If you buy into the concept that business is -- by design and structure -- an inherently "toxic machine", then one question that has to be asked is.... How would one go about truly detoxifying their business? While a fundamental belief of this ... [Continue Reading]
At the heart of business — 3 ironies
Being fascinated by business I have spent some time studying the specific toxic natures of the machine. And as any good engineer is taught to proceed, I have deconstructed the machine to try to better understand how and why it operates the way ... [Continue Reading]
The reality about business – a toxic “machine”
I am troubled. I am deeply troubled by much of the wreckage of the outcomes of the modern corporations and its current business practices. I want to be, and generally am, an unfettered advocate for open markets, for globalization, for ownership ... [Continue Reading]
Our current path is not sustainable
I live in a time when we – and I believe that to mean the majority of the human species – are starting to awaken to the reality that we live in a physically closed system. I stress physically closed to properly differentiate from a fully closed ... [Continue Reading]
A competent engineer with a passion for business
What I learned from my undergraduate engineering schooling was that with reasonable tools and assumptions about operating conditions, you could break things down into their component parts, illustrate your solution, state your assumptions, and show ... [Continue Reading]
Businesses behaving badly
We are suffering some significant shocks to our economy, from oil prices and environmental anxiety, to a variety of contaminated consumer products, and now a major financial crisis. Corporate greed, stupidity, regulations, and corruption are blamed ... [Continue Reading]
