Tag Archives: rationality

The Ecology of Digital Transformation: Sense-Making in Silicon Valley

I have just returned from a week of “educating” in Palo Alto, where the third residency module of the 2022 De Groote EMBA Digital Transformation was taking place. Palo Alto is, of course, the epicentre of the great disruption known … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged adaptive cycle, banyan, Bildung, ecological perspective, ecology, ecosystem, Goethe, Hannah Arendt, Hewlett-Packard, Holling, narrative, Palo Alto, Peter Drucker, rationality, reason, sequoia, Stanford, Stephen Toulmin, Vernunft, Verstand | Comments Off on The Ecology of Digital Transformation: Sense-Making in Silicon Valley

Cuttlefish Spurting Out Ink: English and the Projection of Power

The Guardian reported today that a massive leak from a whistleblower in the private bank, Credit Suisse, had exposed the hidden wealth of clients who are involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other crimes. The bank responded, … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Uncategorized | Tagged Anglo-Saxon, Bill Clinton, Credit Suisse, George Orwell, language, latin, power, rationality | Comments Off on Cuttlefish Spurting Out Ink: English and the Projection of Power

Management Needs to Return to Reason

‘The arts of life…turn out to possess their own special methods and techniques…Bad judgement here consists not in failing to apply the methods of natural science, but, on the contrary, in over-applying them’. Isaiah Berlin, Political Judgement Ever since the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged AI, analysis, big data, calculation, Cartesian, economists, Edmund Burke, Enlightenment, existential, French Revolution, Hamilton, identity, instrumental, Isaiah Berlin, Jefferson, Mercier, political judgement, pragmatism, rationality, re-engineering, reason, Ronald Reagan, Sperber, Steven Pinker, Thomas Paine, utility, West Point | Comments Off on Management Needs to Return to Reason

Climate Change and Evidence-based Management [Part II]: The Case for Practical Wisdom

This blog is a continuation of last week’s in which I suggested that in managing complex systems with unstable parameters one cannot rely just on data-based predictions, one has to depend more on judgement-based anticipations: In The Rational Optimist Matt … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged analytical philosophy, Aristotle, BCG, confirmation bias, Drucker Forum, Enlightenment, evidence-based, Honda, intrinsic motivation, intuition, Isaiah Berlin, judgement, logical positivism, Matt Ridley, Mr. Spock, Oxford, paradigm shift, phronesis, practical wisdom, rational optimist, rationality, Richard Pascale, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Climate Change and Evidence-based Management [Part II]: The Case for Practical Wisdom

The 3 “Rs” of Management: Rigour, Relevance and Rationality

The debate between rigour and relevance continues in management education, usually spurred by management professors’ concerns that practitioners are paying little attention to their research. The history of the problem is now familiar: in the first half of the 20th … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Bloom, Carnegie Corporation, constructivist, ecological rationality, engineering, Ford Foundation, Hayek, Kahneman, Martin Wooldridge, Michael Raynor, Mumtaz Ahmed, rationality, relevance, Richard Rorty, rigour, rules, Schumpeter, System 1, System 2, The Economist, Van Reenen, Vernon Smith | Comments Off on The 3 “Rs” of Management: Rigour, Relevance and Rationality

HBR Blog: The Mongrel Discipline of Management

A few days ago this blog of mine got published on the HBR Blog Network where it is attracting a good deal of comment. You can read it in situ as well as the comments here (as well as see the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged change, discipline, ecological rationality, logic, management, means and ends, mongrel, participant, rationality, spectator | 1 Comment