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Play it Again, Stone: A Review of Money Never Sleeps
Oliver Stone is a bold man, first to attempt a sequel to as successful a film as Wall Street, and second to choose as its subtitle (even if it is a reference to the original) a phrase so open to parody. The original Wall Street was so successful because it caught the business zeitgeist of…
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Social Studies: Confrontation and Celebration
I’m just back from the Social Studies event last weekend and here are my reactions. First, the confrontation. The issue of whether Harvard should accept the scholarship fund named in honor of Marty Peretz was passionately debated, but it did not dominate the day. The protesters outside the Science Building seminar and Adams House luncheon…
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Awaiting the Social Studies Celebration: With Anticipation or Apprehension?
When the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Harvard’s Social Studies program, in which I majored, was announced, I immediately made plans to attend. While the term “social studies” in Ontario, and likely many other places, refers to part of the elementary school curriculum, at Harvard it is something special. Social studies is an interdisciplinary…
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Neil Reynolds: Not Ready for Prime Time
For some time Neil Reynolds published his op-ed pieces in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, where they generally escaped readers’ attention. Now that he’s been moved to the op-ed page, he’s getting lots of attention. Reynolds’s take is what might be called Tea Party Canadian-style. For Reynolds, government is always parasitic and the…
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Why the Silence from Mr. Harper?
It intrigues me that during the entire long-form census controversy Mr. Harper has said nothing. The initial explanation is that he is on vacation at his summer residence at Harrington Lake. The tactical explanation is that on a controversial issue the relevant minister(s) should speak for the government, as Bernier and Clement are doing, and…
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Re-encountering Lorne Weil: A Narrative of Reinvention
Last week I was reading Walter Keichel’s The Lords of Strategy, a history of strategic management, a field in which both academics and consultants have made important conceptual contributions. Early on, there was a somewhat inside-baseball chapter about the development of the market growth-industry share matrix by the Boston Consulting Group in the late Sixties.…
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Statistics Canada: The Administrative Will or the Political Won
Yes Minister once referred to the clash between the political will and the administrative won’t, but in the case of retaining the mandatory long-form census, I think it is more appropriate to reverse the terms. Chief Statistician Munir Sheik’s resignation on a matter of principle is extraordinary and courageous. I heard him speak once or…
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The Census Long Form: Different Messages from Politicians and Public Servants
The census issue not only refuses to go away but during the last week has become more contentious. While more and more voices are calling more loudly for retaining the mandatory long form, the government is sticking more adamantly with the voluntary form. StatsCan is doing what public servants should be doing. They have accepted…
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Why Management Professors Should Write More Books
It is paradoxical that while so many books about management are being published, so few of them are by management professors. There are three mutually reinforcing reasons for this. First, many fields within management have adopted a natural sciences research model that emphasizes publishing academic journal articles rather than books. Second, the research component of…
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The Chief Narrative Officer
Last week’s post discussed two anthems traditionally performed at the Last Night of the Proms, Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem. There is a third, “Rule, Britannia!” which celebrates the Royal Navy. And the idea of celebrating the Royal Navy takes me by the following logic to today’s blog, the last in the series…
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Building the Empire or Building Jerusalem?
Last week, improbably, I attended the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Last Night of the Proms concert. This came about because my older son had come to enjoy Elgar’s 1st and 4th Pomp and Circumstance marches, which led to a conversation about the 1st march being traditionally played at the Last Night of the Proms, which led…
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Small Rooms and Social Class in Management Narratives
In this post I will discuss two of the questions on the exam in the graduate narratives course. The first question, noting that some movies about managers are filmed almost entirely in indoor settings while others often use public spaces and outdoor settings, asked students to give two examples of each and discuss the advantages…
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Roy Halladay vs. the G-20 Summit
One of the questions on my recent public management exam asked students to resolve the logistical conflicts between the G-20 Summit, scheduled for June 26-27 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and baseball games between the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies at the Rogers Centre next door. The Phillies’ pitcher at one of those…
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Closed and Open Politics
C.P. Snow, in Strangers and Brothers, his series of eleven novels about life in academe, business, and government, often referred to “closed politics.” By this he meant decisions made on the basis of confidential consultations among politicians and public servants and announced as a fait accompli. There is, of course, another side to political life.…
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Hung Parliament or Minority Government?
As the UK election approaches, with the prospect of no clear majority, let’s think a bit about what happens on May 7. Unaccustomed to such situations, people in the UK refer to it as a hung Parliament, a term that suggests political immobility. Canadians, who have had considerable such experience at the federal level refer…