From an early age, my life’s goal was to get at “the truth.” There were only two obvious career paths: Science, or investigative journalism. I went the first route, becoming an academic researcher. Proud of the path I chose, and always admiring the other one.
Does it cost money to be green, or can a company make greater profits by being green? Even a decade ago, most companies thought environmental sensitivity was too expensive an option, that it would render them uncompetitive in a harsh marketplace. Today, most thoughtful CEOs understand that environmentally sustainable products and practices are keys to greater profits.[1]
Let me describe two very different academic careers.
They say the world is changing. Let’s check that out empirically.We might run a couple of sample surveys, to see how people’s behaviors or attitudes change between the two questionnaire mailings. A colleague, however, suggests panel sampling.
The Economist reported that in early 2007, for the first time in history, more humans lived in cities than in the countryside. We are now a different species, in terms of the environmental niche we inhabit. One thinks of Isaac Asimov’s Trantor, the planet that was completely covered by buildings. Is Earth headed for a similar future?2004 was the first year Amazon.com moved more dollar volume in consumer electronics than in
(This continues a discussion of the topic I started here, in Spanish, and in §5.4 of this published paper, in English. Not necessary to read those first; this blog stands on its own.)There are many definitions of sustainability.
Years back, conversing with a now long-retired dean, I happened to let slip the words “common sense.” He replied, “It’s been a long time since I heard that phrase uttered on this campus, much less seen it practiced.”He had a point.
We management professors are very conscious of the "professional school" label given to colleges of business, law, medicine, engineering, nursing, and education in diversified universities – universities in which some clinical fields, like psychology, may be part of the college of Arts&Sciences, and thereby on the other side of the divide. (At my alma mater, clinical psych is in A&S, and counseling psych is in the College of Education.)Though a few verbal grenades are tossed over the divide each semester, schools on both sides generally co-exist tolerably well. What are the differences between them?
Last week I posted a column on cost accounting. But I didn’t say it was about cost accounting, and nearly eight hundred people read it. Let’s try a (ahem) “scientific” experiment, starting with this announcement: This column is about cost accounting too. I’ll share the readership numbers with you next week!Among the first things we teach students of business operations are the cherished principles of incremental cost (cost resulting from an action taken, minus costs that would have resulted had the action not been taken), opportunity cost (cost relative to the next best alternative), and sunk cost (past, irrecoverable, and hence irrelevant costs).
Last month New York’s Attorney-General Andrew Cuomo criticized banks – including Citi, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase – for paying large (okay, huge) executive bonuses when the companies were losing money.He called this an illicit transfer of shareholder wealth to the pockets of individual managers. Cuomo’s report spurs me to tell you about a certain illicit transfer of taxpayer money to private pockets, one that’s been bothering me a lot...
The tough editorial decision was behind us; the die had been cast. Pre-prints of the controversial article and its invited rejoinder appeared on the publisher’s web site. The same day, the Nicolas Cage movie Next opened in theaters. Those who believe in eerie coincidences will see one here. Let me explain.
