While the rest of the world is limping along during this global recession Norway is doing quite well for itself. The contrary Norwegians have succeeded in growing their economy just around 3% last year and their government is running a budget surplus of about 11% according to an article in the NYT entitled Thriving Norway Provides an Economics Lesson. How did they do it you ask? According to experts Norway saved while everyone spent, it also helps that the government takes in large revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. According to Spiegel Online Norway applied any fiscal surplus during good times to shore up public services such as pension funds and implemented ethical guidelines to guide sovereign fund investments.
As usual, Stanford Professor Bob Sutton has tapped into some interesting stuff. He cites a 1993 study which apparently showed that people (female students in this case) accurately echoed, after observing only a brief video clip of instructors, the feedback of other students who had sat in the instructors' classes an entire semester. The 'thin slices' of experience viewed by the test students were a mere 30 seconds long, with sound turned off. Scared yet? Sutton notes that even shorter clips were used, down to 6- and 15 seconds -- with basically the same results. Subsequent research corroborated the findings. Perhaps the folk wisdom of the ages is right: first impressions are not only lasting ... they're accurate.
Having a hard time finding that right job? Never fear, register with Doostang which "is an online community that seeks to match the brightest new grads with what it says are the crème de la crème of positions in finance, consulting and tech".
Doostang was created by Mareza Larizadeh. "Larizadeh never intended to launch a career start-up. He was completing his MBA at Stanford University in 2005 when he got the idea for Doostang, which is a modified version of 'reaching for talent' in Latin."
Read more about it.
So often today our "service economy" is anything but. Stanford Business School Alum Seth Godin blogs about the abdication of responsibility in once great corporations, noting how a firm can deteriorate into a pixelated mosaic, with every employee eager to push 'interruptions' (i.e. legitimate requests for service) to others. Nor is this unique to companies; it can represent the decline and fall of any organization. Haven't we all experienced this when trying to get service from once great brands? The old saw still applies: "If not you, who? If not now, when?"
With a new administration in Washington, government regulation is back. In the United States., industries and sectors representing more than a third of the nation's economy -- including financial services, automobiles, health care, and telecom -- are being reshaped. Many are asking how regulations will impact those businesses. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich offers his perspective in the July / August issue of the Harvard Business Review on how the government will manage and regulate business in the foreseeable future.
GSB Alum Tom Peters (MBA '72, PhD '77) on his blog offers comments he made to the American Hospital Association. Calling his outline "Principal Management & Leadership (as opposed to Policy) Issues", he argues that while hospitals face constraints, management and leadership 'miracles' can still happen. Peters draws attention to the fact that on a recent Fortune list of the top 100 places to work, 13 are healthcare institutions. Of course, opportunities for improvement remain; he notes that surveys indicate that the patient is still often not considered the proper focus of concern and attention.
The annual San Francisco marathon was held this past Sunday. Over 20,000 runners competed in the full marathon and the half marathon. In the effort to be more green and have less of an environmental footprint a number of leading edge "green" initiatives were adopted. In 2007, the event made a conscious effort at "going green," when most road races were still figuring out how to preserve precious natural resources.
Read more about it.
A report recently published by the Center for Public Integrity , in conjuction with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, entitled Tobacco Underground gives a good overview of the black market for cigarettes. Among the statistics cited is the fact that up to one billion dollars in revenues are lost every year in cities like New York, with an estimate of $40 billion worldwide, from an underground tax evading market in cigarette sales. Additionally it is estimated that up to one-third of the world’s cigarettes are sold on the black market and that much of the selling is done by organized crime groups to support terrorist activities. As reported by David Kaplan, editorial director at The Center for Public Integrity and editor of the report all under the watchful eye of the tobacco companies.
No, this is not the 1800s, this is July 2009 in West Bend, Wisconsin, a city 30 miles from Milwaukee. A huge battle has erupted that has divided the city. Residents have battled for months on blogs, airwaves and at meetings -- including one where a man told the city's Library Director that he should be 'tarred and feathered'.
It all began when West Bend couple Jim and Ginny Maziarka objected to some of the content in the City Library's young-adult section. Mrs. Maziarka asked the Director to remove items from the shelves. He refused, she hit the blogosphere, and the battle began. Outside West Bend, the fight caught the attention of Robert Braun (President of a Milwaukee group called the Christian Civil Liberties Union) who, with three other Milwaukee-area men, filed a claim against West Bend calling for one of the library's books to be publicly burned. Read the whole story
Womenomics is the title of a book written by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay just added to the Jackson Library collection.
Excerpt from Publisher's weekly review:
The authors assert that after decades of trying to outdo men or fighting the Mommy Wars in the office trenches of the 1980s and 1990s, women have gained enough corporate clout to start changing the workplace to suit their needs. Shipman and Kay review the depth of women's influence as consumers and earners, maintaining that their power gives them the right and the ability to ask for flexibility in their work lives, to negotiate assertively and effectively, to say no and to give up the guilt associated with getting their needs met. Through Shipman and Kay's own stories of struggling with demanding work and home lives and anecdotes from other working mothers, the authors make a convincing argument that with some mental and emotional effort, women can create their ideal work and home lives.
Also take a look at an article written by Claire Shipman on "What Is Womenomics?" to find out more about this concept.
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