Professor Ha-Joon Chang has two things in common with Karl Marx. Firstly he’s right in much of his economic analysis of the ills of capitalism and secondly his prescriptions of the solutions to these ills are lacking. Chang’s best-selling book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism is a timely and important addition to...
In part one of this blog we suggested that it might be time to question the role of capitalism in securing our futures. In this second part of the blog we look at what might replace or update capitalism 1.0. Res Communes – sustainable wellbeing economics of, by and for the citizens I’m involved currently...
Michael Jacobs, an ex-SpAd to Gordon Brown, has recently written in the New Satesman that ‘green social democracy can save capitalism’. Well, not everyone agrees. For some, the ‘green social democracy’ experiment has, thus far, not worked, and indeed, might be running out of time. And as for capitalism – or at least capitalism1.0, it’s...
Nick Clegg’s current predicament is a perfect example of a leader failing to ask the right questions. Furthermore, as Professor Stefan Stern has pointed out, Clegg has been swept into the classic CEO pitfall of choosing not to pursue issues that sit in the “too hard” basket. Both epitomise serious shortcomings of leadership. The fact...
“The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest” John Stuart Mill As though scripted for a 1970s dystopian SciFi fantasy, society has landed in the wrong place and is apparently marooned here. Our people and our planet are not at ease with...
It is time to re-consider some societal fundamentals and have an honest conversation about the legitimacy of power. Why are we surprised that the Eurozone remains in crisis? That the issue of ‘Palestine’ remains unresolved? That American kids are still being shot in the streets, only weeks after the horrors of Newtown? That austerity lingers...
Re-reading James Breiding in the Wall Street Journal on ‘The Unbearable Vanity of Davos’, I was reminded of a first encounter with the cartoonist Hugh MacLeod: ‘Change the world or go home’ was his ‘Blue Monster’ message to Microsoft in 2006. ‘Microsoft’, MacLeod later confided to authors David Brain and Martin Thomas, ‘is in the...
Dear Leader…… I regret to inform you that you have just failed the Trust test. There has been a flurry of noise around trust in recent days, perhaps stirred by the impending launch, from my alma mater, of the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer ahead of this year’s gathering of the great and good in Davos....
Trust trips off the tongues of most political and business leaders with worrying ease. It is a word always easy to say but a relationship more difficult to earn. And trust simply spoken is trust rarely earned. A seminal HBR blog post yesterday by John Kotter (http://tinyurl.com/aggogfz) drew the important distinction between management and leadership...
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