ERPZ explores quite a lot of stuff; from matters about studying smart to the huge issues surrounding economics and the environment. This are the efforts to cover what students need to learn about and know (true to our objective of ‘Educating students about being students’), but we seem to have missed out something really important in today’s world and that’s “Leadership”.
I started out reading a recent issue of Fortune Magazine, which featured an article on How to build great leaders, uncovering the different MNCs methods of identifying and grooming leaders for their organzation. A second article on leadership discusses the leadership during a crisis or recession. Talent on Tap, an article from The Economist talks about the increasing trend of getting temporary big bosses to sit in the autonomous firms and thus helping to tide the firm over a crisis or avert one.
Finally, an article from Knowledge @ SMU discusses the implication for leadership in individuals with different degree of self-monitoring. They suggested how high self-monitor individuals stand out as informal leaders although the low self-monitors are the ones who ends up in position of authority. I like to think that high self-monitors are suitable for ad-hoc leadership roles or to lead during special circumstances, perhaps why firms need temp bosses. In long run, during ordinary day to day management and leadership, the consistency of low self-monitors probably stand out and will become more important. If you’re interested to find out whether you score high on the self-monitoring scale, you can check out this test.
While we tinker with the idea that governments and politics are important sources of forces for the good when it comes to climate, corporations are already doing loads in the real world with the advent of Corporate Social Responsibility.
To be frank, CSR can sometimes be make-up for the company’s public face but there are still substantial number of firms who are doing real big good stuff and tackling different aspects of social costs the company might have inflicted on the society. Knowledge @ Wharton introduces the CSR moves of Campbell, which covers not only environmental actions but also social programmes (mostly to do with employees).
The Economist thinks little of CSR but highlights the ordinary good that firms and companies does by just doing their own stuff (manufacturing, marketting, improving, innovating). The newspaper argues that business people should probably trumpet these achievements of fostering innovation, cooperation between groups and individuals across the globe besides being so engrossed with CSR.
Sometimes I guess if you look on the bright side, everyone is probably doing good through being selfish – the central idea of economics.
It saddens me to read in The Straits Times that at the end of the whole Copenhagen COP15 summit, the only statement issued was just a whimper, a short simple declaration that does not commit anything very much promising. The US$30b fund is an improvement that I found encouraging, but otherwise all the wrangling and politicking was disgusting and disappointing.
As an environmentalist, I guess I always had greater expectations about COP15 and what governments should be doing. But even as my expectations were lowered by the day as I tracked the summit through the newspapers, I am still disappointed that there will not be real leadership and guts to tackle climate change. Reading The Economist, in particular, seems to increase that pessimism. Local politics ultimately rules the day, and sadly local politics are heavily influenced by lobby groups like the oil industry, as well as naysayers who do not believe in the concept of climate change.
It does not help matters that recently there were <a href="leaked emails of data collected on climate science being ‘massaged’. It only proves the skeptics and naysayers that climate change is an agenda usurped by those against capitalism and the Western world, against development and industrialisation. It was already difficult to convince people, or to convince even ourselves, that the economy would not be affected by measures to fight climate change. This ‘Climategate’ might only sour perceptions about environmentalists, environmental scientists and those who support the climate change notion as rogues who are trying to stop the world from getting wealthier.
Very hard to feel very optimistic. I visited the Hopenhagen website, and on its index page it asks for input from visitors to its website for what hopes the visitors have for the environment / climate and what is it that keeps them optimistic. I could not think of anything positive to write about, knowing that the legal, political and economic hurdles were so huge. I closed the website window without typing anything.
So tell me, what keeps you optimistic about resolving climate change?
We begin this week’s reads with an interview with Paul Samuelson by John Cassidy from The New Yorker. John Cassidy recently published a new book, How Markets Fail, which I’ll read some time soon. It won’t be that soon though – I’m still reading Thinking Strategically and moving on to Art of Strategy after that.
Eric Morris shared something about the cab industry in New York, which eventually concluded with urging for less regulation (ie. raising the supply of cab licenses or “medallions” as they’re called). One of the comments revealed a really humourous story of how the cabbie’s industry in Ireland got deregulated overnight; I shall reproduce it here:
A similar sitution existed in Ireland up to a few years ago. Change was brought about when the government went to issue more wheel chair accessable taxi licenses. The Taxi driver / owners group foolishly sued the government. They claimed that the government didn’t have the right to issue new licenses. They won but the court ruled that the government didn’t have the power to issue any licenses. The taxi ma[r]ket was deregulated overnight.
The current complaint from taxi drivers is that there are too many taxis etc etc. There were clear winners, the consumer and those new taxi drivers who are now free to ply their trade in a vastly increased taxi market.
The fact that GPS navigation on-board cars/cabs are widely available means that the tacit barrier to entry for the cab business have been significantly lowered. Anyone who can drive and have a car with on-board GPS navigation (and perhaps a meter) can technically offer good taxi services. Knowledge of the city and the different landmarks have become less of an advantage or requirement.
Tech Quarterly is here again and here are some highlights.
There’s an interesting study about the contagious effects of loneliness. It sounds kind of paradoxical since the fact that it can be spread at all shows that the victims are already interacting with people and thus not ‘lonely’ technically speaking. In the area of medical research, there’s a glue designed for aiding bones to heal.
As for gadgets and machines, readers might be interested in an article on E-readers and potential future developments that these devices will move towards – especially having coloured displays. The discussion on ways of typing different language text on mobile phones helps you understand more about non-latin languages.
Finally, there’s something on mechanization of agriculture; the article reveals surprising labour shortage in this field of work. I thought the solution might be to move the unemployed people from the urban areas to these agricultural regions but well, they designed all sorts of machine to do the job so that means the unemployed will have to find something more complex to earn a living.
The weeks seems to be passing faster as the entries on ERPZ becomes more frequent. The one-entry-per-day rate now is not exactly very sustainable without additional support from guest writers and contributors so I’m once again calling out for interested parties to leave a comment with your emails so I might be able to contact you and get your contribution up.
The linked article mentioned about the ‘paradox of choice’, which is the topic of Barry Schwartz’stalk on TED.com. He explains the disadvantages of being offered too many choices and the problems associated with the implications of having too many choices in the first place on the psyche of the person after making the decision, citing Dan Gilbert’s presentation in the same TED conference.
Barry is another great speaker, mixing humour consistently throughout his talk with a steady flow of cartoons. The point he makes in our escalating expectations is very real and worth pondering over for anyone who wants to exert discipline on their thinking to keep their mind healthy. He claims he wrote the book, The Paradox of Choice to explain to himself why he felt worst when he got a better jeans than he previously did.
I read the review of Alan Greenspan’s book 2 years back in The Economist, but didn’t buy it until late last year when I went on a book-shopping spree. The book gone on to stay on my book table (yes, I seriously need a bookshelf) for another year or so before I dusted it two weeks ago and began reading it. In any case, I bought an updated version, which features an epilogue detailing Alan Greenspan’s take on the Subprime Financial Crisis and his prescriptions.
I was immediately surprised by Alan Greenspan’s clear writing and simple style so contrary to his famous inscrutable public announcements about the Fed. It is this that earned The Economist’s rare praise:
Sub-heading of the book review: “Not many surprises in this memoir-cum-essay except that it is an unexpectedly enjoyable read.”
Book Review Quote: “[D]espite everything, the book turns out to be first-rate. It engages on different levels: it is intelligent in a way that few popular books on economics manage or even try to be; and, wonder of wonders, it is a good read.”
The book begins as a memoir, detailing Greenspan’s childhood, interest in music, schooling, economic/technical inclinations and his long career in the Federal Reserve Bank where he was Mr Chairman. His memoir ends somewhat abruptly in retrospect at the eleventh chapter, The Nation Challenged. Beginning with the chapter, The Universals of Economic Growth, he went on with his economy essays and analysis of various economies, industries and trends. Like what The Economist says, Age of Turbulence is a good read, his memoir was very neutral and he was very humble about his work at the Fed. His accounts of the workings of the Fed provides non-American readers a good starting point to learn about their system. Greenspan’s essays on the world economy and economics stays faithful to his belief in the power of free markets and respect for the freedoms and rights that the American Founding Fathers have sought and preserved.
He defends his views that no one can possibly identify a bubble and actively sought to burst it before it gets too big and cause a crisis in its subsequent burst. As a matter of fact, this is the case because anyone who can confidently identify the bubble can profit from it by going against the flow and thus end up defusing it before it builds up. At times, when the so-called ‘irrational exuberance’ exerts too powerful a market force then regulators wouldn’t actually be able to defuse it anyways. He seem to sigh at the voter’s expectations that the government is almighty and is disappointed by typical politicians who doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of ‘trade-offs’. These are typical economist’s perennial concerns about the world in democracies that never seem they’ll ever go away.
As a pragmatist, Greenspan shows great appreciation for the rule of law that has maintained the workings of the market and fostered a culture of trust so essential to capitalism. And reflecting on that, Greenspan gives suggestions on how the emerging economies need to improve their governance and legal systems to catch up with their prosperity and march towards developed status. These are valuable insights gained from Greenspan’s 19 years of being the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Indeed, Greenspan confesses that he knows little about international economics until he took on this role since his work at Townsend-Greenspan & Company (which closed following his nomination to that post) deals little with the economies of other nations.
Overall, Age of Turbulence provides wonderful insights into workings of the capitalist system of America and great ideas about emerging economies, the direction the world economy is heading to – knowledge significant to any economics students and economist-wannabe.
Problem is, how many people it takes to make the change?
95, according to Tony Juniper, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth in UK, in his book of the same title. When I first saw this book at Central Library, I thought it had tips and nitty-gritty details about how one can do his part for the environment in his daily actions. Coming from his background as an activist, this book is far from a step-by-step guide but instead a huge tome for policymakers to think about the many environmental issues that plague us ranging from climate change to biodiversity. His perspective is very British but the vast range of recommendations are very useful in any context. Some of his 95 ideas are quite overlapping and repetitive and not all are very solidly supported by data, but otherwise he makes quite good arguments for his recommendations. He infuses a lot of his personal experiences with Friends of the Earth, and it touches me to see how much has been done by activist groups for the environment, despite its being David in a David-versus-Goliath battle against Big Government and Big Multinationals.
I cant possibly list all 95 ideas here, but I have spent the past few days compiling them into Word document. I dont own this book after all, and it will be good for me to remember and keep in mind all these ideas that can come in very useful in future if I decide to go into environmental activism. An idea I found interesting is the creation of corridors for wildlife to migrate as a result of climate change, rather than creating static, fixed-border reserves that do not allow animals to migrate poleward for instance in the event of rising temperatures due to global warming. It seemed like quite a “duh!” solution but it has not been implemented yet. His being an expert on birds brings another dimension to his ideas, which care a lot for biodiversity and bring a very local, on-the-ground view about the effects of environmental ruin on wildlife.
The book is not just a must-read for environmentalists and environment activists but also for policymakers and politicians who need to know and be concerned about the environment because of its wide-ranging impact not just on biodiversity but also on equality and democracy for example. He supports his ideas with justifications that are economic as well, so he is not exactly one who advocates for a poorer quality of life for us all so that Earth can be saved.
I almost totally forgot about the package this week! For a start, check out how exactly you should be reading stuff at all in order to be studying effectively. The articles that are linked there serves as good reads for your weekend although they’re all from The Economist. Itay Talgam presented a great talk about leadership of conductors at TED.com.
In addition, I wrote something about choosing stuff to read again. Yea, that’s all for this week. I’m pretty busy you see. Have a great weekend.
This week’s package is a little more on the reading side. The Economist dug up the book review of a 1980s book. And read up about how sometimes, product pricing is all about business and little about economics especially when demand function starts entangling with supply. This is the sort of thing that always happens with super high-class sort of thing – or maybe it’s just high-class because of marketing.
Perhaps people are learning more about Professor Waldfogel’s theories since more retailers are rolling out gift certificates for this festive season. How about signaling your care or love for someone through the Internet or your mobile phone instead? Stefana Broadbent, a tech anthropologist speaks on how the Internet enables intimacy.
Finally, a little read on xanthan gum from moreIntelligentLife, a stabilizer – in your food but not something particularly good for your health I heard..
