The Adhoc Thinker

When species move out of balance with their ecosystem nature seeks to punish and return to balance. From the enlightenment humans have assumed a role as masters of nature; so-called anthropocentric thinking. The separation of humans from the rest of nature is, of course, nonsensical. However, it has been key in our efforts (in the words of McBurney) to stuff all of the worlds ecology into economics and it won’t go! All of our worries about business and economics are really for nothing unless we hear and address what is a clear ecological wake up call to the fact that human behaviour is unsustainable. The idea that humans would destroy the earth was, as noted by Lovelock, always far less likely than we would destroy ourselves; sinking under the weight of our own hubris. Make no mistake, Coronavirus is simply part of a wider ecological alarm call. We either find a way to reset the way we live and organise ourselves, as a species, or we will simply see more extreme wea...

The unprecedented events arising from the Coronavirus pandemic has created a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, the need for social distancing is creating a huge swing towards digital delivery of products and services and the replacement of physical meetings with digital platforms. As such, this may well be a defining moment, where the digital economy assumes a driving role in the global economy. On the other hand, as the virus has taken hold national governments have quickly abandoned international cooperation and retreated into national isolation; slamming borders shut, refusing the sharing and export of medical resources and protecting national industries. Nowhere has this been more evident than Europe, with citizens trapped in countries other than their own, as flights are canceled and borders closed. On top of a continent wide trend towards reactionary and nationalistic politics this may well also set the tone for the future. Going forward we face a world which is...

The New Nomads The fusion of mobile phones and internet has blurred the distinction between the two and given rise to voice over internet telephony and mobile internet. The resulting culture of mobile communications has taken to the concept of the virtual office to a new level. The culture of self employment gave rise to the explosion of modular space/service flexible business centres during the 1990's. However mobile internet is enabling a growing number of both employed and self employed people to do away with the office almost entirely. Consultants, sales people, designers and marketing executives are all using the portability of laptops and especially mini-laptops combined with mobile internet to work from cafes, literally on the go. This has the triple advantage of reducing costs (coffee is cheaper than monthly floor rental), ensuring employees are connected and exposed to surrounding trends and provides greater autonomy and mastery at the individual...

The convergence of technology and globalisation is changing the world.  This blog provides a short description of how it is changing value creation.  Back in the days before the internet, strategy was about securing value creation within business processes, products and brands.  However, writing in 1990 Prahalad recognised that technological change requires a focus upon core competence to be able to adapt a business to markets evolution.  As the internet started to take hold Hammer realised that global connectivity would wipe whole layers of processes and people from organisations. To prove his point he cited how Ford sales people now entered purchase data such that they could reduce accounts payable staff by 75%!  This led to a noisy fad for so-called business process re-engineering (BPR).  By the mid 1990s Arthur provided a prescient insight into the key characteristics which were re-shaping not just strategy, but economics itself.  He argued that ...

The UK is currently undergoing a crisis of identity, which is partly rooted in the question of the nation and what it means to British.  However, it is also about the infrastructure of the country and how it should be delivered. Underlying questions of service, performance, ownership, subsidies and so forth for the health service, railways, social services, education, and much else that make up the fabric of the country, are to what purpose we measure the success of these systems.  Are they purely utilitarian; to be measured by cost-benefit analysis, or are they some sort of metaphysical representation of the nation, the values it aspires to and central to the reproduction of civil society? These questions matter because, as the pioneer of privatisation and deregulated markets, the UK continues to blaze a trail that others, encouraged by institutions like the IMF, are following.  Furthermore the answers to these questions will, in the context of Brexit, have a dramatic ...

The New Economy Heralds the  Return of Taylorism Given that the net has proven to be a superb tool for comparing consumer prices and obtaining cheaper products and services it, perhaps, should not be a surprise that the hidden costs of some of the fast growing businesses in the world amount to a return to Taylorsim as the people management norm. As I have noted elsewhere previously, this may be dressed up as talent management, but for the average employee it means low paid insecure employment, with exhausting targets, overbearing managers and pressure to conform to company policies. Amazon, SportsDirect, RyanAir, Tesco and others have all come under intense media scrutiny for their employment practices. Ryanair, it seems runs league tables for pilots fuel loading, employs over 70% of pilots on zero hours contracts, makes ground and stewarding staff pay for their own uniforms and drinks (at airport prices). Whilst Channel 4s Dispatches reports pilots feeling under p...

Brexit or Bust...! How did we get here? Philosophically the Anglo-American model of the State is quite different from the European State. Derived from Hobbes and Locke, it is rooted in a belief that man is, at core, evil and government exists primarily to protect us from ourselves. For the British relationships with the State are based upon a contract, whereby citizens grant authority to the government in exchange for guarantees to protect life, liberty and property. As Margaret Thatcher discovered, whilst trying to impose a new tax upon property, governments that are perceived to have failed to honour this contract swiftly pay the price. There can be no doubt that a large number of people perceive the EU as a threat to their liberty. This contrasts with the European model, derived from Rousseau, who believed that people are basically good, but corrupted by their environment. Thus the job of the European States is to manage and improve the society, with individual rights ...