Archive for 5 December 2006
Is Math More Precise Than Words?
| Peter Klein |
Commentator Michael Greinecker suggests below that mathematics, as a language for expressing economic arguments, is more precise than words. Indeed, Samuelson’s landmark Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947) opens with this statement from J. Willard Gibbs: “Mathematics is a language.” Samuelson felt he had to justify his translation of conventional economic analysis into mathematics — a defense hardly needed today!
As Roger Garrison once noted, mathematics is indeed a language, but so is music:
There is no reason for economists to observe a categorical prohibition against either mathematical formulation or musical expression. The relevant question is: What sort of language — music, mathematics, or, say, English — allows economists best to communicate their ideas? Which language serves the economist without imposing constraints of its own upon his subject matter?
Garrison argues for English (or French, German, Spanish, whatever) on the grounds that mathematics cannot express causality, and economics — here Garrison follows Menger and Mises — is essentially a causal science. (I make this point about Menger here.) That is a subject for another day, however. (more…)
How To Screw Up an Email Negotiation
| Peter Klein |
From WebWorkerDaily, tips on how to screw up an email negotiation. Highly recommended. Generalizes easily to other kinds of email exchanges.
We’ve previously shared some ideas on ruining a PowerPoint presentation (use tiny fonts, a busy background, garish colors, lots of graphics and animation, inconsistent grammar, and read the slides word for word).
Coming soon: How to screw up a blog entry.
An Organizational Routines Bloffer
| Nicolai Foss |
Here is a blog offer: Teppo Felin and I have written “Organizational Routines: Historical Drift, A Course Correction, and Future Directions,” and if you mail me at njf.smg@cbs.dk, I will be happy to send you a copy. Here is the abstract:
Organizational routines and capabilities have become key constructs not only in evolutionary economics, but more recently also in business administration, specifically strategic management. In this essai we discuss the historical origins of the notion of routines, and highlight some of the theoretical and definitional drift associated with the notion of routines over time. In parallel we also explicate some of the underlying theoretical problems of routines (and related concepts); problems such as the lack of clarity on the origins of routines, and the more general need for micro-foundations. We argue that individual-level considerations deserve more attention in extant work — we in effect call for a course–correction in work on organizational routines — and we argue that evolutionary economics and strategic management should aim to build micro-foundations related to understanding the origins of routines.
Badly Needed: Research Into Meetings In Organizations
| Nicolai Foss |
Ahhhh! Today was my last day as member of the Academic Council (or Senate) of the Copenhagen Business School. As Denmark has the most undemocratic university legislation in the world (with the possible exception of North Korea) and the whole university system is socialized, all decision-making power is in actuality concentrated in the hands of the President and the Dean. This means that bodies such as the Academic Council have nada real decision-making competence. Knowing this, the members should be expected to get the meeting done as quick as possible, and go back to serious business, that is, research and teaching. Not so! One endless and essentially pointless debate followed another.
Which makes me wonder: Given that incredible amounts of time in organizations, public as well as private, and often involving absolute key employees, are spent in meetings, why do we see so very little serious (non-pomo) academic research into the phenomenon of meetings in organizations? (more…)
Best Business Movies
| Peter Klein |
The American Enterprise Institute gives us a list of the ten best business movies (via Craig Newmark). “[W]e looked for three qualities: (1) a great movie, (2) a relatively realistic picture of business, and (3) an attitude not openly hostile to capitalism as we know and love it.”
Here are some movies about entrepreneurs. And here is an entire blog about the treatment of capitalism in film.
Organizations and Markets 
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