Posts filed under 'Jargon Watch'
Jargon Watch: “Green Shoots” of Recovery
| Peter Klein |
Thanks to Bill Easterly for noticing that Chauncey Gardner is In the House. G7 officials are now telling us they see “green shoots” of recovery. Can’t you just imagine this behind-the-scenes conversation at the summit?
President “Bobby”: Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?
[Long pause]
Chance the Gardener: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.
President “Bobby”: In the garden.
Chance the Gardener: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
President “Bobby”: Spring and summer.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
President “Bobby”: Then fall and winter.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
Benjamin Rand: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we’re upset by the seasons of our economy.
Chance the Gardener: Yes! There will be growth in the spring!
Benjamin Rand: Hmm!
Chance the Gardener: Hmm!
President “Bobby”: Hm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very, very long time.
[Benjamin Rand applauds]
President “Bobby”: I admire your good, solid sense. That’s precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.
Actually, this level of analysis can also be found at the typical graduate macroecomomics seminar. Oops, did I say that?
1 comment 27 April 2009
Adam Smith’s Famous Metaphor
| Peter Klein |
The indefatigable Gavin Kennedy explains, for the umpteenth time, that Adam Smith was ambivalent about market capitalism and that the famous metaphor of the “invisible hand” was not meant as a generalized defense of the market. As Gavin points out, Smith’s detailed analysis of the market economy appears in Books I and II of the Wealth of Nations, while the invisible hand metaphor appears only once, in Book IV, where Smith defends British merchants who, despite mercantilist export subsidies, preferred to keep their capital invested at home, to the benefit of the British economy. Notes Gavin:
So inconsequential was [Smith's] use of The Metaphor that neither he, nor anybody else until the late 19th century, commented upon it. . . .
Moreover, it was only in Chicago in the 1930s that The Metaphor was generalised into Smith’s so-called “law” of markets. Paul Samuelson (1948, 1st edition), in his famous textbook, Economics (16 editions), publicised this invention with the inevitable affect on modern economics, as tens of thousands of his readers took it on trust as true.
To be sure, the relevant passage in Smith also includes the famous lines, “By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good,” and the remark that “What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.” But Smith’s statements need to be understood in context; he is discussing the specific problem of trade monopoly, arguing against trade and industrial policies that subsidize particular markets or industries.
4 comments 31 March 2009
Towards Beyond
| Lasse Lien |
We all know that there is an enormous amount of papers published under the title “Beyond . . . (insert whatever)” and “Towards . . . (insert whatever).” On the theory that using these words in the title almost ensures publication (I admit sampling on the dependent variable here), I have decided to take this to the limit in a series of four papers.
The first one will have the snappy title: “Towards Beyond.” The second: “Beyond Towards.” The third: “Towards Towards.” And finally, the most ambitious one: “Beyond Beyond.” I only have the titles so far, so I am interested in coauthors who can fill in the rest. But given these great titles I consider this a trivial task, and insist that I get to be first author.
14 comments 14 November 2008
Please, No More “Preneurs”
| Peter Klein |
The term entrepreneur is well-established in the academic and practitioner literatures, if not always consistently used. (As I note here, the word is typically applied to self-employed individuals or, in adjective form, to new and small ventures, but I prefer the broader, functional notions of innovation, alertness, or judgment found in the classic economics literature on entrepreneurship.) The literal translation of the French entrepreneur, “undertaker,” isn’t quite right, though I’m rather drawn to the older English terms “adventurer” or “projector.”
In any case, there’s no excuse for the seemingly endless proliferations of
“-preneur” words floating around today. An entrepreneurial individual within a large firm is an intrapreneur. With some additional skills and an external perspective she might become an extrapreneur. A good manager can hope to be a manapreneur. You in the tech sector? You’re a technopreneur. Or you might be a minipreneur, actorpreneur, agripreneur, authorpreneur, seniorpreneur, or even a mompreneur. Enough!
Let’s stick to simple ideas, like manurepreneurship.
8 comments 19 August 2008
Stop Using Military Buzzwords Too
| Dick Langlois |
It seems that, like the British Local Government Association, the US military is keen to get its people to stop using buzzwords, at least according to this February 2007 “Army Doctrine Update” I happened to see posted on a bulletin board in the Brazilian military academy where the Schumpeter Society Conference was meeting. Here are some highlights.
- Know the difference between maneuver and movement (we don’t maneuver networks; we move them).
- Battlespace is no longer a joint or Army term. Use “operational environment.”
- Use “civil considerations” (the C in METT-TC), not “human terrain.”
- Don’t use “red zone” at all; the term is “close combat.”
- Do not use “kinetic” and “nonkinetic” to describe operations, actions, activities, tasks, or targets. Use “lethal” and “nonlethal.”
Or perhaps the point is that they want people to use the right buzzwords.
3 comments 5 July 2008
Stop Using Management Buzzwords
| Peter Klein |
That’s the command to town and village officials from Britain’s Local Government Association, which urges its members to dump trite words and phrases like core values, evidence base, facilitate, fast-track, holistic, level playing field, process driven, quick hit, and my personal favorite, predictors of beaconicity (no idea what it means). Here’s the list, and here’s the CNN story (via Josh). From CNN:
The list includes the popular but vague term “empowerment;” “coterminosity,” a situation in which two organizations oversee the same geographical area; and “synergies,” combinations in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Officials were told to ditch the term “revenue stream” for income, as well as the imprecise “sustainable communities.” The association also said councils should stop referring to local residents as “customers” or “stakeholders.”
The association’s chairman, Simon Milton, said officials should not “hide behind impenetrable jargon and phrases.”
Business-school educators, please take note!
7 comments 30 June 2008
Nietzsche and Contemporary Philosophy
| Peter Klein |
“Nietzsche is peachy,” according to a bumper-sticker I once saw. Nietzsche is sometimes cited in management research as an authority on power, complexity, time, or relativism (e.g., Singer, 1994; Kilduff and Mehra, 1997; Mainemelis, 2001). But what did Nietzsche really say about these things? What are his main contributions to philosophy? Professional philosophers can’t seem to agree, as witnessed in this roundtable conversation with Peter Bergmann, Teodor Münz, Frantisek Novosád, Paul Patton, Richard Rorty, Jan Sokol, and Leslie Paul Thiele. Bergmann calls Nietzsche “the culture hero of modernism, a cultural revolution comparable to the Reformation or the Enlightenment. His critique of herd values is reflected in the posture of the avant-garde: elitist to the present, democratic to the future.” But Nietzsche was no nihilist, says Sokol; he was rather “an excessively sensitive person horrified by a world where nothing has rules and stands for nothing.”
All agree that Nietzsche bears no personal responsibility by the appropriation of his ideas by German nationalists, but Schrift notes that Nietzsche “chose to write in a style that invites misunderstanding — his use of metaphor, dissimulation, and hyperbole in particular, all make it easier for his words to be taken to mean something other than what he might have intended.” A warning to those of us who like jargon and are guilty of bad academic writing. (HT: 3quarks)
2 comments 20 February 2008
Jargon Watch: Paradigm Shifts
| Peter Klein |
Don’t you sometimes wish Thomas Kuhn had chosen another term?
Via the New Yorker’s outstanding cartoon archive.
Add comment 14 April 2007
Words and Phrases to Avoid
| Peter Klein |
More on jargon: Here are some words and phrases to avoid. Also check out Eric Rasumssen’s “Aphorisms on Writing, Speaking, and Listening” and the Economist’s style guide for many useful tips. And whatever you do, flee from egregious PowerPoint mistakes.
1 comment 4 April 2007
Jargon Watch: Buckets, Not Silos
| Peter Klein |
I’ve never liked the term “silo,” as used in business administration to describe closed spaces like functional areas, research topics, or approaches. “Economists and sociologists need to come out of their silos and work together.” What are we, sacks of grain? Intercontinental ballistic missles? I long for simpler and less pretentious terms like “areas” or “topics.”
From Tuesday’s WSJ we now learn that silos are out. The new preferred term is buckets. Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris says that ethanol “doesn’t help the conservation efficiency bucket — it helps the diversity of supply bucket.” Cingular Wireless thinks its new rate plan helps customers “dig into their big bucket of night and weekend minutes.” Is the combined India and US market best conceived “as a whole, or as two buckets?” asks a Citigroup analyst. Why do such silly terms proliferate?
Readers are invited to supply their own favorite examples of business and academic jargon. Perhaps we can hold a contest to choose the silliest.
See also previous entries on adjacencies, wikis, bad cover letters, and bad academic writing.
1 comment 30 March 2007
