stevphel

Capabilities and Comparative Advantage

| Steve Phelan |

Brad DeLong recently posted an interesting set of questions on his blog about corporate nationality: (more…)

26 November 2007 at 12:40 am 1 comment

Things That Make You Go Hmmm . . . .

| Steve Phelan |

I had an interesting encounter with two economists in my college last week. The first was during a presentation I was giving to the MBA Association on buying opportunities in Las Vegas following the subprime debacle. I assured the audience that buying opportunities existed but you needed to to be very knowledgeable about the area of town in which you intended to buy. The professor of economics who preceded me in the presentation immediately retorted, “if so many opportunities exist then why isn’t everybody buying?” (more…)

20 November 2007 at 5:51 pm Leave a comment

Metanomics

| Steve Phelan |

I have used a lot of simulation studies in past papers and I currently sit on the editorial board of the Journal of Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory (CMOT). However, I was surprised to stumble upon an emerging field in economics called “metanomics.” (more…)

20 November 2007 at 5:42 pm 1 comment

Relevance and Practice

| Steve Phelan |

Peter, thank you for the warm introduction. In addition to 15 years in academia, I also had another life working in strategic planning in major corporations in Australia and undertaking the odd strategy consulting gig. I’ve also had the pleasure of teaching executive courses on four continents.

In all this time, the most common critique I encounter is the lack of relevance of academic courses to the “real world”. I am sure that many readers will agree that the 1980s and 1990s were an exciting time to be a strategy practitioner or researcher. The work of Porter and Barney (among many others) brought a level of rigor to the discipline that promised to revolutionize the practice of strategy.
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