What, Why & How do we Know ?
Interesting post from Anecdote about peer pressure influencing moral decisions. I first noted this 15 years go when I read DeLorean’s (auto)-biography. The paraphrased quote of his I keep dredging up is “Committees of moral men make immoral decisions”. Nils Brunsson has this well documented as “Management Hypocrisy” Interstingly another recurring memory on that score, … Continue reading “The DeLorean Effect”
Interesting post from Sam Norton. A thoughtful Christian positioning on recent “blasphemy furies”. Amongst other things I was taken by this quote from Rene Girard. “The invention of science is not the reason that there are no longer witch-hunts, but the fact that there are no longer witch-hunts is the reason that science has been … Continue reading “Would Science Consider This Blasphemous ?”
Also from Mark Federman, a piece on research he is doing on organisational effectiveness. The point that interested me, apart from the general parallel with my agenda, and my earlier dissertation is his focus on Chris Argyris “espoused theories” concept – ie the idea that they are different to actual “theories in use”. Something I’ve … Continue reading “Organisational Effectiveness”
Dave Pollard picks up on The Edge 2006 Question response from Kai Krause, and adds quite a detailed take of his own. The original Krause analogy is a good one. If you take a memetic view of cultural ideas, that drive our day to day decision making, the crises that occur (those that don’t arise … Continue reading “The Blue Screen of Death”
Here it’s the debate about the “right to offend” sparked by the recent Sikh religious debate over the content of the play at the Birmingham Rep. This is at the highest political / public / human / artistic rights level, but Chris Argyris showed that avoidance of offence (and embarrassment) was at the root of … Continue reading “Political Correctness Disguises Facts”
Apparently such a thing exists and people can do courses on it. [Google cross-hit]. Not heard of it before but, call me cynical, I don’t like the sound of it, sounds doomed to failure of planned objectives, with plenty of solid blame-shifting, Brunsson-hypocritical, arse-covering, “somebody else’s problem” problems. [Post Note Sept 2010 – I have … Continue reading “The “Rational-Comprehensive” Planning Model”
As I was with Eco’s plot below, I did also mention earlier that I had obtained Nils Brunsson’s “The Organisation of Hypocrisy”. Read only a small part so far … Interestingly, Brunsson says most people interpreted his first edition as pointing out a hypocrisy that was in need of stamping out in order to improve … Continue reading “Talking of Hypocrisy”
I’ve not yet finished reading Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” – great 14th century murder mystery with philosophers, inquisitors and church leaders thrown in – hard to spot where fact ends and fiction starts … anyway the point is I’ve also just received and started reading the 2nd edition (2002) of Nils Brunsson’s “The Organization … Continue reading “Managing Hypocrisy”