Talking about strategy » wikipedia

12 manage vs. Wikipedia on management

Kim Warren — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:29:10 +0000

The post on game theory reminds me to recommend the 12manage site for (mostly) authoritative explanations and discussions on a wide range of management topics, including strategic management – multiple languages too! Wikipedia does OK within its own constraints, but as I’ve blogged before, it’s pretty flakey on strategy. Jaap de Jong who edits 12manage does a great job managing and moderating the content and discussion to keep it on track, though it’s not possible to prevent entirely some off-target comments getting through.

Previous strategic incompetence in banking

Kim Warren — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:30:48 +0000

Watched a great TV series recently The Ascent of Money presented by Professor Niall Ferguson. If you cannot view it, the book is probably good too. It makes the dry and obscure world of banking and its origins brilliantly accessible. One little nugget in the latest episode reminded me, though, that it’s not long since the last time those clever folk in banking messed up so badly that governments had to bail out the disaster at our expense – remember emerging market debt? Our own Gordon Brown became a hero by getting the developed economies to sign up to “The Enhanced HIPC Initiative” pledging $100 billion to 26 countries with unsustainable debt burdens at Cologne in 1999. That time huge loans were given not to sub-prime consumers but sub-prime countries! And just as this time round, what was not a bad idea on a small and cautious scale blew up because the banks and the analysts that drive their behavior went over-board. If you want a lively telling of the story, see the Wikipedia entry on developing countries’ debt, complete with dire warnings about ‘weasel words’ and ‘biased’ commentary [though it looks reasonably accurate to me] – or a more dispassionate entry under emerging market debt.

So – do top executives in banking have to achieve any qualification in strategic management at all? [Probably not - because there isn't one.] So just how do they have to demonstrate their competence before being given the power to mess up all our lives? Perhaps some of them or their consultant advisors would like to explain themselves.

Wikipedia on strategic management

Kim Warren — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:52:04 +0000

Working on the 2nd edn of the textbook, I want to link to other things folk may find if they look into this subject, and of course Wikipedia is going to be popular. Shame to find, then, that their entry on strategic management ‘needs to be rewritten’ to comply with quality standards. Click on the discussion, and there’s an interesting stream of comment and explanation of why it was withdrawn as a ‘featured’ Wiki article. Amongst this debate I see quite a lot about the problem of abstract and ambiguous concepts that bedevil the field and make it hard to identify anything that could be described as a ‘professional’ perspective.

[ For newcomers to the blog - 'professional' implies that two intelligent people, adequately trained, would tackle the same problem in a recongisably similar way, using similar tools, and arrive at similar conclusions and recommendations - as you'd expect from, say, two doctors, lawyers, engineers or accountants. Of course there will be differences of detail or emphasis, and some really tough issues may challenge even the best professionals in the field. But still, most of the work of strategic management should meet basic standards of professionalism. A partner at McKinsey once boasted to me that 'Our partners are so leading-edge in their thinking that the answer a client gets depends on which partner leads the assignment. I don't think that stance is representative of the firm's view, though. ]