A couple of weeks ago I got into a Twitter conversation with my friend Therry de Ballion. He had mentioned branding as becoming so pronounced, so prominent that brands eventually serve as a “catalysts” for both customers and businesses eliminating the need for organizations. The implications didn’t hit me immediately.
I think I replied that [...]
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An organization-less church? Possible?
Joseph K. Hart, too contrary for Vandebilt
I came across an index card last week. It must have fallen out one of the books we’ve been carrting around for years and have begun to weed out. It was a reference to a “Hart, J. K.” and a book, Light from the north with the notation, “1926. folk high schools in Denmark” and [...]
Uncertainty & complexity, the twin bugaboos of organizations
Uncertainty appears to the chief bugaboo of organizations. Max Miller, the Hamburg sociologist in his 2002 paper, Some theoretical aspects of systemic learning, abstracting organizational theorists (such as Simon and Weick), wrote, “If there is anything that defines the central problem of an organization, it is the inescapable and enduring struggle of coping with uncertainty. [...]
The forgotten rewards of reading a physical, hardcopy of a newspaper
I’ve been meaning to comment on this for a while since we started our home delivery subscription to The New York Times at the beginning of the month. In reading the paper in its original ink and newsprint version, I’ve come across articles and read that I never would have with the on-line version. The [...]
IRB procedures expand to include “community-engaged research”
I’ve had to— as they say in scoring large scale writing assessments— “recalibrate.” I’ve recalibrated my attitude toward IRBs and their need when it comes to evaluating interventions designed to better communities. I attended a session today at Light Hall on “IRB issues in community-engaged research” and sponsored by the Vanderbilt IRB. I had no [...]
The Baffler returns
I bought a copy of the not-strictly literary magazine, The Baffler, last weekend at a Davis-Kidd sale. I had not seen a copy in a long time and apparently it has been on a sort of sabbatical. I am glad to see it back in the magazine racks.
As best i can describe it, The Baffler [...]
Are our public school students treated as supermarket tomatoes?
This morning Joe Palca, the NPR science reporter, interviewed a U of Florida plant biologist about growing more tastier tomatoes. The biologist, Harvey Klee, noted that tomato growers were rewarded for size of their tomatoes and yield of their crops. “Flavor is irrelevant,” he said. You see size and yield are easily measured and counted, [...]
Another vote against planning from the 37 Signals guys: Plans “aren’t worth the stress”
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hannson in their new Rework published by Crown Business advise going against most of what we’ve come to accept as sacred business truths. Having worked with federal funded programs from education to drug and alcohol prevention, I know their proclivity toward forcing recipients to use business ways. So I am [...]
Okay, okay. I’ll get rid of some books, Martha
This by David Dalla Venezia. One of his pictures is used as the cover for Ray Pawson book, Evidence-based Policy: A Realist Perspective (London: SAGE, 2006). I picked it up today to reread some passages. Pawson included some links to Venezia’s work and I saw this. It captures what others have described and what I’ve [...]
Jesus returns home, A remembrance of Ray S. Anderson
I recently Googled “Ray S. Anderson.” His name was on a thick paper on the church that was part of a seminar he taught at Fuller. I had found the paper during our massive paper throw-way. We filled completely one of those green recycling contains supplied by the city, by the way.
I found that Anderson [...]