In discussion with a colleague about how to strategically manage life in an organization, I was drawn into thinking about how cultural institutionalism would motivate a strategy. Most organizations have pretty positive stories to tell about themselves – if they didn’t, they have organizational commitment issues. My advice is simple: 1) Learn what the story […]
Via the Washington Post comes an interesting article on data mining and the airline industry. Apparently, airplanes are not crashing enough for the airlines to be able to determine the sources and causes of accidents. That is, there is not enough variability in the outcomes (the last crash was August 2006) to do forensic analysis. […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about institutions lately, in light of my earlier post on check-lists and medical practices. I originally had in mind a post about how the Berger and Luckmann version of institutionalization at the more marco-level is about the crystallization of practices. So what check-lists are theoretically are the same as other […]
That’s Tourettes without Regrets. But of course that’s not the punchline, it’s MC Jelly D that I want you to know about.
The New Yorker has a great article on the effects of technology in emergency medical care, with findings that are worth drawing out more carefully. In particular, the article is about intensive care units, where extraordinary measures are taken to keep patients alive. The question the author asks is, what happens when increased organizational complexity […]
Well, if we’re going all sociological and stuff, we may as well have Veblen stick his thoughts in the mashed potatoes…
Now that’s a rival good.
This is a bit far afield of my own expertise, but I’m curious: if I predict that an event in the future is a causal outcome, but it was an event that has already occurred that was causal, how can I be proven correct or wrong? I’m thinking about Obama and the Democratic primary, Iowa/NH, […]
I’ve noticed that whenever a site fails to load, it’s almost invariably because it’s hung trying to connect to Google analytics. I know there’s blog visitor-porn, but it is seriously obnoxious. Does it really matter how many people are visiting your site? Really? Really really?