Recessions

It’s disaster in the desert. Late last week, Dubai World quasi-defaulted — and took the Emirate’s credibility with it. Will Dubai meet its obligations? It’s the question the beancounters of the universe are nervously asking. As usual, it’s the wrong question. Dubai was a mini-America: finance and real estate made up the lion’s share of […]

Research finds that these fees are an outsized source of revenue for banks in poor communities.

One of the emotional impacts of navigating a tough economy is fear. We speak of courage as a virtue, but seldom do we spend enough time considering the flip side of courage, fear! Of course it’s there, lurking, but how should we deal with it? Specifically, should manager show fear? If so, what happens when […]

There are two kinds of people in the world, the saying goes, people who divide everything into two, and everyone else. Binary divisions everywhere shape our perception of the world. For several years they have crippled our civic life. We are used to partisans uniformly labeling events and ideas “good” or “bad,” without thoroughgoing analysis. […]

I believe the big “innovation story” of 2008 won’t involve a cool product, a specific company, or a new creative hotspot. Rather, it will involve a general sense of anxiety about a phenomenon that I call Innovation Overdrive. And since 2008 is a presidential-election year, this general anxiety may influence the political conversation in the […]

A 3% increase in unemployment rate was linked to a 1% increase in the number of people in pain, according to an analysis of data from 1.3 million people in 146 countries.

Several years ago, my colleague Dave Ulrich and I looked at how leaders build value by building employee confidence in the future. Our findings bear revisiting...

How consumer behavior feeds the jobless recovery.

Two years after the financial crisis began, the business community and the broader public are still wrestling with two fundamental questions about capitalism that should help to orient and shape how we think about business ethics. Last week, I discussed the first of these questions: How much faith should we have in capitalism? This week, […]

Data shows that family businesses outperform professionally-managed companies.

What do we need to do to get over these difficult times? Consider a study conducted by a group of Swiss researchers led by Ernst Fehr, who examined psychological motives for taking revenge. The researchers invented what they called “The Trust Game.” Here is how it is set up: You and an anonymous participant are […]

Is it the responsibility of schools to teach ethics? I think it is – but only if it’s done the right way. MBA Students don’t necessarily care about Kant’s third formulation of the categorical imperative — they need a simple values toolkit that they can understand and have at the ready, not an impression that […]

Thanks to everyone who commented in the Pirate Bay thread. I think it's a great thread. Let me respond to the two or three comments about a lack of nuance....

Renewable energy, eco-friendly construction, and many other green initiatives are markets that promise to generate jobs and profits. Former U.S. president...

There's an old story about two shoe salesmen whose company sends them to a remote village in Africa. Upon arrival, one sends home a message saying, "No...

It goes to show that timing isn’t everything. Here we are, amidst the greatest economic failure since the Great Depression, and two high-profile writers are out with big new books on the surprising secrets of what makes people successful. What’s more, both of these students of success are enamored of the same secret–a lesson drawn […]

How does unnovation happen, anyways? Why does the zombieconomy churn out unnovation as reliably as Lady Gaga churns out bad outfits? Simple: it seduces...

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” — Justice Lewis Brandeis A day before Lehman went bankrupt, they carried an A rating from Moody’s on their debt. Likewise, AIG was rated AAA only 24 hours before they begged for their first multi-billion dollar tranche of bailout cash. Worse yet, the rescue bills have not created a new […]

Rudyard Kipling, in his beloved poem “If,” speaks to the virtues that make a boy into a man–virtues (without regard to gender) that seem awfully relevant to a world in which financial markets are in meltdown mode, and credit markets are more frozen than the players in this weekend’s NFC Championship Game. The poem begins […]

Troublingly, the macroeconomic crisis that's engulfed the world shows no signs of ending. Why not - why is it grinding on with the grim relentlessness...