Bottoms up, Bottoms up

Last week our discussion on innovation brought two techniques to the table; top-down innovation and bottom-up innovation. These two ideas basically described where the ideas came from, and whether the trickled down or shot up. After thinking about the terms in that manner, I decided that if a low-rank employee could shoot his ideas all [...]

Virtual Worlds for Non-Believers

  During our talk in class about virtual worlds it became clear to me that some people frown upon virtual worlds because they just don’t get it. Why would a person want to live a life online and outside of the real world? 1. No geographic boundaries! Thats right folks… you yourself can sit next [...]

Follow Up on “Soldiers Kill and Rape in Iraq”

Up front, let me just be clear.  I think our military forces are mostly well-intentioned people.  We ask much of them, often to do their best in support of policies or goals that change or that they may not completely agree to. At the same time, I think any sober reading of war will show [...]

Final Paper Topic – Bucknell University

Sitting in the lush farmlands of Central Pennsylvania, Bucknell University is one of the premier liberal arts universities in the nation.  It boasts an absolutely magnificant campus, talented faculty, and intelligent and motivated student body (if I don’t say so myself).  Having now spent almost three years at this university I believe that I have [...]

What kinds of laws govern organizations?

When I first read the final paper guidelines, I felt a little intimidated by the open-ended nature of the assignment. So far, we’ve been given pretty specific direction; yet have still been given some freedom in constructing our topics. So, at first, this assignment seemed a little daunting. Thinking about everything we’ve read in Scott [...]

From the Ground Up

After our class discussions thus far regarding innovation, I found myself very curious to learn about more concrete examples of how innovation is working for businesses today. I managed to come across this interesting and applicable article on BusinessWeek.com (that, by the way, has an entire section of their homepage dedicated to the topic of [...]

Does one Organization define YOU?

To be given the freedom to write about a gamut of things for this final assignment, I have encountered many roadblocks. Not many opportunities are given where you are not just “assigned” a topic. As my thoughts began to come together with what I wanted to look at in reference to organizations, and how they [...]

Right and Wrong

       In “Homecoming” there was a definite breaking of American law.  Avon Barksdale, Stringer Bell, Marlo Stanfield, and others were participating in drug trading and assault. To all intents and purposes, what they did was illegal and un-American. Although they operated a drug trade business, few legitimate businesses would operate under the same terms as them. [...]

Final Paper Ideas?

Throughout this semester, our class has discussed a wide range of topics which either directly or indirectly shape organizations. In Scott, we have briefly discussed open-systems, rational systems, and natural systems. We have seen how these perspectives evolved over time, and the various examples of how and when these perspectives tend to apply. Eventually the [...]

Technology and the Globalization of Taste

Theodore Bestor wrote an article entitled “How Sushi Went Global,” in 2000, and after reading it I felt it exemplified some ideals of technology that we have been discussing. Sushi has been at the top of Japanese cuisine for over a thousand years. It originally arose as a way of preserving food. Fish were placed [...]

The Corporation

I recently watched bits of this documentary. The documentary uses various real life examples to show how corporations seem to act just like people (not in a good way). The synopsis is quoted below from IMDB. Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it [...]

Best of March 23- March 27

With the unique nature of the blogs this week, our criteria for analysis was a bit different, ranging from informative to intuitive, and everything in-between. On a side note, Jordi has reminded all of us to correctly use apostrophes in our writing or he will be more infuriated than he is with the supposed profits [...]

Where is the Stimulus Money going?

Resources  if you want to dig in deep. Find out how the government is accounting for our tax dollars. Cool graphic of all the money allocated last fall: Tracking TARP money:

_The Wire_ Assignment Details

The Wire assignment Hello folks.  For next Tuesday, March 31, you need to watch one episode of the HBO drama The Wire.  Our episode to watch is #31, “Homecoming.” It is on disc three, and is #6 of season 3 (but 31st overall). I picked it because it highlights some tensions around innovation for different [...]

A lesson learnt? Preventing the economy from slipping into a depression

The economy is no perfect system, and this statement is no surprise. Like prices that rise and fall over time, the economy expands and shrinks over time too. As we are all well aware, currently the economy is shrinking – and it is doing so more than it would in its ‘normal’ cycles. This abnormal [...]

No One Raindrop thinks it Caused the Flood

After reading about Enron, I wondered a lot about the social phenomenon known as Diffusion of Responsibility. This phenomenon takes places when any one individual feels he does not bare the burden of responsibility because there are many others present that can instead. When an event occurs that requires a response, the individual assumes that [...]

Federal Reserve – Independent?

There has been a lot of talk about a recession, an economic crisis and that the Federal Reserve is printing money. But what is the Federal Reserve? Maybe many of you know already about it, but I decided to investigate a little and find out more about when it started, who created, what is its [...]

China’s Concerns

The recession occurring in the United States has lead to financial distress in many other countries over seas, but no country is more intertwined with the US economy than China. In a recent article published by MSNBC, China’s vice governor of the People’s Bank of China discussed the rising fear looming over failing U.S businesses. [...]

Recession Vs Depression

As anyone that has a computer, a TV, a radio, or even two cans tied together by strings has noticed by now that the United States economy is experiencing a recession. So what exactly is a recession? It really depends on who you ask.

Bear Essentials

What are the characteristics of a bear market? The United States economy has been in a bear market since 2007, but what does that mean? We read all about the fantastic bull market that assisted Enron in all its success in the early 90′s, and we associate bad connotations with the bear market, but I [...]

AIG gets in trouble–what about everything else?

I caught this article about AIG while perusing headlines the other day. What a good point it makes—what such a comparatively prolonged fuse about AIG execs and their bonuses? Aren’t there more important and impactful things to worry about and to rekindle our economy? I don’t mean say the crazy bonuses to AIG execs are [...]

The Newest Piece of the Puzzle: PPIP

So, we all remember the government’s implementation of TARP last October. The concern after that, however, was how the government was specifically going to handle the relief of these bad assets rather than simply pumping money into financial institutions. I remembered wondering and being concerned with this as well, and just this past Monday, Treasury [...]

Ben Bernanke’s First Ever Public Interview Recap

In response to Jordi’s request today that we focus on something pertaining to the recession, I thought it would be helpful and interesting to recap the recent Ben Bernanke interview on CBS’s 60 minutes. This interview was particularly significant because Bernanke has never been interviewed like this before, and it was mentioned during the show [...]

Freddie Mac what happened?

Would our current economic state be any different if banks had not been handing out mortgages like candy during the Fourth of July parade? It is nothing new to the American people to hear that the mortgage industry is a huge factor in our current economy downward spiral. But would things have been different if [...]

My Big Question = HUH?

HUH? Sources: Moody’s Economy.com; Congressional Budget Office; Office of Management and Budget Notes: U.S. Deficit measured in billions of dollars; GDP measured in 2007 U.S. dollars