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Dick Rumelt has a blog, Strategy Land.  Miscellaneous posts, including one on strategy and goals, a post on Steve Jobs and Apple.

And, here’s the website for his recent book, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters.  An excerpt can be downloaded here (pdf).

[link via David Lazer]

Twitter is getting lots of interest from social scientists.  Here’s a piece from the current issue of Science about how “social scientists wade into the tweet stream” (the figure below is from this article).  And, an NPR piece on a forthcoming Science article by Macy and Golder on affect and mood and twitter.

Looking back on it, getting an MBA at the University of Chicago (1981) is really what led me to academia. Back then, course readings were 30-40 academic journal articles. Rarely did a textbook accompany a class. As students, we knew we were there to learn the latest-and-greatest academic thinking. In our view, courses based upon some textbook anybody could get at their student bookstore for $50 had to be worth little more than, well, $50. Forget about classes taught by the grey-hairs (you know, classes in which some big-shot ex-executive sits around and regales students with war stories) — total waste of time, in our view. No, we wanted the meaty stuff. The stuff that wouldn’t be “best-practices” for another 10 years. Commercializing that knowledge, yeah, that’s where the money was.

So, I specialized in Finance (what else?) and launched into an exciting decade+ of business practice. At some point, I started consulting and, at some point after that, I was asked to work on a strategy project. I knew nothing about strategy at the time — BUT! — I knew how to read academic journals. No problem. Off to the library to read the pink strategy journal! Up to speed and 10 years ahead of practice in a few sittings. That b-school training was truly awesome. (In case you are wondering, btw, years later when I was a rookie PhD, I interviewed at Chicago. My old Micro prof, Sam Peltzman, took me to dinner. When I asked him what journal articles he was putting in his MBA course, he did a spit-take and said, “Wall Street Journal articles.” More on this later.)

I guess it would be fair to say that I found the strategy literature sadly wanting in comparison to the precision and mathematical sophistication I was used to in the Finance literature (mind you, this was as a practitioner). My reaction was: big opportunity here. This was the 90s and, for those who are not aware of it, the methodological advances in economics were really expanding at that time: game theoretic learning, evolutionary economics, behavioral economics, computational methods … cool technological approaches that held some promise in tackling the complexities inherent in the strategy problem domain. Off I went to get a math econ degree and I’ve never looked back with any regrets. (I do look back and marvel at the level of hubris that propelled me on my way — though, without it, where would any of us be in this academic hustle?)

Over time, outside of trying to stay up on promising methodological developments, I became less attentive to what people were doing in economics. Early-on, I tried to get my IO friends interested in the issues that so animated my own research. Typically, 3 minutes into describing something I was working on to a respected IO colleague, I could see the eyes glaze over and hear the responses go on autopilot. I really was a strategy guy and, clearly, the strategy literature was where my career would rise or fall. When asked, I explained it in this way, “The central question in strategy is who gets what, why and for how long. IO economists, IO being in many ways a mirror field, are interested in how the most value gets created. The dichotomy is one between distributional vs. efficiency issues. We want to tell Apple how to make more profit. They want to tell the FTC how to increase social welfare.”

This is not to say there weren’t always great economists in the bi-curious category. Of course there were. But, they were not the majority and I was smugly comfortable in my belief that, regardless of how frustratingly slow progress in strategy was, the field had little to worry about from economics. In fact, just as recently as last year, I had this discussion with one of my dearest colleagues, Jan Rivkin.  I was somewhat surprised when he, in so many words, told me I was full of it. I felt sorry (for him) that I couldn’t bring him around in that discussion. Eventually, though, I knew I would win him over.

That was until about a month ago. That was about a time the paper by Chad Syverson (2011) started making the rounds. Entitled, “What Determines Productivity?” it is a wide-ranging survey paper that collects and organizes work in economics on persistent differences in firm productivity levels. Almost all the papers are from 2000 on. I found the quantity and quality of work cited, frankly, jaw-dropping. Now, those who have followed the narrative to this point will say, “Yes, but it’s work on productivity — that means the interest is still all about efficiency!” True. But, here’s the catch: “efficiency” in this work is typically measured as Revenue/Cost. Take the numerator and subtract the denominator and — PRESTO — you have the object of focus in strategy.

I’m still digesting this. It could be good news. After all, I’d love to have more outlets for my work. On the other hand, young scholars like Syverson are smart … and teched-up … and full of youthful energy. What I can say is that the bar for strategy research has stealthily gone up over last decade.

If you’ve been following the blog recently, I’ve decided to self-publish the Grad Skool Rulz as an e-book (click here to get a free sample). I wanted to briefly address self-publishing.

First, despite my calls for online access, I do believe in traditional publishing. My decision to self-publish the Grad Skool Rulz does not reflect a view that traditional publishers are useless. Publishers do important work that deserves to be rewarded. They sort through tons of garbage to find decent materials, they edit, they market, and they make nice packages. My beef with journal publishers, for example, has to do with the value. Professors edit and review materials for free. It is now possible to distribute the work at very low price, much lower than what publishers charge libraries. But that leaves a lot of other publishing that can be done by for profit firms.

Second, self-publishing the Rulz does not indicate a rejection of peer review. The Rulz are informal advice columns, not scientific research. As imperfect as it may be, peer review is valuable. You’ll rarely find feedback as useful in blind review. The Rulz are opinions and not really the sort of material that merits the judgment of experts. I’ll continue to submit my academic research to regular journals and presses.

Let me discuss the positive reasons for self-publication. The main one is access. I wrote the Rulz because I really feel that people are getting lost in academia. So I didn’t want the book to be hard to find, buried inside a publisher website or waiting for years while the publication process finishes. Also, I didn’t want price to be  a barrier. With self-publishing, the price can be low. Few in the intended audience would be unable afford the book. I have always been suspicious of textbooks that cost hundreds of dollars. If you have Internet access and $2, you can get this book. Finally, e-publishing embodies the spirit of the new media. The e-book is flexible and direct. It’s easily updated and modified, it can be kept current.

We’re excited to welcome Michael Ryall as a guest blogger.  Mike is an Associate Professor of Strategy at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.  His research focuses on the formal theoretical foundations of business strategy.  You can find additional details (publications etc) on his website.

Mike is also behind the Strategy Research Initiative (SRI), a call for more high-quality research in strategy.  You can learn more about the initiative from a piece Mike et al published in Strategic Organization last year:  “The Strategy Research Initiative: Recognizing and Encouraging High-Quality Research in Strategy.”  Among other things, SRI also put together a joint paper workshop/conference with ASQ last summer.

If you have seen Mike present, you’ll know that he has an opinion (we posted about this earlier this year).  Refreshing.

Welcome Mike!

One of  my reading habits that changed significantly after leaving grad school was that I started reading more popular nonfiction. In grad school my reading time was completely soaked with accumulating a knowledge of the Literature. If I ever wanted a break, I’d pick up a novel and have a few moments of respite before diving into the next treatise on decoupling and organizational routines. But recently I’ve started reading more popular nonfiction. I still like escapist reading, and good nonfiction can be as absorbing as any novel. I’m also constantly on the search for good observational details about organizational life that I can pull into the classroom. Students in my undergrad classes at BYU got pretty sick of every organizational example I’d use being about church or school. Second hand stories from a friend of a friend who works at an investment bank don’t carry the same punch. But there are plenty of great examples of organizational intrigue in compelling nonfiction. MBA students also thrive on real life illustrations. Another reason is that good nonfiction writing often comes with its own ethnographic analysis that can be readily adapted to the concept or idea we’re trying to explain in class. There are some obvious examples that often get picked up (e.g., Liar’s Poker; Moneyball; Team of Rivals), but here are some books that you might not have thought of as having good organizational analysis in them.  I’ve used (or will use) all of them in class.

• Our Band Could be Your Life by Michael Azerrad. The chapters of the book are a series of vignettes about indie rock bands formed in the 80s and 90s and their attempts to build a fan base with very little organizational infrastructure or label support.  Azerrad captures a number of dynamics in the music industry – collective identity and genre creation, entrepreneurship, anti-corporate movements, team building – that would make great fodder for class discussions.
• Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. This was a popular press book that launched Bourdain’s career as the Travel Channel’s official tour guide to the world. People familiar with the show will recognize his schtick, but what will surprise you are all of the gritty details Bourdain reveals about life in the kitchens of New York. It’s a great case study of how a partially underground labor market works, the dynamics around organizational loyalty and commitment, and a solid memoir of work.
• These Guys Have All the Fun by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. I’m still finishing this one, but I can already tell you that it’s a rich source of details about the power and politics inside a well-functioning organization, the cable sports network ESPN. I read a review of the book that said there were too many details in this book about the mundane details of business and not enough about the personalities behind the show. I think that’s exactly the reason I love the book! Miller and Shales, by collecting a bunch of oral histories of current and past employees of ESPN, tell a super engaging story about how a small business gets started and becomes a dominant player in the television industry.  Much of the focus of the book is about the behind-the-scenes interactions of people creating an entirely new industry and about the business acumen and political savvy needed to survive that kind of launch.
• King of the Club by Charles Gasparino. This book follows the rise and fall of Richard Grasso, the former chair of the NYSE who was notoriously ousted from his position after the public discovered he was due a compensation worth over $100 million. The details about the eventual compensation scandal were intriguing, of course, but what makes this book great is its demonstration of how Grasso climbed the corporate ladder, starting off on the lowest rung on the totem pole and ending up the most powerful man on Wall Street.  I use this book in my MBA class to talk about the importance of the “rules of the game.” Grasso was adept early on at learning and mastering those rules, but at some point he become detached from the broader cultural expectations of equity and fairness, which led him to make some poor political calculations.
• The Beatles by Bob Spitz. Yep, this is the greatest book about teamwork and the deterioration of a team that I’ve ever read. One of my favorite parts of the book is the telling of them learning how to be the Beatles during their time in Hamburg.

Via Organizations and Markets.

Kirby Schroeder, friend and artist, produced this cover for the Rulz book. What do you like or not like? I value your comments.

In addition to guest posting at orgtheory this month, I also blog at The Huffington Post. Check out my latest over at HuffPo Culture on the TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras. This piece, in which I argue that this particular show should no longer be on the air, brings together some of my work on child beauty pageants, kids and reality television, and children’s rights. I also (hopefully) show that it’s a good thing for (academic) sociologists to watch television. I am not ashamed to watch TV, including reality shows!

You’ve seen the four-year-old dressed up as Dolly Parton (complete with “enhancements”), right? And, of course, you’ve seen the images of the three-year-old dressed up as Julia Roberts’ prostitute character from Pretty Woman, haven’t you?

Judging by the ratings for TLC’s fourth season of Toddlers & Tiaras, it seems you have. Each week over two million people tune in to watch the series. The show, which premiered almost three years ago in January 2009, has always been talked about. But over the past month it has shot into the stratosphere of pop culture. Not since the death of JonBenét Ramsey have child beauty pageants received so much media coverage. This week, for example, the cover of People features five-year-old Madisyn (aka Maddy) Verst — little “Dolly Parton” dolled up in her cupcake beauty pageant dress — and asks, “Gone Too Far?”

I’ve been studying child beauty pageants for over a decade and I do believe that shows like Toddlers & Tiaras have gone too far. Such young pageant contestants should not be featured on television.

As Wednesday night’s season finale of Toddlers & Tiaras made clear, pageant moms are acutely aware of the television cameras. One mother harshly whispered into her five-year-old daughter’s ear during an at-home practice session: “We are on camera. Don’t you dare tell me ‘no’ one more time. Do you hear me? We are on national TV. Everybody’s going to see this. Do you hear me?” After her daughter, Carley, said, “Yeah,” her mom immediately pasted a smile on her face and declared in a kinder tone, “Ok. We’re doing the Cruella de Vil run through. I want this…” But Carley cut her off declaring, “You are driving me crazy!”

Mommie Dearest-like scenes are decidedly uncomfortable to watch, though that doesn’t mean we should go to the extreme of banning child beauty pageants outright. Activists recently tried this approach in Australia after the introduction of “American-style” child beauty pageants in July. But they were unsuccessful and the pageant show went on.

Outlawing child beauty pageants in the United States is also not a serious option. As legal scholars, like Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, and historians, like Holly Brewer, have detailed, American families have long been free to pursue any activities in their own home that they deem suitable for their own children. The state is not likely to interfere with day-to-day parenting decisions, unless the child is placed in an environment that is clearly unsafe and abusive. The bar is set pretty high — physical abuse, neglect, and abandonment. While some may feel that spray-tanning a child, for example, is a form of abuse, it is not like hitting or binding a child. In general the government takes a hands-off approach to children’s activities. Even children’s boxing, deemed physically unsafe for thousands of young children by the American Association of Pediatrics earlier this month because of the risk of chronic and acute brain injuries, is legal in the United States.

CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING!

Update: Here’s the link to book – available for download to PC’s, Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and other devices. $2- cheap!

Thanks to all my friends who helped me with the Rulz manuscript. I’ve spent sometime this week pulling it together and prepping it for upload into Smashwords, the self-publishing website. Still working on the text. Once I’m done, you can download a single document that you can read on PC’s, iPads, smartphones, Nooks, Kindles, and just about anything else you got. The document will have all the Rulz plus additional materials for post-docs and tenure track profs. There’s also a lot of new rulz on topics like the MA thesis and the dissertation prospectus. Here’s the complete table of contents:

Table of Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Do Not Go to Graduate School

Chapter 2: Picking a Graduate Program

Chapter 3: Don’t Pay for Grad School

Chapter 4: Get the Rules!

Chapter 5: Learn the Unspoken Rules

Chapter 6: Course Work

Chapter 7: Time Off: Summers and Leaves of Absence

Chapter 8: Develop Good Taste

Chapter 9: Passing the Tests

Chapter 10: The M.A. Thesis

Chapter 11: Make Some Friends

Chapter 12: Picking the Advisor and Finding a Mentor

Read the rest of this entry »

I just got an exam copy of Chris Hann and Keith Hart’s 2011 book Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique (Polity).  The book is a very nice, short introduction to key issues in that space.  So, if you are not familiar with key issues in economic anthropology (e.g., debates like substantivism-formalism or different traditions of economic anthropology: German, British, American, French), or just want a refresher, then the book is a fantastic place to start.

Recommended.

As a bonus, if you haven’t been there before, check out Keith Hart’s Open Anthropology Cooperative.

Econ Journal Watch has a symposium dedicated to the question of whether property is some sort of bundle of rights. They’ve got some prominent folks, like Richard Epstein, who defends the rights bundle position. Others, such as Eric Claeys, think it is conceptual mush. Interesting readings for folks interested in legal issues, political philosophy, and econ soc.

The most recent issue of the Journal of Institutional Economics is dedicated to the “evolution of institutions.”   Several interesting articles.  The piece that caught my eye outlines a “diagnostic tool for analyzing institutional dynamism.”  The article is written by Elinor Ostrom and Xavier Basurto, titled “Crafting analytical tools to study institutional change.”

So, the paper tries to, very practically, offer a framework of sorts for studying configurations of rules and systems.  Table 1, below, summarizes the defaults for their various “rule types” (boundaries, aggregation, information etc).  The authors, then, apply the framework to a typical “commons” problem: irrigation systems.

A pretty straightforward, interesting paper.  The paper of course has a normative, design flavor (in a refreshing way).  And, it also has a very set-theoretic feel (e.g., see Table 3) and indeed cites the work of Charles Ragin.  (Of course, Peer Fiss has lately been doing lots of work in this space, highlighting the potential of fuzzy sets type methods for comparative organizational analysis.)

Worth a read.

@bduckles links to a website that maps musical taste over time:

“In particular, when the ratio between number of listeners who tagged “I like” and “I don’t like” is calculated, it can be observed that almost all positively ranked songs carry some form of “universal” values, such as wisdom, compassion, love, peace, …

The visualization consists of a scatterplot, in which the size of the squares correspond to the number of users who tagged that song as a favorite. The Y-axis represents a general consensus that the songs are likeable, or not-likeable.”

The microbiological laboratory hazard of bearded men.

[Hat tip to Freek Vermeulen's twitter feed.]  Ken: are you looking for more orgtheory posts like this?

A little while ago, we discussed conservative fantasies about higher education. For example, conservatives often have this incorrect belief that colleges no longer teach the classics. In fact, the opposite is true. Most universities have courses on Western civilization, classic philosophy, and so forth. Many are quite popular.

Rather than debunk specific beliefs, I want conservatives to consider the following practical steps for improving colleges and universities. I think these recommendations are easy to follow and consistent with conservative beliefs:

1. Western Civilization courses: Rather than complain, you should enroll in these courses. If you have already graduated from college, encourage your college age friends to enroll. The more people who take ancient Greek philosophy or classics of Western political thought, the harder it is to eliminate them. The larger the enrollments, the more deans will approve hires in these fields.
2. Be pro-intellectual: There is nothing conservative about being anti-intellectual or anti-science. If conservative theory rests on judgment, knowledge, and tradition, we should respect people who spend a life time learning about our history and culture, even if we disagree with their political views.
3. Pursue an academic career: If you believe in ideas, give academia a chance. “These colors don’t run” applies to the world of ideas.
4. Support academic work: If you are financially comfortable, support academic work. Most colleges will accept donations earmarked for specific departments or programs. If there’s high quality work you believe in, I’m sure the university will be happy to take your money. On a small scale, buy popular books from authors you like who work in higher education.

Any of these actions is much more productive than gloating over the craziest panels at the latest MLA convention or supporting Horowitz style “conservative diversity” legislation. And if enough people do it, you might actually make a positive change.

If you are interested in this question, consider reading Great Minds in Management: The Process of Theory Development (Oxford University Press).  In this edited book volume, a set of top minds were asked to talk about the origins of the theories that are attributed to them.  So there is a chapter by Albert Bandura on Social Cognitive Theory, a chapter by Barry Staw on the escalation of commitment, a chapter by Jay Barney on the origins of the resource-based view, Karl Weick talks about sensemaking, Ed Freeman on stakeholder theory, Dick Scott on institutional theory, Oliver Williamson on transaction cost economics, Sid Winter talks about evolutionary economics, Jeff Pfeffer about resource-dependence, etc, etc.

Good stuff.

No matter what your theoretical cookie is – the chapters are interesting (though I haven’t carefully read all of them).  Some of the chapters are biographical, others talk about their own (often interdisciplinary) influences, some talk about the struggles of getting their work published (Barney’s RBV paper was rejected by top journals, he eventually accepted his own paper in a “lesser” journal — the article is now cited nearly 20,000 times), others offer “lessons” (Williamson: be disciplined, be interdisciplinary, have an active mind), etc.

Definitely worthwhile.

In the epilogue the volume editors Ken Smith and Mike Hitt offer their thoughts on the process of theory development (summarized in the figure below).

A little while back, Andrew Sullivan posted on some of the most important research one can imagine. Bronnie Ware, a palliative care provider, interviewed terminal patients. She asked people what they regret. The most common answers:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Very wise. A few comments: Ware notes that all men wanted to work less. People wonder why I keep a goofy schedule, teaching once a week all day. Simple answer: more time for baby! I can always write another grant or article, but once my baby grows up – poof!

Some commenters had problems with #5 – how could you not let yourself be happy? I think people build up emotions that prevent happiness. For example, when I was in graduate school, I often obsessed about work even when I was on vacation. But over the years, I learned to do what I want with whom I want and not to care about what people think. Not caring about what other people think is an important life skill. Just relax as much as you can and enjoy life.

All the grad skool rulz are being edited and collected into one text and supplemented with advice for tenure track faculty members. I’m trying to cover the basics of your time from grad skool applications to getting tenure. I’ll make the document available for $2 on Smashwords, the self-publishing website. That way, it can be downloaded into any text reading device – PC’s, Kindles, Nooks, and smartphones. It will be much more affordable and available than traditional print. Of course, the original columns will be available for free on orgtheory.

Now, my question for the orgheads – what kind of cover image would you want to see on the document? It has to be public access. I could also just go with a simple block of color. Any ideas?

As a good navel-gazing academic, I often find myself thinking about the research process: how do we discover or produce new knowledge? Naturally, I’m especially interested in how we do this in the world of org theory: Where do our questions come from? How do we experience the organizational world? How do the people and interactions our data represent speak to us? Basically, what is good research? And, while we’re at it, how can we do more of it?

About 15 years ago, with the help of the Sloan Foundation, some colleagues and I launched a project called Science and Technology in the Making (STIM) that was intended to use this new technology called the World Wide Web as a tool for research. Remember that at the time (some would say, to this day), the web was used primarily as a means for sharing what we already knew, not generating new knowledge. We tried to engage various communities to contribute their experiences so that we scholars could have access to heretofore unavailable accounts of things like the computer mouse, the New York City blackouts of 1965 and 1977, Boston’s “Big Dig” and the electric vehicle (my contribution).

I’ll spare you the sausage making (more here), but I would like to think that we were anticipating one of the most interesting recent developments in the natural sciences, the growth of so-called citizen science. Though scientists have always been citizens, citizen science refers to distributed, large-scale research projects that encourage and rely upon participation by multiple individuals. You may have heard, for instance, of Zooniverse, eBird, etc. Most of these projects ask participants to contribute their observations of natural phenomenon to online databases that could, in principle, be intepreted by anyone, but, in practice, are interpreted by professional scholars. Some, like galaxyzoo and phylo, ask participants to interpret and code visual images that require human judgment. The algorithms aren’t yet good enough to do it for us.

The knowledge production process in these projects is pretty straightforward. People participate freely. It’s educational. It probably builds support for science more broadly. I can imagine some ethical issues arising around intellectual ownership, allocation of credit, and status reinforcement, and I do not know if anyone has looked at the quality of the data (in absolute or relative terms), but on the whole, citizen science seems like a pretty positive development. Besides, Clay Shirky says we waste a trillion hours each year anyway so with more citizen science, maybe we will waste a little less on TV.

If more is better, are there examples of citizen science in the community of scholars that study organizations? I hope so. If not, can we think of projects or ideas that would lend themselves to collective effort? The fine folks at the Sloan Foundation have even sponsored the Citizen Science Alliance to help us get started. Comment or email to get the conversation going.

Lots of gems in this recent Q&A (to skip the intro, go directly to 7:04).

WTIU news in Indiana ran a feature on remembering 9/11, which touched on topics like transportation and security. The clip above features a number of Hoosiers, including myself, commenting on 9/11 and its consequences for daily life.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice review of recent work that maps scientific citation networks. The image above is a rough map of where everything is. The neat thing is that sociology, according to the data from J-Stor citations, is in the middle of things. I think Jim Moody has work showing the same thing. The articles also discusses new techniques and how they can be used to map out scientific specialties as they emerge from citation patterns\.

Last night Miss Angola, 25-year-old Leila Lopes, was crowned the 60^th Miss Universe—the first ever winner from Angola.  She beat out 89 other hopefuls in Sao Paulo, Brazil to take the crown.  The hosts declared this to be the “most coveted title in the world,” a statement I’m sure many would disagree with, even if some of the prizes seem nice.

While Miss Universe is the most-watched beauty pageant worldwide, at times it seemed like nothing more than an extended infomercial.  Between long features on the host city/country and massive product placement for sponsors (like OPI and Chi) there was very little actual pageant to watch.  Sure, we saw the women strut in their bikinis (where the commentators did mention several times that all the contestants were wearing the same Catalina suits and Chinese Laundry nude heels) and glide across the stage in their evening gowns. And of course we were treated to the Top 5 answering a final question live (always interesting in the Miss Universe Pageant with translators—this time those who spoke Ukrainian, Chinese [not sure whether Cantonese or Mandarin], and Portuguese).  But viewers also had to endure many endless dramatic pauses that would put Ryan Seacrest to shame during the announcements of finalists and winners.

While beauty pageants are rarely just about “beauty,” this year’s Miss Universe Pageant highlighted the business-side of beauty pageants.  It’s basically the only televised competition I know where the judges’ results are not completely honored. As was said during the broadcast at the announcement of the Top 16, “members of the Miss Universe Organization” also help select the finalists. Donald Trump, who bought the pageant in 1996, wants to make sure he and his people like the winner… But imagine if Mark Burnett openly had a hand in selecting the winner of Survivor.  Sure, television producers can manipulate shows through editing and selection of challenges for contestants, but they can’t actually cast a vote or change the rules to protect their favorites.

Then again, if you know anything about the history of the Miss Universe Pageant, this might not surprise you. Miss USA/Universe has always been the tawdrier, sexier, and more commercial cousin to Miss America. In 1951 when the newly-crowned Miss America Yolande Betbeze refused to be crowned in her swimsuit (the Miss America Pageant actually started out as a bathing beauty contest in 1921 and didn’t fully move toward “respectability” until after WWII), Catalina, pulled their sponsorship and started the Miss USA/Universe pageant system.  So from its inception, the Miss Universe Organization has been focused on business and bathing suits.  That it’s most popular says a lot about what our society values.

Although this year’s pageant should have had a different result, if pageant rumors were to be believed.  It had been suggested for months on pageant discussion boards that Miss China would take the crown. Not only is she a beautiful women and model, but Trump had allegedly hand-picked her, wanting to pursue more business interests in China. Could Miss China’s placement as the fourth-runner-up tell us something about The Donald’s next business venture? Unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

As a loyal pageant watcher, Miss Angola was certainly a worthy competitor and she is a beautiful winner—even if Trump doesn’t start building high-rises in Luanda.  But I’m still disappointed that the 89 contestants didn’t wear their “national costumes” during the parade of nations.  Here’s winner Miss Angola in hers:

But think how much more fun the night would have been if you had seen costume winner Miss Panama appear live in this!

My tacky national costume award goes to Miss Chile:

Who is your favorite?

Oh do we love rankings around here.  Poets & Writers recently came out with their 2012 ranking of MFA programs (here’s their methodology and eighteen measures).  The ranking has problems.  Creative writing faculty address some of these problems in an open letter.  Here’s the New York Observer story (the letter is at the end).  The open letter is also posted below the fold.

(Hat tip to Harriet.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Q: Why are east Asian Americans (Chinese/Koreans) are more willing to adopt Western names than central Asians (e.g., Indians)?

Don’t you dare fall back on “culture” unless you can really lay out the mechanism.

Well, it’s September 11, 2011, or 11-9-11 for our more logical friends overseas. I was waiting for one of our hosts to weigh in, but since the day is almost over here, let me offer a few observations.

My twins were two ten years ago and naturally remember nothing. Like many kids their age across the U.S., they were asked to interview family members about their memories of 9/11/01. Both kids did their bit, but later my son—after first apologizing and making sure that I wouldn’t think he was a terrorist—asked me if there was any video of what happened that day.

I had to stifle a gasp both because (I know) he has searched for things on YouTube that he should be embarrassed about, but apparently he could never bring himself to violate a perceived taboo around 9/11 and because aside from people living in New York, Washington and a few others, everyone in the world experienced 9/11 via media. It was the ultimate horror movie, unfolding before our very eyes that beautiful September morning. Of course there’s video, I told him.

We found some selections on CNN and started poking around. To watch the initial coverage of the tragedy is to relive the moment the first observers (along with most of the rest of us) first learned of the idea that people would do such a thing as commandeer an airplane and deliberately fly it into a building. Yes, the intelligence community had considered it, but the typical early observers literally couldn’t imagine such a thing. What was a plane doing there, they wondered? Did it look like it was suffering mechanical difficulties, one anchor asked an eyewitness? Were the engines on fire at the time of the accident? Even the impact of the second plane doesn’t immediately compute. Like Simons and Chabris’ experiment where a man in a gorilla suit walking through the middle of a group of people dribbling basketballs often goes unnoticed because we’ve been asked to count the basketball passes, the second impact is still so unexpected, so out of context, that the CNN anchor doesn’t realize what’s happened.

I was reminded of a quote from Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson that appears in Melani McAlister’s early meditation on 9/11 (subscription required):

All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives.

We all have our narratives of 9/11—where we were, whom we were with, how we coped (or didn’t)—but we also have our amnesias. We cannot remember what it felt like to have never known that planes could be flown into buildings to kill and terrorize. Our kids will never know that feeling, and that, it strikes me, is a great shame, part of the immeasurable cost of that day.

My second observation involves this video. It’s meant as a 9:00 minute “lowlight” reel of the days events and entitled “Look Back at How September 11 Unfolded.” My son and I started there, but soon noticed something strange. Spoiler alert. If you want to see for yourself, watch the first 90 seconds or so and see if you notice anything odd before reading on.

Did you notice? There’s a soundtrack. It’s not Wagner or Carmina Burana, but some poor sound editor at CNN had to select the music to which the South Tower of the World Trade Center would fall! Talk about a tough day at the office. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, didn’t I just say that we all experienced that day mediated and interpreted by our friends at CNN and elsewhere. Yes, but… Here I was reminded of Alan Megill’s thoughtful Historical Knowledge, Historical Error (Chicago, 2007) where he explores the difference between acts of history and acts of memory. History, according to Megill, challenges our understanding of what happened in the past, while acts of memory tend to reinforce what we already know (or think we know). BTW, I’m not suggesting that we embrace the 9/11 conspiracists, only that when we hear a soundtrack for the ultimate reality TV show, we recognize it as such.

Two brilliant IU grad students – Shiri Noy and Kathleen Oberlin* – have written a fun and helpful piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the topic of the Q&A session. In their own words:

Answering questions after a presentation provides an opportunity to demonstrate one’s knowledge, unscripted. Done well, an academic can make a name for herself and create a lasting impression on peers, colleagues, future students, and employers. But a presenter must think quickly on her feet and be both open to criticism and suggestions, yet firm and confident about the contribution to the field that her research offers. Fairly or not, the Q&A session is often what attendees talk about most, and presenters reflect on the most, after a conference session or meeting.

For example:

The Praisers. These benign audience members will compliment your research and often enjoy presenting focused elaborations on some aspect of your presentation. It’s best to gratefully acknowledge a Praiser’s input, and use his question (if indeed he even asks one) as a platform to further elaborate on your research.

Check it out.

* For IU locals, it’s Casey.

Project Gutenberg is amazing.  The founder, Michael S. Hart, died earlier this week.  Rather foresighted: the effort behind this massive, digital library was started in 1971 when Hart was a student at the University of Illinois.

I’m guessing most academics can’t walk past a bookstore without stopping in and buying a book.  Here’s a set of bookstores I like.

Suomen Akateeminen Kirjakauppa in Helsinki.  Nice selection of both Finnish and English books.  Nice place to work.   Free wi-fi, I spent a few mornings working from there this summer.

Libraire Philosophique J.Vrin in Paris.  Ran into this little bookstore last summer.  Bookstore dedicated to philosophy.  Lots of English selections.  And – used books!

King’s English Bookstore in Salt Lake City.  Independent bookstore in the best sense.

My “local” Borders.  Sadly gone.  (Not before I was able to get a stack of books at a very steep discount.  Our university bookstore thankfully is excellent, and there’s always Barnes & Noble.)

Blackwell Bookstore in Oxford.  Lots of books.

Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, the Left Bank.  This bookstore is a religious experience. Stacks of books everywhere.  Used, new.  Beds and shrines upstairs.

Here are some other bookstores worth checking out.

As long time readers know, I believe that most college rankings are garbage because they use dubious measures of performance and quality. Also, the leading magazines tend to cherry pick data so that a handful of schools (H/Y/P and Stanford) are always on top. For example, there’s an old Slate article on how Cal Tech, perhaps the most elite science college in the world, routinely gets shafted. Then we get to the issue of bad data. College administrators are often sloppy or dishonest when submitting data for these rankings.

Bad data, favoritism, and a lack of logic. How could it get any worse? You can depend on Newsweek and the Daily Beast to rise to the occasion. They’ve now produced a ranking of the least rigorous colleges. In their own words:

To pick out the least challenging of the nation’s top colleges, we considered schools that admit students with an average Critical Reading/Math SAT score of at least 1250. We then took into account student opinion, quality and quantity of professors (which directly impacts challenge and workload), and drop-out rate. The total score for each school consisted of several components: College Prowler‘s “Most Manageable Workload” score (40%), student-to-faculty ratio (25%; from the National Center for Education Statistics), and an analysis of student-posted evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com (25%; generated by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, an education think tank). Additionally, we plotted each school’s average SAT score for admitted students against its freshman retention rate (percent of first-years who return the following fall; from NCES) to estimate the degree to which each college’s actual retention rate differed from what the correlation would predict. We took the results as a measure of relative ease or difficulty, and factored this in as 10% of the overall score.

You read that right: RateMyProf scores – people voluntarily griping or praising profs. I’d flunk anyone who used that data in an intro research seminar. Some of the data is puzzling. The ratio of freshman SAT’s and retention? Very ambiguous. Retention may be due to many things aside from rigor in the class, such as financial aid or location of the school. Also, schools may teach hard material but allow people to hide or surmount the problems. For example, MIT has a fairly high retention rate because the freshman year is either pass (C or higher) or “no record” (D or F).

The results of the “least rigorous” study? Many top notch engineering schools, which most observers recognize as being very demanding, make the list of the 25 least rigorous schools, such as Rensselear Polytechnic, Illinois-Urbana, and UC Berkeley.* Other schools, which are not known as being easy grades, such as Wisconsin-Madison and Hopkins make the list. This isn’t fun, lighthearted journalism. It’s an embarrassment.

* Disclaimer: I’m a Berkeley graduate. I studied the extremely easy topics of math and engineering. And boy, was it easy!

Here’s an interesting, upcoming conference that I only recently found out about: “Philosophical Foundations of Economics and The Good Economy: Individual Values, Human Pursuits, Self-Realization and Becoming.”  That’s a long title.

The conference is hosted by the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University, set for September 23-24.  No registration is required.  Here’s the program (pdf).   Some of the sessions look interesting.  I’m going to try to attend.  With any luck, additional rain delays may even give me a chance to catch a US Open match.  (If any orgtheorists in New York perchance want to meet up, I’d love it.  Send me a note.)

Thanks Brayden and hello OrgTheory.net… My first crack at guest blogging… I was going to start out with a slightly longer intro but as Fabio mentioned the Nissan Leaf, I’ll start there and try to bring it back to OrgTheory broadly defined, of course.

My writings on the early (1897-1925) history of the electric vehicle (article 1, article 2 and book versions, JSTOR or MUSE subscriptions required, and yes, there were electric vehicles way back then, perhaps even in your home town!) left me struggling with questions that come out in Fabio’s post and its comments.

First: the electric car is always 10 years away, plus or minus 5 years. The book contains lots of evidence of experts predicting the imminent arrival of the electric car in the late 1890s, the 1900s, the 1910s and the 1920s. Since then, working with UMD doctoral student Byungchae Jin, we’ve found similar statements from the 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, and, of course, the 2000s. I will not tar Fabio with the label of “electric vehicle expert”, but none other than Nobel Laureate and current Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the following in Cancun last year at a UN climate conference (quote and context from Reuters):

Cars that run on batteries will begin to be competitive with ones that burn petroleum fuels in about five years, the U.S. energy secretary said at the annual U.N. climate talks. ‘It’s not like it’s 10 years off,’ Chu said at a press conference on U.S. clean energy efforts on the sidelines of the climate talks. ‘It’s about five years and it could be sooner. Meanwhile the batteries we do have today are soon going to get better by a factor of two.’

So, the electric car is and always has been the car of tomorrow, but never the car of today. Why? That’s seems like an interesting question from the perspective of someone who’s curious about the interaction of technology, organization, industrial evolution, policy and consumer behavior. Fabio and the comments touch on many of these factors. Why have so many very smart people been so consistently wrong for so long?

One factor that inevitably comes up is the battery. What does it mean to say that we need better batteries or, as Secretary Chu says, that the better battery is about five years away? University of Arizona cultural archeologist Michael Schiffer has called this unquestioned belief in the transformative role of the battery of the future the “better battery bugaboo.” The BBB is the idea that the fate of the electric vehicle has been, is and always will be inextricably linked to (always, it seems) lagging developments in the science of electricity storage. But what about the social construction of technology? Isn’t it one of our hardest won intellectual battles that technology is what we as a society make it to be? How can it be that this recalcitrant thing, this stubborn artifact, has been standing in our way for so long? What does this say about our theories of technology? Is everything but the battery socially constructed?

I’ll say a little more about this in the days ahead, and I’ll also say a bit about whether I believe, as Fabio said, that it’s different this time, but for the moment, I’m curious what OT.net readers think: Is our historic inability to (re-)construct the storage battery a challenge to our understanding of the plasticity of technology?

Did you watch the Little League World Series last month? It’s possible you missed it in the wake of other news stories, like Hurricane Irene.  But this year’s winners (a team from Huntingdon Beach, California) were also overshadowed by coverage of their own game, as the state of competitive youth baseball and whether or not these “unpaid adolescents” were being exploited became the media’s focus.

Sportswriter Dan Wetzel made his case for compensating Little Leaguers in “Pay the Little League World Series Players.”  Wetzel writes: “Not every Little Leaguer, just the ones who play on television, where their innocence is packaged into a commodity. And, no, they shouldn’t make millions or even hundreds of thousands.  They should get something, maybe several hundred per television appearance. If it made people more comfortable that the money went to a college savings fund or maybe into a trust that becomes available when they’re 18 or 21, so be it.”

Any self-respecting economic sociologist, or sociologist of childhood, will immediately think of Viviana Zelizer’s classic Pricing the Priceless Child after reading this quote.  And you will also know that childhood innocence and compensation do not always mix so well.

I’ve written about how we should think of children’s participation in afterschool activities as a form of children’s work.  Afterschool activities can qualify as “work” both because of prizes won and because of the acquisition of cultural capital that will have a pay-off in the longer run.  I’ve also written about child performers, particularly children on reality television shows, and how they are compensated.  Child performers have always occupied a complicated space in child labor debates, partly because their “work” is often constructed as being “educational.” But I’m not aware of any serious scholarship (sociological, economic, or legal) on compensation of child athletes.

In my opinion compensating child athletes may sound logical on some level, but it is a complicated issue that poses a few problems that are likely insurmountable in today’s commodified world.  The most obvious practical complication has to do with NCAA regulations. If we compensate kids they almost certainly lose their NCAA eligibility.  Of course many of these kids won’t go on to play NCAA baseball, but they may play another NCAA sport.  Compensating them without proper protections in place jeopardizes those future opportunities. (Paying NCAA athletes is another issue that has been batted around for some time, though it also has been talked about a lot more in the past few months).

Second, and even more complicated, is that if we compensate kids in a way consistent with them being classified as workers or performers (and limiting compensation to those who appear on television makes it more likely they would be classified as performers) that would also limit the number of hours they could “work” and the conditions under which they could labor.  This could impact practice times, length of games, and other parts of the sporting experience.

However, I do believe that kids should be compensated and rewarded for their hard work—particularly when it helps adults benefit financially. One model to look at would be the National Spelling Bee (which, incidentally, is now not only broadcast on ESPN, but also live on ABC in the final rounds).  Finalists receive prizes, like an encyclopedia, along with scholarships, bonds, and cash awards.  Other in-kind gifts like computers and trips are also possible (for example the National Geography Bee winner wins a trip to the Galapagos Islands). Perhaps elite child athletes could receive similar types of awards—like specialized training—that could protect them from NCAA violations.

In the meantime they have to settle for hometown parades and a DVD of their television appearances.  What do you think is fair?

I test drove a Nissan Leaf this weekend. It’s a nice little car. It’s also the future of cars in America because the Leaf is an all electric car. For years, people have been promising that electric cars would be here. But now it’s happened. The technical issue was making a battery that was cheap, light weight enough, and didn’t take forever to charge. The problem is now solved.  Also, there is now an incentive to create charging stations. Major firms, like Walgreen’s and Ikea, have ordered tons of chargers. While you are shopping, you can charge the car for free.

Now, I want to discuss the long term consequences of electric cars for the auto industry. Currently, there’s an iron triangle that defines the auto world: manufacturers and the people who make specific parts; the oil industry; and dealers. The electric car will revolutionize how this triangle works.

The oil companies will take a big hit. Electricity is extremely cheap. Charging a car costs about 10% of the price of gas. It’s so cheap that, as I noted above, that merchants will give you electricity for free if you promise to shop at their store.

The real change, though, is in the nature of auto sales and the dealerships. Electric cars are made very differently than gas powered cars, which will upend the system of dealerships. Right now, dealers and auto manufacturers make their money off of maintenance. The price of a new car is subsidized pay all the repairs done by dealers.

Electric cars will change the system because electric cars have very few parts. The Nissan Leaf is essentially a big stack of batteries, which spin the axles. There are no belts, no injectors, no spark plugs, no gaskets, no oil. It’s like a kid’s toy car. That means there is almost no later maintenance. Thus, you can charge more at purchase (which the auto firm soaks up) because you will pay a lot less on gas and parts. The result? Dealerships will massively shrink.

This new system will take about 10 years to fully take hold. Once a few major cities have a bunch of charging ports, the model will be viable. Gas powered cars will be old cars or cars reserved for long distance trips where you are time sensitive and need to gas up quickly. Bottom line: The engineers have solved the battery problem and now the rest of the industry is set to change.