Theory 1: Goal Setting

Goal setting is the process of establishing goals. It sometimes involves subordinate and superior working together to establish goals for a set period of time. There are several attributes of the cognitive process of goal setting:

• Goal specificity: Jan tells Michael to award a gift that costs up to $1,000 to the person who makes the most sales. However, a specific sales target isn’t set up which makes it difficult for employees to compete against one another. If the goal were more specific, they’d have more of a goal to aim for.

• Goal difficulty: In the case of The Office, the difficulty of achieving highest sales varies according to the motivation levels of other employees.

• Goal Commitment: degree of commitment to a target depends on the rewards an employee would receive whether its recognition, monetary or in the form of benefits. However seeing as Michael ends up using the award money for a coffee machine for an attractive lady, employees would soon lose the motivation to do well.

• Goal Intensity: The degree of competition in the office isn’t very high which wouldn’t make the process of achieving the goal very intense.

Continue reading "Organizational Behavior in "The Office: S01E06"" »

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• Certain Degrees Now Cost More at Public Universities | Jonathan D. Glater | New York Times

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• Profits Matter | Lawrence Kudlow | RealClearPolitics

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• Why Socialized Medicine Doesn't Work | Dr. David Gratzer | Investor's Business Daily

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• Al Sharpton and Wal-Mart's Lee Scott allies for immigration bill | International Herald Tribune
• Wal-Mart warns two Chinese suppliers over labour practices | Forbes.com
• New OFCCP Regs Have Employers on Guard for Discrimination | workforce.com
• Board expected strong reaction to Dubai bid | Liam Dann | NZ Herald

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• Dubai bid for Auckland Airport | The Dominion Post

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• Transsexual trucker is 'hounded out' for wearing make-up | Liz Hull | the Daily Mail

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• The 700 MhZ Club | Wretchard the Cat | The Belmont Club

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According to some sources, the Burj Dubai is now the world tallest building:

Burj Dubai is now officially the tallest, man-made structure in the world. The tower scaled 510 metres to beat the Taipei Towers that stands at 507.3 metres. Official sources engaged in the construction of the world's tallest tower told The Gulf Today that they have reached the goal in terms of the building's height. Although the height of the skyscraper has been kept under wraps, it is believed Burj Dubai will end up somewhere between 705 and 950 metres. When completed, it will have between 154 to 180 floors. Construction for what is set to be Dubai's landmark structure began on Feb 1, 2005 and is set to be completed in June 2009. Being constructed by Samsung Corporation, the tower is designed by Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings and Merril. The tower is the centrepiece of the Dh73 billion Downtown Burj Dubai Project of Emaar.

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• Dubai, The world’s fastest growing City | Ramesh Natarajan | Views and Thoughts of a Global Indian
• Make The Clothes, Outsource The Retailing | Chana R. Schoenberger | Forbes.com
• Sainsbury Shopping | Lionel Laurent | Forbes.com
• Traders Tune Out RadioShack | Joshua Lipton | Forbes.com
• The Effect of Board Structure on Firm Value in an Emerging Market: Evidence from Korea | Bernard Black & Woochan Kim | SSRN
• Miami Condo Glut Pushes Florida's Economy to the Brink of Recession | Bob Ivry | Bloomberg

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Here's how Answers.com defines a popular idiom about fish, fowl, and flesh:

Also, neither fish nor flesh; neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. Not one or the other, not something fitting any category under discussion. For example, They felt he was neither fish nor fowl--not qualified to lead the department, yet not appropriate to work as a staff member either. This expression appeared in slightly different form in John Heywood's 1546 proverb collection ("Neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring") and is thought to allude to food for monks ( fish, because they abstained from meat), for the people (flesh, or meat), and for the poor (red herring, a very cheap fish).

Today the economic blog of the Middle East Media Research Institute has a fascinating and utterly tragic post about fish and flesh in today's Baghdad. It is entitled "Consumption of Fish in Iraq and its Drawbacks"

Continue reading "Neither Fish Nor Flesh" »

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The need to reduce US dependence on "foreign oil" is a popular refrain these days. Politicians like Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R) here makes the typical and I think inarguable case:

I was pleased that President Bush used his State of the Union address to point out that our current addiction to foreign oil is a matter of national security. I could not agree more. It is past time that we politicians drop the rhetoric and take decisive action. The fact that 60 percent of the oil we consume is imported represents a vast transfer of wealth away from the pocketbooks of Americans. Worse, more than 30 percent of our imported oil comes from countries that have been — or may soon be — hostile to the interests of the United States. ... While there is no simple solution to the problem, it is not rocket science either. There are three areas of critical importance where I believe great progress can be made. ... First, we must increase domestic production of oil and natural gas by allowing exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on Outer Continental Shelf lands where huge reserves exist. ... Second, we should take steps now to encourage the conservation and efficient use of oil, gas and other energy sources. ... Finally, as we transfer our transportation sector away from fossil fuels, we must support research and development of advanced technologies such as nuclear energy, clean coal and hydrogen power that will provide our long-term answers.

In the Middle East, particularly the oil-rich gulf sheikdoms, there is an equal and opposite recognition of the perils of oil sales to foreigners:

Continue reading "Do Buy or not Dubai" »

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• Whole Foods CEO sorry for anonymous Web posts | Nichola Groom | Reuters
• Where Michael Moore is Wrong | John Stossel | RealClearPolitics

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• Private-Equity Billionaires and Lower Taxes | Evan Thomas & Daniel Gross | Newsweek
• Cigarmakers in a panic | James Thorner | St. Petersburg Times
• Death sentence over China slave scandal | AFP
• Wheelchairs Funding International Terrorists | Bruce Kessler | Democracy Project: Democracy Project
• Intellectual Property and Social Justice | Anupam Chander, Madhavi Sunder | SSRN

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• Prince is determined to revolutionise the music industry | Neil Armstrong | The Daily Mail
• Ice-cream makers frozen out as corn price rises | Suzy Jagger & Carl Mortished | Times Online
• Back in the groove: young music fans ditch downloads and spark vinyl revival | Katie Allen | The Guardian
• Black's victims line up for compensation | Andrew Clark | The Guardian
• Information Technology and Information Worker Productivity: Task Level Evidence | Sinan Aral, Erik Brynjolfsson, Marshall Van Alstyne | SSRN
• Global Economy Booms as Taxes Fall | James Pethokoukis | US News & World Report
• Political Liquor's Economic Hangover Just Beginning | Henry Miller | TCS Daily
• The New Myths About Inequality | Arnold Kling | TCS Daily

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Last week was not a good one for Conrad Black:

Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, (born 25 August 1944, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is formerly prominent biographer, financier, and newspaper magnate who was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice on 13 July, 2007.

That was a Friday the 13th. To make matters worse his enemies and victims are picking at his corporate corpse, determined to pick it clean:

Victims of Conrad Black's crimes are hoping to seize any remnants of the disgraced press baron's fortune through a blizzard of civil lawsuits seeking compensation for mismanagement and embezzlement.

As Black prepares for a bail hearing on Thursday, at which the US government will seek to have him sent directly to prison, lawyers say his multiple fraud convictions provide an open goal for a crowd of enemies demanding recompense.

The rump of Black's Hollinger International empire, renamed Sun-Times Media, said this weekend that it would forge ahead with a lawsuit seeking $542m (£266m) in damages from Black, his wife, Barbara Amiel, and former colleagues including Dan Colson, who used to manage the Daily Telegraph. Gordon Paris, the Sun-Times director who led an initial investigation into Black's profiteering, said the criminal conviction was a "step towards restitution and justice" for investors.

There is a story about Black recounted by one of his close former aides that I heard about a year ago and which I now understand in a new light:

Having worked for Lord Black on two continents on two of his most adored national newspapers, I have to say that I found him to be well mannered, sympathetic, mischievous, and most definitely on my side. He gleefully joined us in the game of setting our editorial agendas and, in general, stood by us through the ensuing maelstrom. One knew where one stood with Conrad because his publications were locked in an ideological unity of purpose. He simply could not tolerate the notion of a newspaper that sits around reflecting on events. He expected his publications to change things - not by confirming prejudices, but by winning people to a fresh viewpoint.

The National Post launched with a pro-America, pro-tax cut agenda It championed the "unite-the-right" movement, (aimed at preventing votes from being split between Canada's two right-wing parties), which recently brought about the defeat of a discredited, corrupt and tired federal Liberal government. It started investigations into the corrupt misuse of taxpayers' money and, most significantly, into the business conduct of the then Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chrtien. This latter line of inquiry, handled by me personally at news desk level, was to have significant repercussions for Conrad. One night, the Prime Minister finally blew, and telephoned Conrad in Europe, reaching him, I am told, in the early hours. Lord Black telephoned my editor, Ken Whyte, soon afterwards to tell him that Chrtien would be writing a long letter to the paper.

The story about Chrtien itself was complicated and, I suspect, held little interest for the proprietor, but he had been left in no doubt how strongly the Prime Minister felt about it. Our instructions from Lord Black were simple: "Carry on, but make sure you get it right."

From "carry on" to carrion.

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• The State Can Take Your Dreams, Too | Debra Saunders | RealClearPolitics
• Michael Moore and the 'World of We' | Rich Lowry | RealClearPolitics

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The Office, Season 1, Episode 3: Health Care

Theory 1: Organizational Reward Systems

The main objectives of reward programs are to keep employees coming to work and to motivate employees to achieve high levels of performance. When Michael Scott is forced by upper management to cut employee benefits, he immediately shirks the responsibility knowing that no matter how small the cut, employees will be disgruntled.

Determinants of whether or not individuals are satisfied with their rewards:

• It’s a function of how much is received and how much the individual feels should be received. The employees are obviously dissatisfied because they feel they deserver more health care benefits than they currently receive, yet even that is being cut.

• Comparisons with what happens to others. Some people start making up diseases probably believing that if some are getting medical pay for what they have, then everyone should be receiving the same level of compensation regardless of whether or not they have an illness.

• How satisfied employees are with intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. There’s little opportunity of extrinsic reward satisfaction seeing as there isn’t much opportunity for promotions in position or pay within the office. As for intrinsic rewards, most employees are unhappy with their jobs and keep them because of their need for a set salary.

• People differ in the rewards they desire and the relative importance different rewards have for them. Older employees such as Stan take the health care quiz much more seriously because they really need the financial help, while Pam and Jim take it as a joke because it isn’t an immediate concern for them.

• Some extrinsic rewards are satisfying because they lead to other rewards. Employees in the office don’t receive either, making it very hard for them to be satisfied with their jobs.

Continue reading "Organizational Behavior in "The Office: S01E03"" »

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• Barbados’ New Travel Industry Competition: Dubai | Barbados Free Press
• Sex and Dubai and censorship | Aqoul
• America's Blindspot on Dubai | Steve Clemons | The Washington Note
• Dubai's rival bid may scupper Nasdaq merger | Yvette Essen & James Quinn | Telegraph

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Theory 1: Socializing A Culturally Diverse Workforce

The Office has a largely diverse group of employees that differ culturally and physically, which constitutes the spectrum of human differences.

Diversity is based on age, ethnicity, gender, physical attributes, race, and sexual/affectional orientation. Because of the various differences that exist between people, a socialization process must be undertaken in the workplace to ensure that the leader is familiar with the various ethnicities and cultures that exist around them.

An attempt to socialize Dunder Mifflen can be seen in The Office as management brings in an organization to teach an insensitive Michael Scott about diversity.

Diversity training:

Process vs. content: Diversity training focuses on the process that’s undertaken rather than the content. In The Office, Michael brings together his employees in order to discuss why some acts may be seen as offensive while others are not.

Emotional vs. conceptual training: The informal, unstructured dialogue that’s encouraged through the use of process training techniques encourages people to learn about how to deal with others with respect to their feelings.

Continue reading "Organizational Behavior in "The Office: S01E02"" »

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Theory 1: Leadership Fundamentals

Leadership occurs “when one group member modifies the motivation or competencies of others in the group (p.313).” In The Office, Michael Scott believes that he is loved by his employees for being a great mentor and leader, which motivates them to work for him. However, it quickly becomes obvious that the employees are still at Dunder Mifflin more out of a need for steady jobs rather than out of love for Michael. Figure 11.1 provides a framework for studying leadership

Trait Theories of Leadership show that there are some traits that are often associated with leadership effectiveness - many of these traits appear to be missing in Michael. For example in terms of personality, he lacks emotional maturity, integrity, and stress tolerance. He at times has excessive, undeserved self-confidence, as well as extreme energy levels. In terms of motivation, his strong need to have people like him holds him back at times, and the fact that he doesn’t have a strong need for professional achievement is a drawback (He says that he’s a friend first and a boss second). Finally, he lacks the actual abilities that would make him a good leader; he doesn’t seem to have strong cognitive skills or interpersonal skills.

Behaviors of Effective Leaders

An employee-centered leader focuses on satisfying the basic needs of his employees and taking care of their personal advancement and growth. Michael constantly stresses the importance of his employees’ happiness and comfort in the workplace. He often fails however to keep them comfortable by making awkward and inappropriate jokes

A job-centered leader uses close supervision to ensure that jobs are done. Leaders usually rely on coercion, reward, and legitimate power to influence behavior, which makes it difficult for Michael seeing as he usually doesn’t try to enforce his leadership.

Continue reading "Organizational Behavior in "The Office: S01E01"" »

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JTA reports on passage of the Foreign Investment and National Security Act, aka, the "Dubai Ports Bill."

A bill passed by Congress that creates greater oversight of foreign investment in the United States calls for scrutiny of companies cooperating with the Arab boycott. The Foreign Investment and National Security Act is also known as the "Dubai ports bill" because it was inspired in part by the controversy in 2006 over the Bush administration's decision to sell control of some U.S. ports to a company based in the United Arab Emirates.

Much of the controversy concerned fears about the possibility of infiltration into ports management by Al-Qaeda or other groups, but the UAE's nominal adherence to the Arab League boycott of Israel also sparked anger.

The bill, initiated by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), mandates the secretaries of state, treasury and commerce to report on U.S. investments by "foreign governments, entities controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government, or persons of foreign countries which comply with any boycott of Israel" and "foreign governments, entities controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government, or persons of foreign countries which do not ban organizations designated by the secretary of state as foreign terrorist organizations."

The bill's final reading passed the U.S. House of Representatives this week and it now goes to President Bush for signing.

Commentary

I think the Arab boycott of Israel is counter-productive, wrong-headed, and bad for the economy of the Middle East as a whole, let alone the Palestinian people who would surely benefit more from increased foreign direct investment than from increased foreign aid. That having been said, what little I know of this bill leads me to conclude it is also counter-productive, wrong-headed and bad for both the economy of the Middle East, let alone that of the US. My prediction is that President Bush will veto it, assuming it ever even makes it through the Senate in anything resembling it's present form- something that I think is highly unlikely.

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• Editorial Introduction | The MEMRI Economic Blog | The Middle East Media Research Institute
• Openness and Industrial Response in a Wal-Mart World: A Case Study of Mexican Soaps, Detergents and Surfactant Producers | Wolfgang Keller, Beata Javorcik, James Tybout | Social Science Research Network
• Which Came First, IT or Productivity? | Sinan Aral, Erik Brynjolfsson, D.J. Wu | Social Science Research Network

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What accounts for the growth of the Sunbelt in the last few decades? According to Harvard professors' Edward Glaeser and Kristina Tobio new paper entitled "The Rise of the Sunbelt", the answer is not the Sun.

In the last 50 years, population and incomes have increased steadily throughout much of the Sunbelt. This paper assesses the relative contributions of rising productivity, rising demand for Southern amenities and increases in housing supply to the growth of warm areas, using data on income, housing price and population growth. Before 1980, economic productivity increased significantly in warmer areas and drove the population growth in those places. Since 1980, productivity growth has been more modest, but housing supply growth has been enormous. We infer that new construction in warm regions represents a growth in supply, rather than demand, from the fact that prices are generally falling relative to the rest of the country. The relatively slow pace of housing price growth in the Sunbelt, relative to the rest of the country and relative to income growth, also implies that there has been no increase in the willingness to pay for sun-related amenities. As such, it seems that the growth of the Sunbelt has little to do with the sun.

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• China executes the former head of its food and drug agency | Joseph Khan | International Herald Tribune

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• More seniors keep working after retirement | Robert Rodriguez | The Fresno Bee
• Does Economic Crisis Spur Organizational Change? | R. Alvarez, J. Benavente, G. Crespi | Social Science Research Network

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• Train the talented separately | Hanan Esmail | Gulfnews

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• The Greening of Coprorate America | Margaret Kriz | National Journal
• The Google Blogger Vs. Michael Moore's 'Sicko' | Andy Greenberg | Forbes.com

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For years now, ever since the fall of the Shah, chants of "Death to America" have become a staple of Iranian political rallies. In "Mullah's Gone Wild" John Mauldin explains how the Iranian government is committing "economic suicide" by ignoring the kinds of management principles of which the Great Satan is the world's leading exponent. Quoting a report by Roger Stern of New York University:

Despite mismanagement, the Islamic Republic's real oil revenues are nearly their highest ever as rising price compensates for stagnant energy production and declining oil exports. Despite high price, however, population growth has resulted in a 44% decline of real oil revenue per capita since the 1980 price peak. Moreover, virtually all revenue growth has been applied to pet projects, loss-making industries, etc.

If price were to decline, political power sustained by the quadrupling of government spending since 1999 may not be sustainable. Yet we found no evidence that Iran plans fiscal retrenchment or any scheme to sustain oil investment.

"Rather, the government promises 'to put oil revenues on every table,' as if monopoly rents were not already the entree. Backing this promise is a welfare state built on the Soviet model widely understood as a formula for long-run economic suicide.

This includes the five-year plans, misallocation of resources, loss-making state enterprises, subsidized consumption, corruption and oil export dependence that doomed the Soviet experiment. Therefore, the regime's ability to contend with the export decline we project seems limited."

Commentary

The Iranians are within their right to say anything they want about America. They can and should feel free to call it Great Satan and to wish death upon it at every available opportunity. They are also within their rights to manage their prodigious natural resources in whatever way that seems best. That having been said, the Iranians may want to consider giving the Devil his due. One of the reasons the Great Satan is doing so great, at least economically, is because his minions follow with near religious passion the law of Supply and Demand. They also know that allocating resources with an eye toward maximizing profits and shareholder wealth is a better organizing principle than the industry-as-personal-slush-fund approach. And I have a feeling that when called to account for their apparent mishandling of the country's major source of foreign earnings, laying blame and saying "the devil made do it" isn't going to suffice.

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• What Bono doesn't say about Africa | William Easterly | Los Angeles Times
• Chavez vs. Iran's Working Man | Amit Taheri | New York Post
• Iranian banks feel the heat | Con Coughlin | Telegraph

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