You may have seen the signs around campus announcing First Amendment Rights training at UNI. I am a staunch believer in the First Amendment. The amendment is a key freedom setting America apart from totalitarian, authoritarian, and even other democratic governments. I encourage you to complete the training; it doesn’t take long, and you’ll learn some interesting aspects of the First Amendment.
On November 17, 2021, prior to the US House of Representative’s vote to censure Rep. Paul Gosar, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, from Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, delivered a fiery speech on the House floor, part of which attacked a fellow Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, from Minnesota. US Representative Lauren Boebert, from Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, was elected to her post in 2020. Boebert has quickly gained a reputation for “ugly and unsavory” actions, and using politics to promote her personal brand.
“Ideas matter.” As I have noted in previous blog posts, this was a mantra chanted by my dissertation advisor, Jon Shepard, during my Ph.D. program at Virginia Tech. Jon, trained as a sociologist, and by then, Chair of the Management Department in the business school, was referring to the vital importance of our thinking on the ways we structure our organizations, institutions, and societies. He was conveying that the ways we live, the rules we observe, the social structures we create, are all derived from someone’s ideas—they are NOT preordained or natural law.
Decades ago, my sister and her friend were sharing gossip about their junior high classmates. My Mom overheard them and admonished them: “Don’t gossip.” The lesson still resounds, as the friend has recollected to me recently.
Internet shopping precludes trying things on before purchasing. Free shipping has become the industry norm. As with any resource, “free” shipping leads to wasteful behavior. Customers order two or three sizes of a particular style, since they don’t pay directly for shipping. Retailers hope that maintaining customer goodwill will be beneficial.
Periodically, my wife will give me homework assignments. Not the “honey do” jobs around the house that most partners get—she knows I create more problems than I ever fix—but reading or writing chores, just like I give my students. Her most recent dictate was to read a 30-year-old article from the Harvard Business Review, “What’s the Matter with Business Ethics?” by Andrew Stark. Because business ethics is my home field, I decided to comply. My study of business ethics began in the mid-1990s, not long after the article was originally published, so it also served as a…
Federal judges rule on cases that can affect the profitability of particular companies and even whole industries. Imagine a judge handling a case with a large retailer. What would you think if this judge owned shares of stock in this large retailer and even bought or sold shares during the trial? You would be shocked and suspicious.
Recently, I have been reading about race relations in the USA. Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee approach the topic from different angles, but both point out the fact that African Americans have suffered, in large part, as a result of our economic system. History, indeed, provides an egregious example of how US society has treated certain groups of people; but it is still seen in the putative mistreatment of workers in today’s economy, through the concepts of Striketober and The Great Resignation.
I have long wondered if businesses could somehow promote epiphanies among their employees—those sudden, seemingly unbidden flashes of insight that allow us see an issue from a different perspective or to solve a previously recalcitrant problem. That may seem like an unlikely preoccupation for a college professor, who is thought to gain knowledge through accretion—hard work, study, and persistence. Although we all hope for those “light bulb” moments, when we finally “get it” (and they do occur, albeit much less often than any of us would desire). Most of us experience…
