Category: Institutional Velocity
-
Authenticity and change in the coming commercial flux (Podcast)
Authenticity remains an appealing notion in that it suggests the presence of the good and true. It implies a centredness around a core self image. Leadership has tended at times to offer these characteristics as attractive to followers. Alignment to an authentic figure is reassuring in a modern non-traditional landscape. But for modern people, those…
-
Shocking Britain: UK’s EU exit offers insights into power and change (Podcast)
After a long and messy partnership the UK’s exit from the EU represents a complex set of desires to renegotiate the Social Contract. Some of these might be to restore ‘charismatic power’ to a country used to ‘throwing its weight around in the world’. From Orwell’s common man to Debussy’s challenges to modern realities there…
-
Research Under Capitalism Can’t Be Truthful
“WHAT is actually morally reprehensible is, namely, the resting upon one’s possessions and the enjoyment of wealth.” In a nutshell Max Weber scribes the kernel of good capitalism. For Calvin wealth accumulation is fine, good, if not Godly, but sitting back to count it is an abomination. And our brand of capitalism was fine tuned…
-
Comfortable niches and ‘toothless poodles’
‘Toothless poodle’ is a rather harsh phrase. But ‘poodling’ is frequent mockery for those bodies set up to protect us from wanton hacks or country leaders currying-favour with allies. Glistening in the sun what do our cherished structures serve? Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak hit the nail incredibly hard last year. She wrote a fizzing critique which keeps…
-
Waterstones put in the grip of the small
This is a cute little snippet in today’s rag. “When I interviewed Daunt in 2006 he told me that he was wary of what he called “the Waterstone’s brick wall” – when a company reaches the size at which systems and processes overtake passion and instinct. This, he said, is why he has deliberately kept…
