BUSINESS AND FINANCE
Resonant Decisions
From Harvard Business School comes news of the growing use of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) devices for studying decision making. It may herald a year when we hear a number of striking conclusions based on studies involving a small number of brain scans. Jim Heskett asks what are the more general implications of this trend? Will it have strong explanatory as well as manipulative potential for us as consumers, managers, and citizens? Among the propositions advanced from this work thus far, for example, are that risk and return are assessed in different parts of the brain, thereby questioning theories regarding expected  utility on which a great deal of decision theory has been based up to now.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5599.html
Family Fortunes
Why do some families become very wealthy? Why do a small number of those families remain very rich over more than a couple of generations? David S. Landes, in Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses, observes that business historians have as a rule paid too little attention to such questions, preferring to study the rise and the fall of corporations rather than of family enterprises. As he rather startlingly points out, 90 percent of American firms and almost as high a proportion of European firms are family businesses, accounting for half of all employment in the United States and two-thirds of jobs in the European Union. So the study of rich families is more than gossip or social history. Family firms clearly matter. A majority of business ventures begin as family enterprises, especially in developing economies where trust in kinship exceeds trust in legal and regulatory institutions.  But the question that most exercises Landes is why certain family firms endure?
http://www.powells.com/review/2006_12_28
Spelling Success
“What separates "Made to Stick" from the books it's indebted to – "The Tipping Point" and "Freakonomics" – books that proved the pop- crossover appeal of social psychology, is it’s utility. "Made to Stick" also wants to unveil how people behave. Specifically, it wants to explicate what makes people care about  the ideas they encounter. But then, unlike its forebears, it goes old-school. It emerges as a how-to book – very nearly a self-help book, whether for organizations or individuals – just like thousands before it, only far better. By mapping what makes others listen, it shows you how to make yourself heard…”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0123/p15s02-bogn.htm...
Best for working women?
From Common Dreams: “Two phone calls this week, one from a liberal magazine, and one from an organization representing female executives, were asking questions about two sides of the same issue: “Best” lists for working women. You know the ones “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers,” “Fifty Best Places for Latinas to Work,” “Best Companies for Diversity,” and so on. The magazine wanted to know if the lists are of any use to working women at all, or if in fact they do harm. The female executives  wanted to alert me that Wal-Mart, though facing the largest sex discrimination lawsuit in history, made their top 30. Their question was whether a company can be good for exec women and lousy for say, cashiers.”
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0207-23.htm
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