One other random observation from the NETC08 conference: the predominance of, and enthusiasm for, Twitter among the conference attendees. Is it my imagination, or has Twitter become the Facebook-for-fogeys?To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Taylor’s 1911 Principles of Scientific Management outlined his basic precepts: (1) Decompose work into tasks, or “elements” and develop “a science” for each one; (2) Select and train workers according to a scientific approach; (3) Create cooperation between workers and managers to ensure the work is being done according to the developed science; and (4) Divide the work between managers and workers, so that each performs the tasks to which they are respectively suited.So why do I recite this history (which is from an unpublished paper of mine, Frederick Taylor is alive and well and living in management process), and what does it have to do with bloggers?
Taylor’s scientific management principles were a result of the need created for “professional managers” when ownership separated from management control in the late nineteenth century. Its apparent effectiveness became legendary worldwide: For the first half of the twentieth century, Taylor’s American "way" of doing business was seen as superior to all others.
Taylor’s methods were applied to even lowly jobs such as loading pigs – standard, 92-pound blocks of iron – into shipping gondolas. Many authors, relate the anecdote of the productivity improvements achieved by encouraging workers at Bethlehem Steel in 1899 to work harder and faster in exchange for a higher daily wage, based on piece-work incentives. Taylor’s pig iron loading experiment is characterized as accomplishing tremendous productivity gains: loading a standard of 45 tons per worker at an incentive-fuelled daily rate of $1.69 – for those that made the quota – compared to the average 12 tons loaded at a fixed daily rate of $1.15. However, Charles Wrege and Richard Hodgetts (2000) investigate this now-fabled justification for scientific management by reviewing some of the original logs and journals kept at the time. They discover that the anecdotes were incomplete as retold by Taylor, and subsequently canonized in management folklore and textbooks.
The deficiencies they identify centre on Taylor’s reporting of productivity gains that occurred only under ideal conditions of pig placement and location, perfect weather conditions, and permission given to the workers to toss the pigs into the gondola cars, rather than stacking them neatly. As one might expected, this resulted in significant damage and shorter life for the cars and therefore, higher overall costs to the company. Additionally, workers choosing incentive pay could not sustain the higher production rates for longer than several days per month because of the physical strain.
The total savings achieved through Taylor’s methods were minimal, compared to a completely non-incentive, “rule-of-thumb” method, and neither included, nor compensated for, the additional costs of gondola damage. Despite the unsurprising fact that none of Bethlehem Steel’s competitors took up Taylor’s approach, his principles entered management folklore as a “best practice” of the time.
Died peacefully of natural causes at her home in Wychwood Park surrounded by her family. She was the beloved and loving wife and confidante of the late Marshall McLuhan (1980); dear sister of the late Carolyn Lewis Weinman (1996); devoted and loving mother of Eric (Sabina Ellis), Mary, Teri, Stephanie (Niels Ortved), Elizabeth (Don Myers), and Michael (Danuta Valleau); proud grandmother of Jennifer Colton Theut, Emily McLuhan Boms, Anna and Andrew McLuhan, Claire and Madeleine McLuhan Myers, Arthur, Mark, and Gwendolyn McLuhan; and great-grandmother of Olivia, Charlotte, and Gillian.
Corinne was known for her beauty, grace, intelligence, wit, and Southern charm. She embraced life fully and enjoyed many rich experiences and wonderful friendships along the way. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Corinne proudly remained an American all her life. She graduated from Texas Christian University and went on to do graduate work in theatre at the leading drama school of the day, Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. It was there that she met her future husband, Marshall McLuhan, a graduate student at Cambridge University in England, who had travelled to Pasadena to visit his mother, a drama coach at the Playhouse.
The family wishes to extend its heartfelt thanks to Dr. Wendy Brown for her years of unflagging and tender care, and to special caregivers Sally, Bona, Tasie, Amy, and particularly Cynthia, who has stayed at Corinne's side day and night for the last four years. There will be a funeral mass at Holy Rosary Church, 354 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:30 p.m. Interment Holy Cross Cemetery. Arrangements entrusted to the Turner & Porter Yorke Chapel, 416-767-3153.
The most important results measure impact at the deepest levels of social transformation, and there is a wealth of evidence showing that they are generated by social movements that rarely use the language or methods of business management. Yet, to repeat, there is already evidence that those who do use these techniques encounter trade-offs with their social mission.He goes on to warn that, despite the best of intentions (isn't it always the way?) philanthrocapitalism might well be harming social movements and the vibrancy of civil society. The reason? Because the methods and metrics used by each are polar opposites:
It is easy to identify quick fixes in terms of business criteria, only to find out that what seemed inefficient turns out to be essential for civil society's social and political impact - like maintaining local chapters of a movement when it would be cheaper to the central office to combine them. And although solutions have to work economically this doesn't necessarily imply the raising of commercial revenue. Philanthrocapitalists sometimes paint reliance on donations, grants and membership contributions as a weakness for civil-society organisations, but it can be a source of strength because it connects them to their constituencies and the public - so long as their revenue streams are sufficiently diverse to weather the inevitable storms along the way.
Business metrics privilege size, growth and market share, as opposed to the quality of interactions between people and the capacities and institutions they help to create. When investors evaluate a business, they ultimately need to answer only one question - how much money will it make? The equivalent for civil society is the social impact that organisations might achieve, alone and together, but that is much more difficult to evaluate.For me, I see this as articulating the difference between organizations founded on an Industrial Age foundation, as opposed to those created with a UCaPP sensibility. Reading each through a Valence Theory informed lens highlights the differences. Like most traditional BAH-organizations, the predominant focus is strictly on quantifiable outcomes measured in economic terms, with all other valence relationships taking positions of secondary or less priority. But just, social transformation in a contemporary context requires balance among all the five valences: Edwards points to the civil rights movement in the U.S., and asks, "Would philanthrocapitalism have helped to finance the civil-rights movement in the US? I hope so, but it wasn't "data-driven", it didn't operate through competition, it couldn't generate much revenue, and it didn't measure its impact in terms of the numbers of people who were served each day, yet it changed the world forever."
To me, the idea of "cultural sustainability" is about companies whose actions offset the consequences of their presence (or disappearance). For example, when large companies abandon cities that they've been in for years and where the entire city revolves around them, their move has a HUGE culturally destructive force. How do they offset this in a functional way? How does this get considered to be an externality that needs to be factored in?What danah is talking about is partly incorporated in my suggestion of replacing the often cliché corporate vision statement with a tactility statement, answering the question, who do we want to touch, and how do we want to touch them, today? Understanding the multiplicity of ways - essentially through the five valence relationships - that an organization can touch the communities in which it locates, and with whom it does various forms of business begins to address the concept of cultural sustainability.
...academic misconduct for helping run an online chemistry study group via Facebook last term, where 146 classmates swapped tips on homework questions that counted for 10 per cent of their mark. The computer engineering student has been charged with one count of academic misconduct for helping run the group – called Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions after the popular Ryerson basement study room engineering students dub The Dungeon – and another 146 counts, one for each classmate who used the site. Avenir, 18, faces an expulsion hearing Tuesday before the engineering faculty appeals committee.This charge is wrong on so many levels, revealing the complete cluelessness of the Ryerson administration. At the most basic level, first-year students in the sciences have always been encouraged to collaborate on difficult problem sets and to learn from each other. In my first university physics class (about 100 years ago or so), Professor Ivey said to us in an off-hand way, "Now I know that you all form consortia to work out the problem sets..." We looked at each other. Consortia? Does that mean study groups? (We were engineers.) And a study group that sustained through our four-year program was born, inspired by the prof who knew darn well that no single individual was capable of working through the homework he assigned by him/herself. And this practice sustains to today. "It has long been a tradition for students to brainstorm homework in groups, particularly in heavy programs such as law, engineering and medicine. Each student in the course received slightly different questions to prevent cheating, she said, and she did not see evidence of students doing complete solutions for each other."
It is with great pleasure that I write to inform you that you've been awarded this year's Muriel Fung Award, with much admiration and gratitude for all of your work, care and commitment to the OISE graduate student community. The committee was especially impressed with the range and strength of your involvement, the creativity with which you identify and meet students' needs in a wide range of areas, and how generously you share your time, knowledge and expertise.
During my last couple of years as a television news producer, I watched the networks try to recover from a six year failure to bring truth to power (the political party in power being irrelevant incidentally; the job of the press is to maintain an adversarial relationship with the government at all times) and what's worse, to pretend that they had a backbone all along. I watched my bosses literally stand in the middle of the newsroom and ask, "What can we do to not lead with Iraq?" -- the reason being that Iraq, although an important story, wasn't always a surefire ratings draw. I was asked to complete self-evaluations which pressed me to describe the ways in which I'd "increased shareholder value." (For the record, if you're a rank-and-file member of a newsroom, you should never under any circumstances even hear the word "shareholders," let alone be reminded that you're beholden to them.) I watched the media in general do anything within reason to scare the hell out of the American public -- to convince people that they were about to be infected by the bird flu, poisoned by the food supply, or eaten by sharks. I marveled at our elevation of the death of Anna Nicole Smith to near-mythic status and our willingness to let the airwaves be taken hostage by every permutation of opportunistic degenerate from a crying judge to a Hollywood hanger-on with an emo haircut. I watched qualified, passionate people worked nearly to death while mindless talking heads were coddled. I listened to Lou Dobbs play the loud-mouthed fascist demagogue, Nancy Grace fake ratings-baiting indignation, and Glenn Beck essentially do nightly stand-up -- and that's not even taking into account the 24/7 Vaudeville act over at Fox News. I watched The Daily Show laugh not at our mistakes but at our intentional absurdity.
The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.Time to rethink what branding is all about in the UCaPP world, boys and girls. And that, as it turns out, is one of the themes of the keynote I'll be giving at next week's Consumer Trends Forum International conference in Boston.
Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.
