Digital Archive....

Ethics of Inefficiency The Business Ethics Blog The current way of thinking seems to imply that small-scale production is the way to go. Of course, for much of the 20th century, small-scale production was a sign of affluence: only the wealthy could afford to have a craftsman dedicate hours, perhaps days, to the task of custom-making an item just for them. Today, everyone from yuppies to hippies is clamoring for just that, in their rush to grab for things perceived as local and green and anti-commercial. We don't want multinationals to get between us and the skilled hands that make our loafers, and we want no agrifood giants mediating our relationship with the farmer who lovingly raised the goats that gave the milk that made the cheese. We want our business small, and indie. We want our consumer goods "bespoke," and "artisanal." And the reason for this seems to be some vague impression that those kinds of businesses, and those kinds of p...

How to avoid the 7 deadly sins of business storytelling How to Change the World Over in the American Express Open Forum I posted an interview with Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith about the "7 Deadly Sins of Busines Storytelling." It will help you optimize the impact of storytelling in your marketing. Sent with Reeder  

Research: Money Makes People Stingy SSIR Articles The more you have, the less you give. According to a 2002 Independent Sector survey, households earning more than $100,000 a year contributed only 2.7 percent of their income to charity, while those earning less than $25,000 gave a more generous 4.2 percent. New research shows that's no accident. "The more money a person makes or has, the less generous, helpful, compassionate, and charitable he is toward other people," says Paul Piff, a doctoral candidate in social and personality psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Piff started out by noticing that rich people are generally ruder. When he videotaped them in the lab as they got to know a stranger, people who had identified themselves as having more "would check their cell phones ... or doodle without establishing eye contact. Whereas the individuals who identified themselves as having less, were more engaged: They would establ...

why t-shirts are bad aid: the research Texas in Africa As the World Vision/NFL 100,000 t-shirts controversy swells on (now with a post on Freakonomics !) , I thought it might be useful to talk about the research that shows why t-shirts is a matter of bad aid. If your eyes glaze over at the thought of JSTOR and academic journals, I can sum it up for you in one sentence: the evidence is solid that t-shirt donations are bad for local economies. For those of you wanting to go a little more in depth, read on. One of the best known and most-referenced articles on the subject is "Used-clothing Donations and Apparel Production in Africa" by Garth Frazer. There's a gated version of the article here . Frazer set out to explain why African economies haven't advanced beyond basic manufacturing. He concludes that one major factor prohibiting the development of major textile industries is used-clothing donations by consumers in industrialized countries. ...