GloStra Blog Entries

Philosophy of science and honest scholarship

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Ended up viewing this during my weekend hassle.

Maybe it's time to move beyond dichotomies in our field as well? Either-ors just don't bring out the best in people, subjects or research programs. Regrettably, one loses the comfort of one's fortress of moralistic consciousness.

It's no surprise that the social sciences are particularly plagued (or blessed, depending) with a multitude of philosophical attitudes. But one point I agree completely with Mr. Fri [...]

EDGE.org did it again

juha-antti.lamberg@tkk.fi — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Every time you step into edge.org you find something absolutely fabulous. This time, EDGE offers two hard core presentations closely related to Glostra visions. First, the founding father of theoretical treatment of path dependence and complexity in economics, Brian Arthur offers his view on technological change. Arthur's treatment of technology is closely related to research in dominant designs yet is far more comprehensive. What is more, it offers a philosophical understanding of what tech [...]

On University Reforms, Elites, and Hubris (i.e. yliopistouudistus ei-ole-kovin-rationaalinen)

juha-antti.lamberg@tkk.fi — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Universities are (certainly) not isolated from societies. The links are, at least, two kinds. First, the number and breadth of universities (e.g. as measured by teacher per potential student ratio) is primarily a function of the size of suitable population (i.e. how many literate inhabitants between ages 18-25 exist), wealth of the society (as measured by GDP per capita), and a number of more fuzzy factors such as policy decisions and international competition. Second, university education an [...]

Foucault on economists?

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Ok, this might be a long shot, but I'll let it go anyway. After a long weekend of homo oeconomicus -bashing at Philosophy of Management conference, I could not but read Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization with the same glasses on. Naturally, he discusses madness (which is far from economics), quoting Louis-Sébastien Mercier:

"Thus there are in Paris some very good people, economists and anti-economists, who have warm hearts, eager for the public good; b [...]

Photojournalism, representation and asset asymmetry

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Once again a public lecture put forward a combination of views. This time the topic was: 'The Future of Picturing the World: filming and imaging in a global era'.

The speakers moved between the change in the narrative objectives of aid campaigns to the embeddedness of reporting in military operations (read: Iraq). The most thought-provoking of the presentations, however, was Renzo Martens' video depicting the asymmetry of moral positions in photojournalism, depending on the pe [...]

Summit of dissenters

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Associated with some themes of this blog, I just came across this video...

Anyone interested in the development of policy and risk assessment models in Western economies should definitely take a look.

Earlier, this was discussed here and here.

Gary Hamel and management innovation

publisher@glostra.fi — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Gary Hamel was giving a talk at London Business School for an academic audience. Having heard how nice his Italian suits are, I had to go.

The topic was related to his recent HBS article, how to "speed up" the "evolution" of "management knowledge". While "speeding up evolution" does sound like a plot of a bad science fiction movie, the talk was fairly interesting. Based on the great engineering challenges ("moon shots") recently funded by U.S. government, Hamel and his collaborators ha [...]

A firm's human capital -- and the risk for employee default

jaakko.aspara@hse.fi — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

In strategic management literature, the human capital implicated in a firm's employees has already for a couple of decades been considered as an important strategic resource (or asset) for a firm. Obviously, in "knowledge economy", the value of this particular type of knowledge has become increasingly important, especially in knowledge-intensive and creative industries (such as financial services, IT, or biotechnology)

Yet, as a particular type of strategic asset, [...]

Contingency and social science

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Attending a talk last week about contingency in science (held as part of CPNSS project ‘Contingency and Dissent in Science) left me rather confused. As I found it, the concept of contingency, at least at the LSE, seems to be a name (or a subset-not in a strictly set-theoretical sense!) of the nowadays quite classical realism-antirealism debate. That is, I found no references to Rorty. Although quite understandable, it still seems odd to pass the ‘practical turn' of the 1980s in one sentence, [...]

Incommensurability, explanation, world views

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Consider LSE's slogan: rerum cognoscere causas ("to know the causes of things", ripped from Virgil, I suppose). It makes a direct claim favouring causal explanation. Another matter, however, more rooted in the Anglo-American tradition is the tendency to embrace methodological individualism (individuals matter).

Taken these, it should not come as a surprise that a joint session of Arabic and US speakers covering contemporary issues in the Middle East became a clash o [...]

PhD Juha Mattsson has won 2nd prize in the Sloan Industry Studies 2008 Dissertation Award ...

glostra@glostra.fi — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

PhD Juha Mattsson has won 2nd prize in the Sloan Industry Studies 2008 Dissertation Award Competition.

DI Liang Fang has won the 2008 TKK Thesis Competition. Earlier Liang already won the Thesis Competition of the Finnish Strategic Management Society.

Bailing out industries -- and/or individual firms

jaakko.aspara@hse.fi — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100

When national governments and politicians make decisions about economic policies, they often shape the viability of businesses at the industry level.

With its policies -- regarding e.g. taxing, public spending, or regulation -- a government may consciously choose to support certain industries (e.g., defense industry, private healthcare industry, biotechnology industry). Sometimes, a government may e [...]

Lecture quality

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0100

A weird thing has taken place a couple of times now... I have been to a very weak lecture and asked some of my peers their opinions about them. To my surprise, I generally get totally contrasting views of my own. People tend to be extremely fascinated about those lectures I mostly dislike.

Let me tell you an example. Some time ago quite recently, I attended a lecture given by an old professor about a late, influential philosopher here at the LSE. Monotonous and thin voice [...]

Back to Lex Nokia - and the irrelevance of arguments

jaakko.aspara@hse.fi — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0100

The arguments presented against "Lex Nokia" become increasingly odd (see also my earlier blog entry).

One of the weirdest arguments against the law so far is that it would give corporations greater rights to inspect their employees' emails than what the police has. (Again, remember that the law does not give firms any rights to read any emails of their employees - just the right t [...]

The language question

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Auguste Comte memorial lecture was given today by Prof. Philippe Van Parijs. The topic was interestingly ‘European Democracy and the Language Question'. Despite democracy being interesting and all, what appeared to me to be the most striking insight of his talk was the whole discussion around European Union, unified (political) decision-making bodies and the apparent question of lingua franca. Van Parijs is also originally from Belgium, a country struggling with severe problems of iden [...]

Calculating the cost of snow

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Now that a week has passed after the London-crippling 10 cm snowfall, it is time to look back, just a little bit. The question that seems to be the most pressing here seems to be the cost of the snow to the economy. In other words, how much did everyone (?) lose because of the white fluffy thing?

Estimates vary, some of them reaching billions of pounds. Every completely ‘lost' day, for example a normal banking holiday, is estimated to cost £6 billion. On the other ha [...]

Social change and the match day

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Speaking of social change is a complicated matter. I approach this thorny issue with an example: a football match.

Even visiting East London for just any reason can be an intriguing anthropological endeavour. Not to speak of going to the home ground of a known problem team. These problems occurred mostly in the distant past of 1970s and early 1980s, but still, there's a sense of ‘loudness' that can be felt amidst the crowds.

Nevertheless, to my surp [...]

Lex Nokia: preventing leaks in corporate IPR vs. employee "privacy"

jaakko.aspara@hse.fi — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0100

The protection of corporate intellectual properties is an important issue for any firm, and particularly so for globally operating high-tech companies. Unfortunately, part of the firm's challenge is to prevent its own employees from leaking corporate information and secrets to competitors. Even if it was only a fraction of a firm's employees -- perhaps 1-5% -- who might have the unfortunate predisposition to make leaks under certain conditions, the challenge is real.

< [...]

If the government gets to decide what the country's major industries should do next...

jaakko.aspara@hse.fi — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Facing the "need" to bailout the country's Finance Industry as well as Auto Industry, politicians and industrymen in the US are puzzled over an important question: To which direction one should next take the industry corporations, as the bailout monies effectively give the government control over them ? This debate is -- for sure -- interesting also to other national governments which are struggling with their own finance and other industries (such as that of Finland with [...]

Evolutionary biologists' ontology

tuomas.kuronen@tkk.fi — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Despite that I mostly agree with evolutionary biologists, especially when it comes to the societal implications of their evolutionary views (such as eradicating religion from the affairs of state); one thing has bothered me for a while now. That is the ontological framework-the world-of these popularly bent natural scientists.

Hearing one of the opening sessions of philosophy of natural sciences, the cornerstone of their world appeared to me clear (even though I knew i [...]