From HBR: See the Big Picture Before Making a Decision

Here is a good decision-making advice from today HBR's Management Tip.

Successful strategic thinkers always have perspective. They consider the potential impact of their actions on those beyond their team or unit. Next time you need to make a big decision, here are three ways to make sure your thinking isn't too narrow:

• Explore the outcomes. With every idea, ask yourself, "If we implement this idea, how will other units and stakeholders be affected? What might be the long-term ramifications?"
• Expand your range of alternatives. Gather ideas and concerns from everyone who has an interest in the decision or who will be affected by the outcome.
• Consider the customer. Look at the decision through your customers' eyes. What will they think and which alternative will they prefer? If you're not sure, think about asking them.

Are Italians knowing Car Sharing? (finally after almost 10 years of activity)

A recent TV report from the Italian television (SuperQuark of July 26th 2012 - Rai1) showed me that finally Italy is knowing what car sharing is. 

I have known Car Sharing since 2007, when I wrote my bachelor thesis on it. Since that time Car Sharing has been always in my research interest, and I am now writing a paper about it.

Here is the abstract!

Car sharing, an innovative mobility service complementary to the local public transport, helps, through the sharing of a fleet of cars among users, to reduce individual and social costs of private transport, at the same time avoiding the rigidity of traditional public transport as well.

My paper on car sharing intends to explain the nature and development of car sharing through three key directions: i) the critical analysis of literature, through which it was possible to identify how car sharing is still not very extensive; ii) the overview of the Italian context; and iii) the analysis of car sharing service in detail, through a case study of the experience in the city of Genoa.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the few existing studies on car sharing in an effort to increase academic and managerial attention on this sustainable mobility service. 

Internet and old traditions

Ten years ago or so, a young man would probably have learnt how to iron his shirt by his mom or his grandmother.
Today a young man figuring out how to iron his shirt for the next day of work can easily learn how to do it using YouTube.
The same can be said for cooking, repairing piping or fixing an electric outlet.

Lots of people say internet and globalization are destroying, or making us loosing, our customs traditions. The question which came out from my mind this morning, while learning how to iron my shirt on YouTube is: "are really internet and globalization which are destroying our traditions? Or maybe it is all about people's motivation?"

For sure YouTube is not replacing our mom teaching us, or the time spent with your dad fixing a shelve, but if we have the motivation to learn new things internet and the globalization can really help. They can help in transferring traditions through different generations, even traditions that come from other cultures.

My opinion is that is all about us, about our motivations. If we want to learn how to do something the today world makes it easier than before... (i.e. your mom could have not be available to teach you how to iron when you needed it...).

Have a nice "ironing" weekend!

Learning by biographies should be part of management studies

Earlier today I felt on an old copy of Time (October 17, 2011) dedicated to Steve Jobs.

The article on page 38 by Grossman and McCracken captured my attention and inspired me this post. I don't know why, but I missed this article on that issue and I am thankful I found it now.

I was thinking yesterday that going back centuries ago, people studied the biography of the great people to study how to live, to learn by their experience. Nowadays we focus more on the concepts, on the examples, on the case studies. But, back in high school I remember that my teacher of literature and latin said to us to study the life of the authors before reading the poems.

Well, I thought, why do we study concepts and theories of management without reading biographies? We all say that every organization is made by the people, the organizations' culture is made by the people, the organizations' strategies are made by the people.

Here is why I approached to this article and I advise anyone to find a copy of the article and read it. It is a very well written business story on Steve Jobs' career and ventures.

In Italian business schools we study theories over theories and, in the last decade, we discovered the importance of case studies. Case studies in management are a great tools of learning, they give you the possibility to gain a sort of "soft experience" by acting as if you were the real actor in a certain context.

What we are missing, in my modest opinion, is to study the life of the men who pursued certain strategies, achieving outstanding goals. For example Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs went against any management rule, he didn't listen to a lot of management theories, he diversified a fully integrated company. Biographies such his, or Bill Gates and Warren Buffet should be studied in management classes along with theories and case studies.

I believe this is "History of Management" or it is what "History of Management" should be. We study Henry Ford, or Fayol and Barnard. All of them were directors who changed the world with their vision, we should update, specially in Italy, our way of study management by adding biographies to our background.

By the way, I want to end this post with following quote by the famous Stanford's speech in 2005.

"Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your hearth and intuition. They  somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Cognitive Biometrics. There still is something not on wikipedia!

Today I received a newsletter from a publisher company about newly published academic journals.
One of them captured my attention and curiosity, it was about the so-called "Cognitive Biometrics". I run on google searching for a wikipedia page on that. With great surprise I did not find anything about it.
In this world, probably to find or not to find something on wikipedia is a good index about how new is a topic. Cognitive biometrics is definitely new.
As Dr. Revett, editor of the International Journal of Cognitive Biometrics, wrote "Cognitive biometrics is a novel approach to user authentication and/or identification that utilises the response(s) of nervous tissue."
Cognitive biometrics merges human perception to computer database in a brain-machine interface. It is based on specific responses of the brain to stimuli which could be used to trigger a computer database search. 
The stimulus, according to Dr. Revett, "could be the presentation of a familiar photograph, a song, or a Rorschach ink blot, either individually or in various combinations. It is designed to induce a specific and reproducible change(s) in the (or a set of) state(s) of the individual."
The methods used to record the changes currently include the electroencephalogram (EEG), the electrocardiogram (ECG), the electrodermal response (EDR), blood pulse volume (BVP), near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR), electromyogram (EMG), eye trackers (pupilometry), hemoencephalography (HEG), and related technologies.
According to Dr. Revett "the motivation for this approach is to provide a more intuitive and arguably a more robust and user-friendly authentication protocol that is suitable for both static and continuous authentication requirements."
One should note that cognitive biometrics is completely distinct from behavioral biometrics. Behavioral biometrics, such as keystroke dynamics, signature and gait rely on the precise reproduction of motoric activities, which are only peripherally related to cognitive state. 
Cognitive biometrics uses individual's response (typically non motoric) to a stimulus.
It is the response of the person to the applied stimulus that forms the basic for the authentication. How a person responds to a stimulus is very complex. Basically there is a genetic basis, modulated by our experiential history which can significantly shape our behavior.

The Third Who Joins a Negotiation

Theory defines negotiation as a continuous interactive process of decision making, and multilateral negotiations are differentiated from bilateral negotiations because of their wider size, bigger complexity and greater heterogeneity.

My work (accepted for presentation at the EURAM 2012 Conference) refers to the third parties, i.e. a key stakeholder, as interested entities that enter a negotiation and could eventually act as a facilitator.

Even if contemporary approaches have integrated third party intervention in a broad understanding of causes and dynamics of conflicts, by definition third parties do not have a strong partisan position on the substantive issues in dispute. They seem to have been considered mainly as external entities, not fully interested and involved in the negotiation, thus a real interest for the implementation of the final agreement.

My literature review is intended for all those management scholars and practitioners who want to improve their comprehension of how negotiations can be successfully performed. In particular, the review is aimed at filling a current gap in the literature, because it tries to systematize our understanding about multilateral negotiations. In fact, the review focuses on the role that the third who joins can play for achieving integrative agreements. 

In general, the majority of the reviewed studies have stated the positive correlation of the third who joins with a more satisfactory negotiation output and process itself. 

Why Italy was / is (and will be) suffering the crisis more than the rest of Europe

In last period, the attention of italian politicians and journalists/experts have been focusing on the concept of "growth" as a fundamental response to this crisis.


After Berlusconi's and Monti's financial laws to put in safe the Italian debt and accounting, taxes have been raising to the highest level in Europe. VAT increased from 20% to 21%, and will increase to 23% in 2012-2013, taxes on home property have been replaced, and so on... 


Some institutions have calculated that an average family will have an increase of tax expenditures of more than a thousand of Euros for 2012. 


Now, politicians and journalists said that we need to focus on "growth", the phase 2 of the Italian (and European) Economy's revitalization. A new law is trying to liberalize some markets as: pharmacies, taxis, lawyers, notaries and so on. 


All the measures that will be applied with the new law for sure will have a positive impact on the internal economy and on the profit/surplus redistribution. 
Basically, to use the street man words, companies and some categories will have less and consumers (hopefully) will have more in their pocket.


But, if we think back about our lessons on macroeconomy we should remember that a profit/surplus redistribution does not affect the "growth" of a nation's economy. 
In fact, if we clean out from the dust the GDP equation we will find that:

Y = C + I + G + X

where

Y = GDP

C = consumers spending

I = capital expenditures / investiments

G = public/government spending

X = net exports given by = E - Z

where

E = exports

Z = imports

Now, during an economic crisis, where individuals and organizations are more wise on expenditures and where the growth is quite close to the ZERO, it is obvious even to a freshman that Y cannot grow if you only move profit/surplus from a category to another, the sum (of the change) still will be ZERO.

But, in that equation there is an X, a letter that in Italy is always forgotten by politicians and journalists. The easiest way to grow is to increment the exports.

But even if this seems obvious to everyone, we still don't know why every Italian government (even the last one who is formed by outstanding economists) have not taken any measure to favor the exports.

In fact, Italian multinationals confirmed their position as the companies with the lowest share of non-domestic sales, stated a research of R&S on world's multinational companies financial statements that took into account the last 10 years. 

Even if Italy is part of the Europe, which is the most globalized continent for non-domestic sales. 

During the last 10 years Italian multinationals grew their non-domestic sales of 9%, but they are still at the lowest level in Europe.

This situation seems to be a weakness of the Italian economy, but, as a management scholar, I would say that this is a great opportunity too!

So, dear Professor Monti, dear Italian politicians, pleas take into consideration the idea to favor those businesses that export! 

Let take measure to push Italian exports and we will grow!