Search results

Continental Group's brief epic bout of restructuring did not deter a takeover. Diverse views of the complex story are presented: First, the analysis of the corporation's planning consultant, Mike Davidson; the CEO makes his case to a forum of security analysts; and analysts and the financial press render their judgment.

During the Seventies, strategic planning was tried and found wanting. Or was it? Corporate leadership's response to the tremendous increase in competitive intensity in the Seventies was, appropriately, to elevate strategy to its number one priority. For a number of companies, strategic planning failed to deliver. I don't think it was the concepts of strategy that failed, but the way we tackled the planning.

The creation of future revenues is a formidable challenge and one to which organizational leaders are increasingly turning, now that they have been through years of reengineering and restructuring. Many of these leaders are finding that all the hard work, which may have been necessary for survival, hasn't proved enough for success.

This chapter examines similarities in government policies that have accelerated and privatized the extraction of offshore oil, coal, and oil sands on public lands in the United States and Canada, as well as the arguments used to justify those policies. Sociologist William Freudenburg argued that the diversion of public resources into private hands was made possible by a second diversion, the diversion of attention. Freudenburg, with Gramling, later applied this concept to U.S. offshore oil leases, noting that when it came to offshore oil, the myth of “energy independence” was often used to justify policies that were actually antithetical to the concept, promoting further dependence on fossil fuels. We extend the double diversion concept from offshore oil to U.S. coal and Alberta oil sands, noting the similarities in both the policy changes and the diversionary frameworks. The frameworks also divert attention from the increasing risks associated with energy extraction.

“Nothing succeeds like success” is, as we keep learning in our lives not necessarily true. And yet it seems so plausible that time and again businesses in every sector get caught up in the dream. Putting remakes, reformulations, knock‐offs, spin‐offs, son‐ofs, or out‐and‐out repeats of previous successes into the marketplace simply does not guarantee that success will repeat.

This book chapter reflectively explores the challenges of studying provocation, satire, bad taste and offence in stand-up comedy. The author’s sociological lens on the topic is situated within the broader field of humour studies, which is a relatively small yet creative and innovative field within the human, cultural and social sciences. This lost ethnographic project contains shelved and dormant interview data with a number of stand-up comedians, including the controversial and emotive late Bernard Manning and an early career Steve Coogan. The project also explores the author’s autoethnographic journey into rant poetry, as both a hobbyist and, on further reflection, a way of keeping the project informally but theoretically alive. The issues of censorship, political correctness and informed consent are key ones in the author’s confessional type analysis. Finally, the value and richness of loss, failure and resilience as marginalised yet significant and unacknowledged learning resources in our academic adventures are frankly discussed. The call here is for more lost ethnographic projects to be recognised and appreciated in academia.

Research has found a subgroup of conservative white males have lower perceptions of risk across a variety of environmental and health hazards. Less research has looked at the views of these “low risk” individuals in group interactions. Through qualitative analysis of a technology deliberation, we note that white men expressing low risk views regarding technologies for energy and the environment also often express high social risks around potential loss of control. We argue these risk perceptions reflect identification with corporate concerns, usually framed in opposition to government and mirroring arguments made by conservative organizations. We situate these views within the broader cultural struggle over who has the power to name and address risks.