Category: Business

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/09/why-we-will-end-up-piercing-the-corporate-veil.html

The internet is one big reason why we will find it increasingly difficult to separate out the assets of a company from the assets of its founders or CEOs, as I discuss in my latest Bloomberg column:

More important, social media personalizes agency — in effect, making it easier to accuse particular individuals of wrongdoing. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and the Koch brothers all have images or iconic photos that can be put into a social media post, amplifying any attack on their respective companies. It is harder to vilify Exxon, in part because hardly anyone can name its CEO (Darren Woods, since 2017), who in any case did not create the current version of the company. Putting the Exxon logo on your vituperative social media post just doesn’t have the same impact. With Bill Gates having stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2000, it is harder to vilify that company as well.

This personalization of corporate evil has become a bigger issue in part because many prominent tech companies are currently led by their founders, and also because the number of publicly traded companies has been falling, which means there are fewer truly anonymous corporations. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the most important decision a new company makes is how personalized it wants to be. A well-known founder can spark interest in the company and its products, and help to attract talent. At the same time, a personalized company is potentially a much greater target.

The more human identities and feelings are part of the equation, however, the harder it will be to keep the classic distinction between a corporation and its owners. As the era of personalization evolves, it will inevitably engulf that most impersonal of entities — the corporation.

Do read the whole thing. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-16/purdue-pharma-bankruptcy-how-much-will-the-sackler-family-pay

https://qz.com/work/1675944/the-man-who-invented-brainstorming-did-his-creative-thinking-alone/

Some companies have a serious addiction to brainstorming. Whenever a problem arises, the team is called to gather and shout out possible solutions, with at least one notetaker scrambling to get everything down. It’s as if this were the only known way out of a pickle, or into a new project—and it can feel like a supreme waste of time, especially when the same few dominating personalities ruin the mood.

Yet the value of brainstorming is rarely questioned. (A notable exception is a 2012 New Yorker story arguing that research cannot scientifically validate the effectiveness of the process, but even that did little to get in the way of the ubiquity of brainstorming.) Perhaps that’s because the idea of brainstorming seemingly has always existed; it’s as much a part of workplace culture as pizza parties or sales reports.

by Sarah Todd via Quartz

Whenever I have to stay home sick from work, I’m always uncertain about how much detail to give. Do I let my boss know that I have the stomach flu, specifically? Or would she prefer the simple elegance of “feeling under the weather?”

I mentioned this conundrum at a recent dinner with three friends, all of whom are managers. For the most part, they agreed they would not want to know the particulars of an employee’s reasons for missing work. They trust the people they manage and are troubled by the idea that workers would feel pressured to disclose the minutiae of their bodily ailments. The exception, they said, is when an employee has a chronic illness or condition, in which case it’s helpful to have a bit of context for regular absences.

http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001083133?full=y&ccode=2G192004&exclusive

咖啡为什么这么贵？为什么咖啡种植者会在咖啡日益流行的时候陷入困境？谁拿走了咖啡价值链中最大的利润？

考虑到消费者喝的咖啡比以往任何时候都要多，当下应该是种植者的好年景。然而，由于领先生产国巴西的咖啡豆大量涌入市场，阿拉比卡咖啡豆（两种主要咖啡豆中的一种，品质较高，口感较为柔和）在纽约洲际交易所(ICE)的价格仅略高于1美元/磅，远低于五年前价格的一半。