Andrew Kakabadse and Nada Kakabadse’s Blog

Prompted by this article about changing online habits, in this podcast Nada and I discuss information overload, online etiquette, and research we’ve done on teenage technology use.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Here are the slides from a presentation I gave at the 10th International Conference  on Corporate Governance in London on 10 October:

View more presentations from kakabadse .

With the rise in popularity of social networking and Smart Phones, people are feeling the need to be connected to the Internet at all times. I spoke to Sky News about my recent study on the effects of “Information Overload”, a phenomenon where people feel the need to be constantly connected, whether by mobile phone or home computer. As more people begin using Smart Phones – phones that have functionality to utilise the Internet and send messages – the number of people suffering from “Information Overload” will increase along with it.
This addiction to technology and the Internet often comes at the expense of one’s health and social life. People who are constantly switched on will likely see a negative impact on their overall productivity, even with tasks that they would consider to be routine. [...]

Prompted by this article on how Republicans in the US want to block American shareholders from having a say on CEO pay , in this video I discuss how executives are blocking shareholder activism against executive remuneration, and how the equity-based financing system that prevails in Anglo-America won’t shift to a longer-term stakeholder-based financing system. This is because the issue of executive bonuses in the short term takes away attention from global long-term needs and planning.

Last week I gave a presentation at the EABIS Colloquium in Barcelona entitled ‘Corporate Governance: Global Issues for the Future’. Here are the slides:
Corporate Governance: Global Issues for the Future
View more presentations from kakabadse .

Following up on the recent news that top performing women have higher levels of testosterone , in this audio clip Andrew and I discuss the issue, as well as womens’ career progressions, what happened in Norway when it became the law for women to represent 40% of a company’s board , and how risk is related to testosterone. Listen to the clip here:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Prompted by this article on management gurus on Slate’s The Big Money, here is a video that contains my thoughts on the nature of management gurus, specifically how they can damage their reputations by offering the same thinking over and over again, and how gurus are different from high quality consultants:

In mature markets, where growth is slow and costs are managed to the extreme, what differentiates one company from another? Many organisations and managers have actually become rather indistinguishable in that they uniformly pay attention to teamwork and quality, reduce costs where they can (often through outsourcing) and get rid of poorly performing executives—these activities make for good organisations. But then what give some companies a leading edge over others? It comes down two factors.
The first is brand—a strong brand reputation makes people believe that a Mercedes is better than a Ford, and can help a company even if this belief proves not to be true (e.g. if Mercedes outsourced some faulty components and their quality did decline below the perceived quality of Ford).
The other differentiating factor is people. Better led teams will be more motivated; when there’s a single company mentality, especially among [...]

Following on the heels of the MP expenses scandal, the issue of expenses at another public body, the BBC, has recently been in the news . I was hired by the BBC for some particular tasks. Then their major issue was cutting their costs, and the issue continues to remain unaddressed today. Well, not entirely unaddressed—a number of directors general have tried to reduce the cost base of the BBC over the years, and the message from within the BBC is that costs have partly been reduced, but there are a lot more still to take out.
In the press, current director general Mark Thompson has defended his ‘high for a public servant’ salary as entirely justified as it’s only one third of what a private sector executive in his position would get. I’m not sure if this is a fair position, but I do know [...]

It is indeed possible for people to be productive in a work context using new technologies that enable them to work remotely. However, while virtuality is often touted as a factor that improves and enables quality communication, I believe that the gains from using communications technology are primarily cost reductions.
What types of work can be done virtually? Professional journalists can now easily freelance for multiple newspapers, using technology to complete and submit their tasks in a proficient and professional manner. Other sorts of IT, design, technical and artistic tasks can also be done virtually. The key work is ‘tasks’—transactional tasks are the type of work best done virtually, and when travel is no longer necessary for these, costs are reduced. [...]