El autor sin abuela y la teoría de la organización

La portada de la PDA gigante era un mal augurio. Si no fuera porque el material de la asignatura Organización y administración de empresas II, que curso en la UOC, está basado en gran parte en este libro, la PDA platillo volante habría sido suficiente para dejar el libro en la estantería de la biblioteca.

Pero, ¿qué importa una portada? Se trata de los contenido, y parezco estar en buenas manos. Al menos, el autor, Eduardo Bueno Campos, no tiene la menor duda de ello; de los prólogos de la primera y segunda edición extraigo las siguientes muestas

la aparición, en 1976, de la primera edición de mi obra clásica

esta década transcurrida ha provocado que mi cosecha intelectual y mi patrimonio científico se haya incrementado de forma destacada, con un buen número de artículos en revistas nacionales e internacionales de impacto científico, así como nuevos libros...

Pero leo y leo y, ¡ay! , no puedo compartir el entusiasmo del autor por el mismo autor. Y, básicamente, todo se reduce a que soy incapaz de relacionar mi percepción sobre las organizaciones con las que convivo o he convivido con la mayoría de cosas de las que me habla el libro. Capítulos enteros sin entender de dónde venía el texto (¿descripción de la realidad? ¿prescripción para mejores organizaciones? ¿alguna escuela de pensamiento reconocida? ¿el propio autor? ¿palabra revelada?).

Otro libro sobre teoría de la organización describe muy bien porque me interesa la teoría de la organización y por qué me decepciona no disfrutar leyendo o discutiendo sobre ella:

all forms of collective activity - politics, the family, as well as work - are about organizations in some way. Which also means - and it is a major failing of most books to ignore this - that to study organizations involves thinking about philosophy, politics, ethics and much more. And behind or beyond these abstractions are the lived experiences of people not just working together, but joking, arguing, critizing, fighting, deciding, lusting, despairing, creating, resisting, fearing, hoping or, in short, organizing. I don't find it easy to imagine a world without organizations, but I also don't find it easy to recognize that world in the mainstream books about organizations

He disfrutado de este segundo libro como de una novela, aunque a menudo he estado en desacuerdo con el autor Chris Grey. Otro día, más sobre el estupendo A Very Short Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Organizations.

Comprant llibres

M'he convertit en un entusiasta de The Book Depository. Normalment hi comprava els llibres via amazon.fr; acostumaven a sortir-me una mica més barats que comprant-los a Amazon mateix. Ara els compro directament, amb enviament gratuït, i encara em surt una mica més barat.

amazon.com, però, segueix sent insustituible a l'hora de buscar opinions. I sempre intento començar llegint algunes de les opinions amb menys estrelles. Entre altres motius, per què em convé més que em convencin de no comprar un llibre que de fer-ho.

Bonuses

Henry Mintzberg:

Executive compensation has become a polite form of thievery, or, if you prefer, legal corruption. Executives get paid extra when the stock price goes up (bonus) and when it goes down (golden parachute); they get paid extra for staying in their job (retention bonus (...)), and for just doing their job (a bonus for signing a merger (...)).

As for the argument that if you don’t pay the bonuses, you don’t get the right person, I counter that if you do pay the bonuses, you get the wrong person. You get someone who is willing to single him or herself out from everyone else, at the expense of teamwork (...). The CEO, like everyone else in the company, has a job to do and should be paid for doing it. (...)

For the sake of sustainable enterprise: Executive bonuses should be eliminated. Period.

From http://www.mintzberg.org/pdf/execbonus.pdf

Once things have happened once

Charles Frankel, in High on Foggy Bottom; an Outsider's Inside View of the Government

Once things have happened, no matter how accidentally, they will be regarded as manifestations of an unchangeable Higher Reason. For every argument inside government that some jerry-built bureaucratic arrangement should be changed, there are usually twenty arguments to show that it rest's on God's own Logic, an that tampering with it will bring down the heavens.

Likely to be a valid statement also for individuals

Com és el dia a dia dels investigadors?

http://www.prbb.org/openday

Has extret mai ADN d’un kiwi? Saps com Darwin va desenvolupar la seva teoria de l'evolució? Vols crear el teu propi fòssil? I... per a què serveix, en definitiva, la ciència?

Ara és la teva! Després de l'èxit de l'any passat la segona Jornada de Portes Obertes del PRBB et permetrà de nou respondre aquestes i altres preguntes, fer de científic per un dia passejant pels laboratoris i fent experiments reals.

Si mai us heu preguntat què s'hi fa dins d'aquest edifici de les fustetes que hi ha davant del mar, aquesta és la vostra oportunitat per esbrinar-ho.

Apropeu-vos-hi amb tota la família el proper dissabte 3 d'octubre. Hi haurà activitats per a petits i grans!

Gràcies per l'avís, Maik!

Smarter Work: Why Social Networks Matter

Sacha Chua rocks, as usual

Smarter Work: Why Social Networks Matter

View more documents from Sacha Chua.

La teva responsabilitat

M'ha agradat el discurs de Barak Obama de principi de curs. M'agrada que hi hagi un discurs presidencial de principi de curs!

Això vol dir que -ai!- els meus pobres fill hauran de patir-ne una adaptació Vergés.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

My tablet PC says hi

One of the joys of not being an Apple fanboy is that you can already be the user of a tablet PC. In case you are not aware of it, tablets are cool, comfortable and in a similar price range than any laptop.

In june I got an hp tx2000 at http://mcs-n.com and paid €712 for it. I took advantage of Plan Avanza's interest free credits.

It's small and easy to carry around; reading on it with its screen folded, either on the coach or in the bus, is very comfortable. Unfortunatelly, battery life is not that great; I'm hopping to extend it a bit by taking the time to undervolt its cpu.

It came preloaded with lots of crapware (dear HP, haven't you considered that maybe all this bloatware makes your hardware look bad and underperformant?). I wiped it and did a clean installation of Vista 64bits (make that two or three clean installations... damn activation!) Update: Before doing a clean install on a tablet pc, you may want to save some calibration data (something that I failed to do)

• I went for 64 bits because I was hoping that the OS would be taking advantage of the 4GB of RAM that are available (it won't happen with Vista 32 bits; it may happen in Vista 64 bits; I don't know if it happens in my laptop)
• I went for Vista Ultimate because I found a good deal for students http://daelgolpe.es/ and I thought that I may end up needing its support for different language packs. Yes, this school year I'm a student.
• I don't recall how I got out of the activation nightmare. The great Activation Backup and Restore and Microsoft alternate media allowed me to go from bloated Vista Home 32 to fresh installation to Vista Home 64. I then, don't ask me how, was able to use the Ultimate upgrade license key.

Run!

cc'ing the world about something that a dear friend of mine should consider. From the New York Times: Exercise Found Effective Against Depression

Scientists at Duke University Medical Center tested exercise against the drug Zoloft and found the ability of either -- or a combination of the two -- to reduce or eliminate symptoms were about the same. But they found exercise seemed to do a better job of keeping symptoms from coming back after the depression lifted.

(...) 8 percent of exercisers saw symptoms come back, compared with 38 percent of those taking drugs and 31 percent getting both.

The studies do not prove exercise relieves depression, in part because the exercisers worked out in a group, so group dynamics may have played a role

Para votantes cuidadosos

Lista de los diputados en el Parlamento Europeo, con su actividad parlamentaria, lista de presencia, declaración de intereses económicos... Aunque sería más divertido si fuera como el envidiable TheyWorkForYou.com.