This presentation from the EURO 2016 conference in Poznan, Poland, and from the GDN conference in Bellingham, WA, USA, joint work with Leroy White of Warwick Business School, shows how combining formal and informal organizational networks enables decisions to flow more freely around organizations, but at a cost, leading to an optimal size of informal …
Monthly archives: July 2016
The Brexit Paradox: This is not Representative Democracy
In the UK, voters elect a Member of Parliament who is there to represent the views of their constituents. This is representative democracy, and the UK has survived pretty well with this form of government. It is one of the many things that the Romans Have Done For Us. Members of Parliament are supposed to …
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What proportion of an airline ticket is made up of the cost of the aeroplane?
Aircraft aren’t cheap. Neither are airline tickets. But how much of that airline ticket is made up of the cost of the aeroplane? If we assume a relatively efficient modern airliner, say a 777, a 30-year lifetime, 3500 hours per year, and an average speed of 500mph, that produces a total distance of 52,500,000 miles. Which is …
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Stacking Shelves the Amazon way
Amazon FC are playing in the Euros (the UEFA football championship). Or at least that’s what could be inferred from my name badge. In fact, Amazon FC is one of the Amazon fulfilment centres, located in the Polish town of Poznań, location of the 28th European conference on Operational Research. The fulfilment centre is huge – with a …
The Complexity of the Corporation
In my paper, The Complexity of the Corporation, I introduce complexity science applied to management, discussing complex adaptive systems, emergence, co-evolution, and power laws. “We discuss the notion of complexity as applied to firms and corporations. We introduce the background to complex adaptive systems, and discuss whether this presents an appropriate model or metaphor to be used within …