Continuing my environmental theme, I’ve been musing over building a new training course around helping companies help their employees to think outside the box. This is a tough task in certain companies and cultures. As Benjamin Franklin so wisely said, “insanity is doing the same things over and over, and expecting a different result.” So […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The CO2 blame game
In my previous post, I talked about the collapse of the Doha round of trade negotiations and how this didn’t auger well for a new global agreement for setting greenhouse gas-emission limits and a worldwide price on carbon. The chemicals industry needs clarity. A global price for carbon would enable companies to plan R&D investments […]
Why the Doha failure is bad
The failure, and quite possibly the death, of the Doha round of trade negotiations earlier this week could create a very confusing and erratic regulatory landscape for the chemicals industry. This excellent entry in the New Scientist environment blog by Fred Pearce, senior environment correspondent, makes the point that if the world cannot agree on […]
Market mind reading
Regular readers of my blog might have seen last week’s post linking through to the New Scientist article about research into new ways of assessing how markets behave. Prompted by the irrationally steep falls triggered by the credit crisis (or maybe they were reverse – the previous high valuations were based on irrationality, leading to […]
Missing the point
Great that my entry yesterday Work can be the death of you produced a response. But I think the commentator missed the point. Working long hours is not an issue for staff who are properly managed and motivated. The “presenteeism” of some work cultures, though, is surely a major source of concern for the welfare […]
The US gets my goat
The expression “tthis really gets my goat” is in common usage in Northern England, where I hail from. Indeed, despite spending 11 years in Singapore, few people other than my wife (who is Scottish and has an even worse accent and some even stranger expressions) can understand a word I say. Anyway, the point is […]
Work can be the death of you
My dear old mother used to often say “what’s the world coming to?” as if life was constantly getting worse. But for South Korean workers – and for workers everywhere in Asia – expectations of employers have long been unreasonable. Tied into this is loyalty, “face”, pride and ridiculously long and often unproductive hours that […]
Does your boss listen to you?
Perfect subject if you’ve got the post-weekend blues…. A very irate and tired and emotional chemicals trader was moaning last week about the imposition of a new knowledge-management system by his company. “Our bosses never listen to us and they assume that if they come with a new software solution that we have had no […]
Does the ‘truth’ ever matter?
The momentum of opinion might be about to shift in favour of the belief that this year’s crude-oil price surge is more to do with speculation than fundamentals. No less than 15 bills targeting speculators are circulating around Washington at the moment. This same article details an investigation of allegations that Optiver, the oil trader, […]
Crazy money breeds new thinking
This article from The New Scientist suggests we might have to develop a whole new way of asssesing what drives all commodity markets. Intuitively, everyone knows that the herd instinct matters. But to measure this mathematically, or statistically, seems a mountainous but fascinating challenge. At least it will keep the a few academics off the […]
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