Lisa and I went to see “Marina Warner”:http://www.marinawarner.com/ give the first “2004 Douglas Robb”:http://www.alumni.auckland.ac.nz/2446.html lecture tonight. The topic was _After The Arabian Nights: Daemons & Alters_. After the lecture, I mentioned to Lisa that, for me, in delivering her lecture, Marina had achieved the holy trinity of breadth, depth, and humour. Often a lecture only …
We’ve started the first of the summits. In these, the various functional specialists get together, hopefully, to share knowledge about their roles (rather than to share competitive information). I suspect, well know, that I didn’t explain the point of them well today. But nevertheless, there is a strange paradox that occurs when we hold summits. …
I found today’s class very revealing. I was a little surprised to find out how difficult students are finding it to select a particular topic for their upcoming assignment this week. I spent some time after the formal part of the class, going around the four or five teams that stayed in the class room, …
Took a few hours off from writing new application for ethics approval to see Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman in Paycheck. I quite enjoyed it; but it certainly is in the ironing movie genre. Since we had free tickets, I wasn’t too disappointed by it. Lisa thought the plot was weak, and I tend to agree …
Last night, Lisa and I went to see Abigail’s Party at the Maidment Studio. As the program says: North London, 1997 — the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. The Sex Pistols are gearing up to blow Donna Summer and Jose Feliciano out of the charts forever. The neighbours have been invited around for a few …
I’ve spent a happy few hours merging two weblogs together. At first I thought it would be as easy as changing a few SQL tables. Alas, that is only half the job. There are also the categories that also need to be redone. Not a straight forward job. Perhaps I should have done some research …
I received the following email: From: dan margan Sent: Thu 3/25/2004 22:40 To: p.smith@auckland.ac.nz Subject: MGMT 301 Assignment 1 Hi Peter, I’m just writing to try and clarify a point about the first assignment due next Friday. We have been asked to make academic links between our groups’ behaviour and the literature (scholarly, not textbooks). Does this …
Darl and I have spent sometime talking about the game of Mornington Crescent1. In particular, I’ve been thinking about it in relation to David Boje’s Stories of the Storytelling Organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as Tamara-Land’. From recollection, Boje’s thesis (in the article) is that organisations can been seen as a collection of concurrent, …
I’ve known Darl for over ten years now. I have a lot of trust in him. I’ve known Emma for two years, and she has never done anything to make me think I can’t trust her. So why was I worried about today’s class? Perhaps, at the heart of it, is trust in the technology. …
The results from the first roll-over of Net Mike are available now. Until Monday, teams will only know the results in their own world. I wonder what lessons lessons are taken away from this first roll-over. How many people will consider their assumptions confirmed? What will happen in those firms that did not perform according …
It’s been a busy week. John Gray has been visiting from Australia as we are working on a research project together. Because of this, I’ve also spent some time with a RA (Research Assistant) who is working on the project with me. As, it happens she is an alumnus of MGMT 301. Somewhat unexpectedly, she …
I’m a little anxious. Okay it’s not “extreme uneasiness of mind”, but nevertheless I’m a little tense … We had expected to have Net Mike setup by now, and to have emailed all the class with their login details. Alas, it’s Sunday and we still haven’t been able to that. The ‘whys and the wherefores’ …