Keynes said he could see no reason why a government should become involved in owning a railway. However, the result of privatizing British Rail and trying to open it to competition, suggests Keynes may have been short-sighted. Monopoly might be a bad thing when exploited by some profit maximising economist, but the case against [...]

Milton Friedman is given a rather severe critique in The Rise and Fall of Management, especially over his malign influence on industrial management, how it is taught and how it is done. The Friedmanism which best captures his contribution to that endeavour is the one which tells the world that ‘corporate officials’ have no ‘social [...]

As recounted in ‘The Rise and Fall of Management’, from the earliest days of industrialisation down to the present day, perhaps one of the most striking step changes to take place has been the adoption of the strategic perspective. It was not till the mid 1960s that long range planning and what became known as [...]

Earlier this year it was reported in the national press that, despite the decline in its investments and fall in profit from £576m to £17m, the former mutual Standard Life’s chief executive, Sir Sandy Crombie, received £380,000 bonus on top of his salary of £754,000. Fellow director Keith Skeoch’s take was £1.3m while [...]

A key tenet of free market capitalism is that businesses should focus exclusively on maximising shareholder value and not allow other considerations, apart from compliance with the law, to intrude on their business activities. As demonstrated in ‘The Rise and Fall of Management’, approaches such as corporate philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and business ethics, are [...]