Posted by Marc Hodak on June 9, 2007 under Self-promotion | 
I don’t expect big things from my Enron presentation because its breaks new ground in research or analysis. It doesn’t. Nor does it come to any startling new conclusions. What it does is distill the whole, incredibly complicated story to the essential elements that distinguished Enron from all the other companies whose greedy, lazy, or corrupt management didn’t bankrupt them. And it puts it all together in a form uniquely useful to a professor who has to cover this material in about two hours. That’s why I expect big things from this presentation.
My wife, who counted all the non-revenue generating hours I put into it, is skeptical. I can now point out that this submission is suddenly among SSRN’s Top 10 in the Organizational Behavior Research Centers Papers. But I’m afraid that just makes her more concerned–that this nominal success in an admittedly narrow category will only egg me on in spending unruly amounts of time preparing the remaining cases.
Posted by Marc Hodak on June 8, 2007 under History |
Well, there is no news in Belgium, where I was this morning on my way to Switzerland. I don’t know if there is much news here, either, but I find Switzerland a much more fascinating place. While most people think of Switzerland as a peace-loving country, it’s history is among the most violent in Europe right up to about 150 years ago. In fact, it’s long history of being literally at the center of conflicts between ever-shifting Great Powers led them to eventually figure out that they could only be the bone between big dogs. But they also figured that if they stuck together, given their home field advantage in highly rugged terrain, they could impose a very high cost on invaders. The Swiss used this combination of circumstances to form a federation that could assert its neutrality. Once accepted as a neutral country, they were left alone to develop.
Anyone who doubts the costs that wars impose even on the victors need only look at Switzerland versus her neighbors today. Beyond its stunning topography, Switzerland has all the cultural, legal, and economic elements of a remarkably stable society. Integrity is very big here–being a person of your word. That is the ultmate source of credibility when violence has been taken away as an option. Though peace-loving, they retain their original success formula of defensive preparation. Every man has military training, sustaining the credo that preparation for war is the best insurance that you may never have to fight one. Today, being surrounded by the E.U., war is the furthest thing from the Swiss mind–a remarkable void in mindspace, given the arc of civilization in Central Europe. And they won’t fight other people’s wars either, given their less than proud past as a major supplier of mercenaries.
More later as we travel from the French west to the German east. I don’t mean for this to be a travelogue, so I’ll think some more about the lessons Switzerland has for incentives–perverse and otherwise.
Posted by Marc Hodak on June 4, 2007 under Scandal |
Well, my material on the Enron scandal is up on SSRN for review and critique. Warning: This is not the Enron story presented as morality tale. This is intended to provide graduate students practical information for evaluating business and regulatory policy.
Michael Jensen has been trying to open up SSRN to these kinds of materials, and encouraged me to submit this. This fully sourced material on Enron is for my “History of Scandal” class starting next Fall at NYU. I will be preparing other cases for this class in a similar format throughout the summer, including Credit Mobilier, the Erie scandal, Kreuger & Toll, etc.
This is the next evolution from a seminar I taught over the last couple of years on corporate meltdowns, taking it to the next level. I’d love to hear what people think.
Posted by Marc Hodak on June 1, 2007 under Invisible trade-offs |
That quote came from a 21-year old student who flew back from Europe with the TB guy, meaning she may have been exposed to infection. Yes, it was selfish of him. But I’m somehow bothered that we apparently have students, journalists, and probably many readers who believe that “selfish” is a worthwhile distinction in this matter.
My personal suspicion of this strange label began as a child hearing my mom complaining about my “selfishness” when it appeared to me that her real complaint was about me not satisfying her wishes in lieu of mine. Like every child, I wanted to make my mom happy, but I was still bothered by the logic of her complaint. I suppose that most kids internalize the negative connotation of “selfishness” as guilt when they make trade-offs in their favor versus other people. For some reason, I couldn’t do that. I grew up considering other’s interests and feelings in a fairly normal way, but I also came to view “selfish” as a fundamentally dishonest accusation, an indictment of the accuser more than the accused.
Don’t get me wrong–I would be quite upset about someone deciding to put me at risk by bringing an infectious disease into my passenger compartment. In this case, it was a personal injury lawyer who must have weighed the liability risk of what he did. But I wouldn’t whine about his behavior being selfish. My complaint would be that it was coercive–he didn’t give me the choice. He brought me into the trade-off of staying in Europe and probably dying versus getting to the U.S. and probably living, while exposing me to a minimal risk. His selfishness in making that trade-off would be no less than my selfishness in denying my consent (or complaining about being exposed.)
One could just as well view this situation in the obverse and say that it exposes a lack of heroism. The infected man was not heroic by staying put in Europe to die. The complaining student was not heroic in suggesting that this mans life was worth the small risk to her. In other words, selfishness is here, as everywhere, on both sides of the equation. So what? Either side could have adopted a heroic stance. Heroism is praiseworthy, but optional.
