Get back on the rails
Whilst both the government and the market plays ever closer attention to the dismal performance of Railtrack it is worth asking why a separate track authority was needed in the first place. Given that the financial case is so compelling, how might Railtrack now be renationalised so as to achieve autonomy with real accountability?
How to manage blame
Managers are unavoidably charged to balance the benefit of innovation with the risks of new processes, and to do this well. But the disastrous effects of asbestos manufacture and BSE indicate that markets and regulation are not helping.
A New Public Sector
Since the early days of privatisation, there has been an evident need for a framework which gave operational autonomy and managerial responsibility in public services but which was not the framework of the plc. But there is merit in pluralism here too.
Be less cynical, stupid
It is the state of economy that decides elections: Or so the theory goes. The evidence, however, suggests that voters do pay far greater attention to the issues and politicians really do mean what they say.
The customer knows best
The management of public services is a key issue for the next five years. The process of re-appointing Tony Blair as Britain's CEO gives some pointers to how it should be done.
Shock of the new
Not all business strategy problems have answers, including those of BT, as Sir Christopher Bland will find when he takes over.
More spark for less grief
The Central Electricity Generating Board dominated the British electricity market for almost 50 years, representing the best of central planning. However, it is competitive markets that, whilst far from from being perfect, deliver the greatest economic benefits.
High street homilies
As Marks and Spencer goes "back to basics", its story is a paradigm of what happened to British business in the last decade. Was the company's problem that it changed too little - or that it changed too much?
Intellectual rights and wrongs
What do the arguments over Napster and South African drugs have in common? Both illustrate weaknesses in the existing regime for the management of intellectual property.
Peak performance
The idea of rational profit- and utility maximisation is prominent in economics, but was challenged by Herbert Simon, a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics who died in February. Instead Simon emphasised the idea of bounded rationality in economics. This article explains why that approach deserves to survive its author.