Business is run by simplifiers. They claim you can only manage what you can measure. They define and digitize complex, open systems in order to control them. Business however is like life. Not everything of value can be measured. Not everything important makes sense. Not everything can be controlled
At SWISSUES, we go back to a time before Analytical Frameworks [i]; before Management by Objectives [ii]; before Scientific Management [iii]; and before Utilitarianism [iv]. None of these understood that the Universe is under no obligation to make sense [v], but they made their name by persuading us otherwise.
What SWISSUES does is try to make sense of why something doesn’t make sense [vi].
Œconomics arose from the moral philosophies of Adam Smith. His book, The Wealth of Nations (1776) is considered to be the first formalisation of economic thought. It was the study of open systems; of people, morality, money and motivations. Smith was a philosopher, not an economist. His first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, (1759) described the natural principles that govern morality and the ways in which humans understand them. Successors reduced these to unnatural, closed systems that could only prove their orignal assumptions. From these arose justifications for all sorts of misdirection and mischief. That is our excuse, if we need one, for trying to make sense of why something doesn’t make sense.
This web site is managed by Bill Young who is always delighted to receive your suggestions, complaints and threats.
[i] Michael Porter
[ii] Peter Drucker
[iii] Frederick W Taylor
[iv] Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
[v] Neil deGrasse Tyson
[vi] Michael Fenn