Archive for the ‘Behaviour’ Category
February 11, 2011
My book now has a publication date in March 2011 and advance copies can be ordered from Springer.
It can also be obtained through Amazon (UK) and Bokus.
Springer Science+Business Media
Essence of a Manager
Pillai, Krishna, 1st Edition., 2011, XIV., Hardcover
Due: March 2011
What makes a “good” manager? This is a book by a manager about managers but it is not just for managers. It is for anyone and for everyone who is interested in the way people – and not just managers – behave and function around the world. Based on actual experience the title “Essence of a Manager” is a succinct distillation of what this book is about. It is not a management manual and yet it is a map for navigation and a guide for behaviour which can be valuable for practicing managers at all levels. It formulates a sound thesis to describe the qualities needed in a “good” manager and builds up from elemental qualities to develop a holistic view of a good manager. Nine fundamental attributes are proposed as being necessary and sufficient to describe a “good” manager. It is applied management philosophy for a thinking manager and deals with the fundamental drivers which lie deeper than language or culture and which control human behaviour.
Amazon (UK)
Bokus.com
Some reviews can be found here: Reviews EOAM – Around the world and back to Finspång
Lars-Otto Gullman, retired, former Director Metallurgy, Gränges, Finspång
I wish I had read Essence of a Manager some 40 years ago, prior to my own industrial career! A similar presentation of the demands on a manager and how a manager can develop his abilities I have not seen till now. In Essence of a Manager the author analyses the nature of the personal qualities a good manager must possess to be able to perform his tasks in a satisfactory way. A method, based upon interview technique, is presented as an effective means of identifying potentially good managers. Many examples are given from the author´s long and worldwide experience of managements styles in different countries and cultures.
Tags:behaviour, Business, Essence of a Manager, Krishna Pillai, Management
Posted in Behaviour, Business, Management | 1 Comment »
February 9, 2011
The latest revelations about the chequered career of Jatinder Ahluwalia being dismissed from Cambridge for falsifying data seems like a film script for Leonardo DiCaprio and another Catch Me If You Can movie.
At Cambridge Dr M.D. Brand, Reader in Cellular Biochemistry was his advisor and in a letter dated November 10, 1997, wrote:
…I am no longer prepared to act as PhD supervisor for Jatinder Ahluwalia, and…recommend that he removed from the Board’s list of graduate students because I believe he has been inventing experimental results.
Brand sent Ahluwalia a copy of his letter, and offered again to let him repeat his experiments with witnesses. Ahluwalia evidently didn’t take advantage of that offer. He lost his studentship funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council at the end of 1997, and was dismissed from the graduate studies program
on February 18, 1998.
While the actions at Cambridge and UCL seem to restore some faith in academic integrity some questions arise about his stint at Imperial College where he received his PhD and at the University of East London where he is currently employed as Senior Lecturer & Programme leader in Pharmacology but is writing papers about plagiarism.
He writes on the UEL site:
I undertook my PhD training at Imperial College, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and Novartis London, studying the mechanisms by which cannabinoid (CB1) and vanilloid (VR1) receptors regulate nociceptive transmission at pre-synaptic nerve terminals.
I was based in Novartis (London) throughout my doctoral studies.
The question arises as to whether Imperial College were aware of his shenanigans at Cambridge. His apparent employment or funding by Novartis during his PhD also raises questions about whether Novartis were aware of his dismissal from Cambridge and even about his discoveries for (or sponsored by) Novartis:
During my first year, we discovered that CB1 and VR1 receptors are expressed on pre-synaptic nerve terminals (Ahluwalia et al. Neuroscience 100, 685-688, 2000; Ahluwalia et al. Neuroscience 110, 747-753, 2002). The final year of my PhD was spent investigating the effect of the endocannabinoid anandamide on pre-synaptic neurotransmitter release from cultured dorsal root ganglion neurons (Ahluwalia et al. Journal of Neurochemistry, 84, 585-591, 2003; Ahluwalia et al. EJN, 17, 1-8, 2003).
His paper on plagiarism while at UEL also has some obvious commercial implications.
Imperial College, UEL and Novartis ought to be worried and perhaps so also should be the editors of Neuroscience and the Journal of Neurochemistry.
Tags:Cambridge University, Imperial College London, Jatinder Ahluwalia, Novartis, Scientific misconduct, University College London, University of East London
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Very fishy: Dismissed from Cambridge, PhD from Imperial, misconduct at UCL, employed at UEL
February 3, 2011
I have posted earlier about 12 retractions of papers concerning research done under the supervision of Sylvia Bulfone-Paus, a Director at the Research Center Borstel in Germany. Six of the retracted papers had been identified earlier and the next six are reported in Retraction Watch.
The retractions came after an investigation which confirmed the misconduct but put the blame squarely on two Russian researchers Dr. E. Bulanova and Dr. V. Budagian with comments that Bulfone-Paus bore responsibility as their supervisor but that she herself had not committed any misconduct. The blogger / whistle blower represented by the Marco Berns / Martin Frost persona had commented that the singling out of Bulanova and Budagian was suspicious and hinted darkly at much earlier wrong-doings (and in fact had specifically mentioned the year 1999).
The latest 6 retracted papers listed include one from 1999 giving some credence to the Martin Frost allegations:
Bulfone-Paus, S., Bulanova, E., Pohl, T, Budagian, V., Dürkop, H., Rückert, R., Kunzendorf, U., Paus, R., and Krause, H. Death deflected: IL-15 inhibits TNF-α-mediated apoptosis in fibroblasts by TRAF2 recruitment to the IL-15Rα chain. FASEB J. 13:1575-1585 (1999, cited 118 times)
For this paper Bulfone-Paus was both first author and corresponding author. It would seem that any misconduct here cannot be passed off onto authors nos. 2 and 4.
After the investigation Martin Frost wrote:
It was confirmed that the Institute Directors have been “snooping” on their workforce. They have indeed viewed the log files of e-mails of the workers. This deeply distressing news was compounded when it was revealed that the only person who the management arraigned after the Stasi-like “snooping” exercise was a member of der Betriebsrat (workers council) showing that the confidence essential for the worker – Betriebsrat relationship is now severely compromised.
The two other Directors are now discussing what to do next with Bulfone-Paus.
But as Retraction Watch describes, some damage control is being done by the institute with some assistance from the Editor of the EMBO Journal who includes the following sentence in his retraction notice:
The authors declare that key experiments presented in the majority of these figures were recently reproduced and that the results confirmed the experimental data and the conclusions drawn from them.
Why would the Journal publish a line so blatantly intended to white-wash some of the authors? Or does the editor mean that the retraction of the paper is somehow negated!
On this theme of the behaviour of Journals Martin Frost also wrote:
We have been sent the exchange of e-mails below from Dr. Karin Wiebauer. They describe Dr. Wiebauer’s efforts to rid the scientific literature of the contamination of the mainpulated Bulfone-Paus papers. ….. One interpretation of the exchange is that the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Immunology is stonewalling and attempting to bury the scientific miscconduct.
The sad saga goes on….
Tags:EMBO Journal, Forschungszentrum Borstel, Germany, Martin Frost, Research Center Borstel, Retracted papers, Scientific misconduct, Sylvia Bulfone-Paus
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
February 3, 2011
The Corruption Perception Index produced annually by Transparency International becomes meaningless relative to the scale of fraud and corruption with large contracts in the developed world and which do not seem to be reflected in the CPI.
An AP report carried by 660news.com reports:
Hundreds of defence companies that defrauded the U.S. military between 2007 and 2009 still received $285 billion in contracts from the Pentagon during the same period, a U.S. senator said Wednesday.
Citing a January report prepared by Pentagon acquisition officials at Sanders request, the senator said the bulk of the contracts, just over $280 billion, went to 211 companies that had civil judgments against them or settled fraud charges of more than $1 million.
During the same period, 30 defence contractors were convicted of criminal fraud, but still were awarded $682 million in new work, according to the Pentagon’s report.
Among the contractors listed in the report is AEY Inc., a Miami, Florida-based company that received a $300 million contract to supply ammunition to Afghan security forces. AEY got the work despite a record of poor performance on other government contracts.
The fraud involved shipment of millions of rounds of banned Chinese-made military ammunition that was repackaged to appear of Albanian origin. After nearly $67 million in payments, the Afghan ammunition contract was terminated in May 2008. The owner of AEY was sentenced to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2009 to a fraud conspiracy charge.
In the report, defence officials listed a series of actions the military has taken to guard against contractor wrongdoing, including the formation of a working group focused on procurement fraud.
I am quite sure that many lobbyists, middlemen, bureaucrats and politicians all received their share of the largesse in these Defence Contracts. The margins available in Defence contracts far exceed those available in other large infrastructure contracts.
Related posts:
- https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/corruption-in-the-european-union-is-alive-and-well/
- https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/chief-risk-officer-of-bayerische-landesbank-arrested-for-50-million-bribes/
Tags:Corruption Perception Index, Defense contractor, fraud, Pentagon, Transparency International
Posted in Behaviour, Corruption, Fraud, US | Comments Off on Reward for fraud: $285 billion in Pentagon contracts
February 3, 2011
Cyclone Yasi has come and gone.
Its speed was a blessing in disguise and has ensured that it is already well inland and reducing in strength. It has left behind a trail of destruction but few (if any) serious injuries or fatalities. The township of Cardwell was warned to evacuate, but about 100 residents chose not to leave and they have not been contacted as yet.
BBC:
Worst hit were the coastal towns of Tully, Mission Beach and Cardwell, with hundreds of houses destroyed. The cities of Cairns and Townsville were relatively unscathed but are being lashed by heavy rains; warnings of further storm surges have been issued. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said there had been no reports of deaths or serious injuries so far.
The similarities of Yasi to Katrina is apparent but the differences in their respective impacts is quite striking.
This may be partially due to geography and demographics and the speed with which Yasi drove inland, but observing both from across the world leads me to the perception that the primary differences between Queensland and Louisiana were
- the preparedness of the government and the population,and
- the sense of civic duty in Queensland, and
- the level of trust in the state government institutions, and
- the level of perceived duty within the institutions
The thought of Queensland police looting after Yasi as some New Orleans police did after Katrina is inconceivable. It’s just my perception but I believe it shows the difference between institutions having a fundamental belief that they have a duty to the population they serve and others where the concept of duty is much less developed.
credit bbc
Tags:Anna Bligh, Australia, Cyclone Yasi, Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana, Queensland, Yasi compared to Katrina
Posted in Australia, Behaviour, Natural Disasters, US, Weather | Comments Off on Queensland sees off Yasi: Preparedness ensures it was no Katrina
February 2, 2011
Following the case of plagiarism that was brought to light by the retraction of a paper in the journal Biotechnology Advances, the Vice Chancellor has responded by email:
Dear Sir,
Thanks for your mail.
As soon as we came to know about the plagiarism complaint against the reesearchers from our division of Molecular and cellular biology, we have formed a committe of senior faculty members of our university to probe the same.
We have also taken action as per the committee’s report. The committee’s report and the action taken details were informed to the DST and other funding agencies in India.
We have also advised our university’s research community to take proper care to strictly avoid occurring of such complaints in future
Dr.S.Radhakrishnan
Vice-Chancellor Kalasalingam University
Update 4th February:
The VC’s response is a little disappointing in that he has advised the university’s research community only to avoid future complaints and not to avoid the misconduct itself. He surely can not mean that the actions are acceptable if complaints are avoided.
So far there has been no response to a request to provide a copy of the “committees report”. It is still not known as to who served on this committee and what their conclusions and recommendations were. What sanctions are to be applied to those found responsible for misconduct is also unknown.
Tags:Biotechnology Advances, Kalasalingam Unversity, Plagiarism, retraction
Posted in Behaviour, India, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
February 2, 2011
Details emerging about the husky massacre in British Columbia makes it seem grotesque and macabre and certainly obscene. Not least is the fact that the General Manager of Howling Dogs received compensation for his own incompetence for the trauma of being attacked by a wounded sled-dog that he had failed to kill properly.
The solicitor knew, the employer knew, the employee knew, all the members of the Compensation Review Board knew —— and the employee was awarded compensation for his own acts of self-induced trauma. He was supported by his employer.
Did they receive some part of the compensation? Did the costs include those of the solicitor?
The Review Officer was a certain Allan Wotherspoon. The original claim was denied but Mr. Wotherspoon overturned that decision. He calls the incident of “the worker fighting off a wounded sled-dog and eventually despatching it” an “accident” and allows the claim! The executioner’s incompetence is called an accident and he gets compensated for it. Twisted logic indeed.
The Review report is here.
http://www.cbc.ca/bc/news/bc-110131-worksafebc-whistler-dog-cull.pdf
Tags:100 huskys massacred, Allan Wotherspoon, British Columbia, compensation for murder, Howling Dogs, Outdoor Adventures, Whistler, Workers' compensation
Posted in Behaviour, Canada | Comments Off on Receiving compensation for incompetence in executing 100 huskies is obscene
February 2, 2011
The mood of the demonstrators in Cairo is captured by the waving shoes in Tahrir Square as Mubarak announces he will not stand again — far too little, much too late.
The political message of shoe throwing or waving is quite unambiguous.
The shoes are out in Tahrir Square: image i.huffpost.com
In the meantime the duplicitous and corrupt Tony Blair praises Mubarak and reveals his view of democracy – “Democracy is Ok provided I like the result” !!!!!
“Blair said that meant there should not be a rush to elections in Egypt.”
It is incomprehensible for me that a corrupt and intellectually bankrupt lightweight such as Tony Blair with all his demonstrated failings could be “rewarded” by being made an envoy to the Middle East.
Tags:corruption, duplicity, Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, revolution, shoe throwing, shoe waving, Tahrir Square, Tony Blair
Posted in Behaviour, Corruption, Egypt | 1 Comment »
February 1, 2011
Tony Blair: Image via Wikipedia
Apparently Tony Blair and his government were more than mere US poodles. That Blair was an accomplished liar regarding his “sexed up” Iraq dossiers has become apparent. But that he had (has) little sense of ethics and could treat with the Devil for the sake of trade deals has always been suspected but is coming out clearly now.
British ministers secretly advised Libya on securing the successful early release of the Lockerbie bomber and demonstrate that Tony Blair’s Government was “playing false” over the issue.
If corruption is taken to be “having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money” it is not difficult to attach a label to Tony Blair and his government.
The Telegraph:
A Foreign Office minister sent Libyan officials detailed legal advice on how to use Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s cancer diagnosis to ensure he was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph show.
The Duke of York is also said to have played a behind-the-scenes role in encouraging the terrorist’s release.
The Scottish First Minister said the revelations confirm that while his administration acted according to its public pronouncements on the affair, Tony Blair’s Government was behaving duplicitously.
“The cables … show that the former UK Government were playing false on the issue, with a different public position from their private one,” said a statement released by Mr Salmond’s office.
Downing Street maintained at the time that is was not complicit in the release of al-Megrahi, and that the decision to free the convicted terrorist was taken by the Scottish Executive alone.
The Libyans closely followed the advice which led to the controversial release of Megrahi – who was convicted of the murder of 270 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103 – within months of the Foreign Office’s secret intervention.
According to American officials, Mr Blair was suspected of securing trade deals after agreeing to include Megrahi in the agreement.
After Megrahi was released in August 2009, another American document records Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s comments – which suggest that Prince Andrew, the UK’s trade envoy, may have played a role. The document records: “He [Gaddafi] went on to thank his ‘friend Brown’, the British Prime Minister, his government, Queen Elizabeth, and Prince Andrew, who ‘against all odds encouraged this brave decision’. [Gaddafi] noted that the UK efforts would positively affect ‘exchange’ between the two countries.
Tags:Blair's governmnt engineered Megrahi release, corruption, First Minister of Scotland, Lockerbie bomber release, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Prince Andrew, Tony Blair
Posted in Behaviour, Business, Corruption, Ethics, International Trade, UK | 2 Comments »
February 1, 2011
Husky dog sled: Image by Feuillu via Flickr
Outdoor Adventures Whistler (ph.604 932 0647) ordered the massacre of up to 100 huskies when their business dipped after the Winter Olymics.
Barbarism takes many forms and is not confined to the Balkans or the Middle East or Afghanistan or Africa. It is also found in British Columbia.
UPI reports:
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 31 (UPI) — A dogsled tour company in British Columbia is accused of killing 100 dogs when its business faded after the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Vancouver radio station CKNW said documents from WorkSafeBC, the provincial occupational health agency, show an employee of Outdoor Adventures Whistler got compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder after allegedly being made to kill the dogs.
The radio station reported the dogs were shot or had their throats cut, and were buried in a mass grave.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/01/31/Sled-operator-accused-of-killing-100-dogs/UPI-47971296497350/#ixzz1Ch1K4uQo
Tags:British Columbia, Dog massacre, Husky massacre, Outdoor Adventures Whistler
Posted in Behaviour, Canada | 4 Comments »
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