Bloomberg (March 27)
“Prices for some of the world’s most pivotal products – foods, fuels, plastics, metals – are spiking beyond what many buyers can afford. That’s forcing consumers to cut back and, if the trend grows, may tip economies already buffeted by pandemic and war back into recession.”
Tags: Buffeted, Buyers, Consumers, Economies, Foods, Fuels, Metals, Pandemic, Plastics, Prices, Products, Spiking, Trend, War
WIRED (November 1)
The walkout at Google was “just the latest sign of tech worker unrest.” Tech workers are “starting to recognize that even well-paid tech jobs are not immune to” harassment and other internal workplace issues, as well as ethical concerns over the products they sell. Thursday’s protest was just “the latest in a string of collective actions by tech workers against their employers” that has included “similar attempts inside Microsoft, Salesforce, and Amazon.”
Tags: Amazon, Employers, Ethical, Google, Harassment, Microsoft, Products, Salesforce, Tech worker, Unrest, Walkout, Well-paid, Workplace issues
Wall Street Journal (June 21)
Investors aren’t quite sure “how to trade a trade war.” Some obvious stocks like Boeing and Caterpillar are being hit hard, but for many others there’s a lack of information on the potential impact, “partly because supply chains are so complex.” While there’s much to “suggest that trade war fears haven’t sunk in properly,” the bigger issue is that it is challenging “to price in something you don’t understand, and the implications of a trade battle are obscure, at best.” We don’t know “precisely which products will be targeted in the next round, or how long the tariffs will last.”
Tags: Boeing, Caterpillar, Complex, Fears, Impact, Implications, Investors, Obscure, Products, Supply chains, Targeted, Tariffs, Trade war
The Economist (March 19)
“Companies are abandoning functional silos and organising employees into cross-disciplinary teams that focus on particular products, problems or customers. These teams are gaining more power to run their own affairs. They are also spending more time working with each other rather than reporting upwards. But the transition to “a network of teams” in place of conventional hierarchy has hardly been smooth. Managing teams is “hard” and research routinely uncovers lapses. And even when teamwork is well managed, things can be taken too far. “Even in the age of open-plan offices and social networks some work is best left to the individual.”
Tags: Cross-disciplinary teams, Customers, Employees, Functional silos, Hierarchy, Individual, Network, Open-plan offices, Problems, Products, Research, Social networks, Teamwork