Interesting times

The last couple of weeks have been fascinating. Last week in Bavaria with the editorial board of E:CO, this week in Singapore for the IRAHSS seminar. In both cases it has been a chance to get together with some really intelligent people who care about the way the world is going. OK there have been a few frustrations with the odd speaker (see past posts) but overall its been a chance to learn and think. I have a host of material as a result and some will feed into the blog over the next week. One of the interesting themes which came up over the last couple of weeks in Singapore is the ethical dimension to managing risk. Singapore rejected derivatives (something that the rest of world may wish they had followed) in part on ethical grounds. The subject came up a lot the last two days and one of the arguments I and others made was that making decisions under conditions of uncertainty on ethical grounds was not just right, but a method of risk mitigation. Either way my thanks to the University of Augsburg and the Singapore Government for allowing me to participate in two weeks of deep intellectual stimulation.

And for those who worry about ethics, Dr Vaine has finally granted me the great honour of a specific mention (well he uses Dennis, but slips to Dave two thirds of the way through). Great satire and a timely reminder of the absurdity of the carpet baggers who populate the management space.