Simon Caulkin

THE BANKERS have claimed another victim – this column. Cost-cutting as a result of the worst media recession in a lifetime means that Observer Management will disappear next week.

THE BANKRUPTCY of General Motors was a defining moment – in effect a symbolic final line under the management century that began with the invention of mass production and was brought to an end by the series of explosions that blew up the financial sector

As Larry Elliott noted in The Guardian recently, since the 1960s the liberal state has been stood on its head. Whereas 40 years ago markets were framed by strong checks and balances, while within the law individuals could, and did, tell officials to mind

Lynda Gratton’s new book, Glow: How You Can Radiate Energy, Innovation and Success , was written before the crunch, but many will find its subject – self-help in a globalised and corporate world – perfectly suited for the times.

WILL ROYAL MAIL be New Labour’s political and managerial watershed? There could hardly be a clearer test case of what, if anything, 12 years of bruising encounters with public-sector reform have taught it.

SIGH. Another grand efficiency wheeze that should have been strangled at birth.

IN AESOP’S fable of the boy who cried wolf, the sting in the tail is that when the wolf actually appears, the young shepherd has lied so many times that no one comes to his aid even when the wolf is devouring the flock (and, in some versions, the boy hims

JOHN LOCKE defined a madman as someone “reasoning correctly from erroneous premises”. For Einstein, madness was repeatedly doing the same thing and hoping for a different result. The worst of modern management – and alas, that often seems most of it – man

AS THE DUST clears after the collapse of the old financial order, mixed with fear and loathing is a palpable sense of release.

THE CREDIT crunch confronts the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement with its biggest crisis. Over two decades, the idea that companies should voluntarily “put something back” has acquired impressive support from the great and the good.