Simon Caulkin

Many accepted business practices turn out to correlate with mediocrity rather than greatness. So why should we insist on importing such practices into hospitals, universities and charities?

Performance management is one of those many management issues (leadership is another) that becomes more puzzling the more you look at it.

BY THE end of the 20th century, management consultancy was a $100bn-a-year business. Considering that there is no accepted body of theory or practice for consultants to sell, it is not a profession, is unregulated and is not subject to anything resembling

THE BIZARRE tale of Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, which has been penalised for treating its patients too quickly, shows just how hard it is for managers to manage in Labour’s idiosyncratic pseudo-markets.

The legal profession warns that legislative changes are likely to put a slow burn under the whole employment relationship, including pay and seniority as well as retirement.

Buying IT systems is notoriously difficult, which might be thought a reason for approaching them with less than the current blind faith. But they are only the most obvious symptom of a much broader failing which a number of observers believe could undermi

DESPITE WHAT they say – and often even think – many, perhaps most, companies are surreptitiously at war with their customers.

By charging statospheric prices, Bordeaux’s top-flight chateaux may be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs

Professionals have never been more important, nor under more pressure, according to a new report.

FLEXIBILITY’ HAS become an economic and social fault-line.