隐形知识的转型:马来西亚华人家族制造业研究

马来西亚华人家族企业文化的特征是以"家"作为其管理模式,是一种集企业文化与权威于一体的家族文化。在"家族至上"的意识下,企业的成员和个体完全归属于家族,个人利益也须服从于家族利益,一切都以家族利益为重。所有的家族成员都有义务尽全力去追求家族的兴旺、发达和荣耀。家族成员都身居要职,掌握着家族企业的隐性知识和核心秘密。由于马来西亚华人家族的利益和企业利益的高度一致,因此他们都会严守秘密,创新其组织,因而制造出利基产品(Niche Product)而使本身企业在激烈的竞争中立于不败之地。当马来西亚华人中小型家族企业(SMEs)经历世代交替之际,这些华人企业却鲜少着重于如何发展其创办人的隐性知识。然而,为确保企业的永续发展,马来西亚华人企业的新一代已开始将隐性知识更加具体化,培育和创新其企业管理、进行企业改革和改善企业的行销技巧。     

The Anti-Axial Age

Karl Jaspers famously characterized the period from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the third century before Christ as an “Axial Age” in which intellectual freedom and creativity blossomed as never before. This article argues that it was followed, five hundred years later, by an “Anti-Axial Age”, which devised a novel formula for intellectual and political repression. Its essence was the state’s capture of the millenial narrative, which had first been developed as religious doctrine within Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Involving the two great classical empires of Western Eurasia, Persia and Rome, and then empowering the expansion of Islam, the Anti-Axial Age left an ideological legacy that continues to haunt the contemporary world.     

Police Perceptions of Irrational Unstable Behaviours and Use of Force

Police identification of people experiencing mental illness is usually based on either the person having an official contact history with police or through observing behavioural indicators commonly associated with mental illness during an encounter. Police have voiced concerns with their ability to identify and respond to people experiencing mental illness in a timely way and report that they commonly resort to more coercive tactical options to resolve encounters. The present study employed a mixed method design to examine 286 police use of force incidents to investigate the association between force used on and by offenders displaying irrational-unstable behavioural characteristics. The irrational-unstable offenders were two times more likely to be perceived by police to have an apparent mental disorder and almost four times more likely to have a known mental health history; one in six had an official record of contact with mental health services. There were few differences in police and offender use of force, considering force as both a categorical and a continuous variable, while incident-level comparisons suggested that police force was generally proportional to offender resistance. Implications are discussed in terms of the need to redress limitations with the traditional police approach style.     

On Jordan Peterson,Postmodernism, and PoMo-Bashing

Jordan Peterson says that postmodernists say no interpretation is better than another. I would no sooner identify Peterson’s adversaries as those who have been misled by “postmodernism” than I would identify them as misled by “sustainability,” “diversity,” “multiculturalism,” or “intersectionality.” Such fare is mainly symptomatic. “Postmodern” invocations are often like “sustainability” invocations: inessential. This piece is not a defense of postmodernism. It is a critique of PoMo-bashing.     

President-Elect Trump: Is the Past Prologue?

There is worldwide interest and concern over the pending US Presidency of Donald Trump. This article recounts the experience of the author and entrepreneur Merv Griffin with Trump in his business career and suggests clues for examining his exercise of the power of the Presidency. His choices for his cabinet and his advisers may well determine his success or failure. The evidence thus far is troubling.