Business today entails a good deal more than selling your products and services to customers. Increasingly companies and organisations are obliged to show sound business management that includes not only profits and a healthy bottom line, but also concern for their environmental impact.
Post Office privatisation seems a trivial policy to bring a government crashing down, but Japanese Premier Junichiro Koizumi has staked his political life on plans to split up and sell off Japan Post. After what he called the ”forces of resistance” voted down the proposal, he called a snap election.
”So, President Thabo Mbeki, exquisitely dressed as always, had a little huffy the other day about gated communities, accusing them of perpetuating apartheid-style separation. I can’t say that I’m a big fan of them either. As much as I love those grandiose fountains and dinky conifers, all in a row,” writes Lev David.
Germany’s conservative leader, Angela Merkel, recently presented her campaign team for next month’s general election, shrugging off remarks by a colleague who had described east German voters as ”frustrated cows”. Merkel, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats, introduced nine members of her team who are likely to play leading roles in any Merkel-led Cabinet.
Western governments heard a faint echo from the 1970s recently as the escalating cost of petrol contributed to higher inflation. And with tension in the Middle East providing another reminder of life three decades ago, the message was that consumers can expect more of the same over the coming months.
With only six gold medals, five less than the Paris haul in 2003, Africa’s poor showing at the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) world championships in Helsinki, Finland, has incensed sports administrators and athletes alike.
In the spectrum of corporate incentives, the cabbage and the cauliflower don’t figure too prominently. Except in Scotland, where managers at two branches of the Bank of Scotland made staff sit the vegetables on their desks to try to prompt improved performance. The move prompted outrage instead.
Innovative Cape Town research has provided valuable insights into why poor, unemployed people don’t turn to entrepreneurship — and another survey will be under way later this year to try to untangle this little-understood part of the economy.
Click on image for full-size view.
Click on image for full-size view.