There’s plenty of research about how bad leadership creates health problems for employees. This piece argues that it is also bad for companies. I wonder how many leaders are brave enough to fire a toxic manager.
Author: joaovcunha
How do recover from a paper rejection
Nice piece from Nature on how to recover from getting a paper being rejected. If I may offer my own bit of advice, there are three points that have been helpful to me:
- Decide wether this is salvageable or whether it needs to become a book chapter.
- If it is salvageable, then begin the rewrite by writing a mock letter to the review team. Reviewers are not stupid, so it is important to make mindful choices about which points to address and which to ignore.
- In no case send the paper as is to another outlet, even if it is a lower tier journal.
Cool books: ‘Relating to things’
My main drive to do research is to understand what are the deep mechanisms at work around me. I feel that if I can at least see all of this hidden processes, I can carve some more agency in my life. A recently published book, called “Relating to Things: Design, Technology and the Artificial” offers amazing new insights about our relationship with things. I found it fascinating. I’ll let the book introduce itself:
We relate to things and things relate to us. Emerging technologies do this in ways that are interesting and exciting, but often also inaccessible or invisible. In Relating to Things, leading design researchers and philosophers respond to issues raised by this situation – inquiring into what it means to live with and relate to things that can actively relate to us, and that relate to each other in ways that do not involve us at all.
Case studies include Amazon’s Alexa, the Internet of Things, Pokémon Go and Roomba the robot vacuum cleaner. Authors explore everything from the care work undertaken by objects, reciprocal human/machine learning, technological mediation as a form of control, and what it takes to reveal things that tend to be hidden and that often (by design) conceal the ways in which they use us.”
Writing in the wild
I think that one of the most important skills for writers is to write from anywhere. This is not just about saving time. It is about shattering the myth that you need to be in some sort of perfect moment of inspiration to produce content. You do not. Writing is work, not inspiration. Love this story about how Cory Doctorow, one of the coolest sci-fi writers I know, has learned this skill.
Are you a discovery (academic) writer?
I always tought I was a bad writer ause I did not outline. Recently I took Brandon Sanderson’s writing course online and I found out that this is actually a good thing (or at least a possibility). Its called discovery writing. Check out this thread on the writing stack exchange. I’d also encourage you to follow Sanderson’s class, even if you dont write fiction and *only* write academic papers. Playlist on Youtube here.
>:-| Covid-19: Amazon
Amazon and its CEO have come under scrutiny during Covid-19 for its treatment of employees. Accusations include:
- Amazon is not notifying warehouse workers when employees test positive for Covid-19
- Employees complain about working under an atmosphere of fear because of what they interpret to be unsafe working conditions
- Amazon fired workers who protested over the company’s policies regarding employee risks during Covid-19 (here is a report on how amazon responded to this case)
These accusations have been worsened by how much Jeff Bezo’s, the company’s CEO, seems to have made during this crisis. Amazon is seeing a surge in consumer demand, which has pocketed its CEO about 24 billion USD due to an increase in amazon’s stock price.
250 years of office work
Very interesting and funny Financial Times piece on how many of the features of today’s office, including constant technological interruptions and working from a coffee place are not that new. The article then goes to list some things that are novel in the new world of work. My favorite are the idea that you should like your job: “A clerk writing in 1907 referred to his colleagues as ‘miserable little pen drivers – fellows in black coats with inky fingers and shiny seats on their trousers’.”
100 years of social media
This article looks at how paper-based communication can be described a early forms of social media. Quite an interesting read:
“A study conducted by Julia Gillen and Nigel Hall from the Lancaster and Manchester Metropolitan Universities concluded that “the low price and efficiency of the Edwardian postcard as an informal written communication technology was not equalled subsequently until the 21st Century.” Postcards writing often lacked punctuation, included abbreviated words and incomplete sentences. Like Twitter which restricts users to 140 characters per ‘tweet,’ postcards writers only had a limited amount of space to pen a message.”
Our invisible co-authors
In my first ever address to the faculty and staff of IÉSEG School of Management, I focused my speech on what I called my invisible co-authors. All of the staff that make research possible in my business school and in universities across the world. Today I came across a beautifully written thread that really resonates with what I said at the time. If you are staff, but especially if you are faculty in higher education, I strongly encourage you to read it here. (Congrats on the thread @readywriting).
Wonderful leadership: Short documentary on a cool SME
To complement my ‘despicable leadership’ series, I am posting examples of leadership worth admiring. Here’s a short documentary on an SME which is definetly worth the watch if you’re into corporate social responsability, SMEs and small-scale entrepreneurship.