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In THE PURITAN GIFT (see page 118), my brother and I described the foundation in the late 1940s of a small electronics company with a large name: TOKYO KYUSHIN KOGYO KABUSHIKI KAISHA; and how, over a very few years, it evolved into a large company with a short name: SONY. We also regretted the decision …

There has long been a battle between Fiscal Doves and Hawks. I capitalise these names because they describe two different breeds with opposing ways of thought. Doves tend to be distrustful of the market place, believing in the efficacy of state intervention. Hawks tend to believe in the efficacy of free markets and are distrustful …

The answer, dear reader, is that I wish the PURITAN GIFT website to be a living thing. So many websites look dead — indeed, most of them are dead, in the sense that they have not obviously changed for a year or more. If, however, the reader sees a topical reference right in the middle …

Today the Cypriot cabinet is flying to Brussels for discussions about the future role of Cyprus in the EU. Many commentators — and, by the way, most of my friends — believe that that the outcome of these discussions will be not only the expulsion of Cyprus from the eurozone but perhaps even the collapse …

This week has seen the publication of a report drawn up by a leading British lawyer called Robert Francis on “appalling standards of care” at a National Health Service hospital called Mid-Staffordshire. This report concluded (in the words of our Secretary of State for Health) that these problems “were also a failing of the wider …

Dear Fellow Puritans: Last Saturday the Financial Times reported five separate incidents occurring within a few days of each other affecting the structure of Boeing’s new Dreamliner aircraft. Happily no one was injured or killed, although some of these incidents occurred when the planes were carrying passengers. You can read the article by clicking on: …

Dear Fellow Puritans, For some years, cynics have predicted the collapse of the Eurozone or, at least, the expulsion from it of some of its “fringe” members — Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. In blogs and elsewhere, I have consistently taken an opposite line. I believed that Germany and Poland, acting together as its …

Dear Fellow Puritans: Brother Kenneth has just drawn my attention to an article by Steve Denning in FORBES of 30 November describing the collapse of Michael Porter’s consulting company, Monitor Group. In THE PURITAN GIFT, we argued that America’s great inherited managerial culture achieved a peak of excellence at the midpoint of the last century …

Dear Fellow Puritans, One of the issues discussed at the Vienna Drucker Forum was the merits of “shareholder capitalism” versus “stakeholder capitalism”. The first argues strongly that the objective of a business is to maximise profitability for its shareholders, which includes raising the share price. The second takes the view that the objective must be …

Dear Fellow Puritans, I am taking part in the annual Drucker Forum in Vienna. Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) was, as you know, an Austrian who migrated first to Britain and then to the US to become the world’s best-known writer on management. He also became a serious critic of what we can call Capitalism-1, …