Is Nature or Nurture More Important in Business Leadership (Management Science)

The debate between nature versus nurture is every bit alive today as it was in the past as science has yet to conclusively resolve the issue. Reviewing the perceptions of people who hire executives as well as a supportive debate helps formulate your own understandings.

Warren Buffet believes most of talent is innate and that the top schools are not the major factor in his executive selection. Warrent Buffet Innate Talent.

According to A Debate Leaders Born or Made there is open discussion on the genetic factors and environment. To me, it would seem that both are going to have comingled influences.

A Perspective:  Environment, education, and opportunity enhance innate characteristics, personality traits, abilities, and interest to encourage the development of high performing executive leadership. 

Boerma M, Coyle EA, Dietrich MA, Dintzner MR, Drayton SJ, Early JL 2nd, Edginton AN, Horlen CK, Kirkwood CK, Lin AYF, Rager ML, Shah-Manek B, Welch AC, Williams NT. Point/Counterpoint: Are Outstanding Leaders Born or Made? Am J Pharm Educ. 2017 Apr;81(3):58. doi: 10.5688/ajpe81358. PMID: 28496278; PMCID: PMC5423074.

18th-Century Philosophy Paperback Book (Lewis White Beck)

Over the years I collected many books and try to organize them. Being unsure of what to do with them I figured I would list a few that seem to be related to the genre which may range from business to philosophy. 

I picked up books sort of read them and then need to find a place for them. Eventually I would like to get into rare books and found a few here and there because people didn't know what they were. One of those hobby things.

This book discusses the concepts that led to the modern era. This book is not rare.

18th-Century Philosophy Paperback (Lewis White Beck) Free Shipping!

Closed Systems of Corruption (Thought Experiment on Hate and Corruption)

Closed systems that encourage corruption and hate are dangerous for society. This may happen from time to time when a social network of poor actors develop closed networks that take on alternative objectives often around racial, religious, ideological, political and other nefarious purposes (i.e. self and group advantage.). The biggest factors beyond the number of victims created is the relative open acceptance of such closed systems and the lack of checks n balances to protect the public. 

In this hypothetical philosophical thought experiment a cultic network of corrupted officials and friends engaged in coordinated behaviors as well as failed to report poor behaviors such as sexual exploitation of women, targeting those deemed less than human, intentionally targeting of minorities (not necessarily specific to any race, religion, or politic), extremists views, harming kids (disespecting parents, boundaries, and health of kids.), manipulating the elderly for money, rumor spreading, threats, extreme rudeness to victims, encouraged violence, taking advantage of vets, retaliating against whistleblowers, concerns over missing drug money, pushing/stalking young victims to commit suicide and sharing complaints with perpetrators to further target and silence concerned citizens. 

We included all of the bad stuff one can think of to show the potential breadth of actions distorted closed systems may engage in and how they may function where the perpetrators, decision makers of justice, and those who were to be a backstop are part of the same homogeneous social cult. People were well aware of the victims and clan preferences but were too fearful to stand for their oaths, values or community. Complacency costed people and society so renewed commitment to our shared societal values is essential for a strong future. 

This is a learning example only that should be taken with a grain of salt. As a thought experiment, we have discovered four phases. At present we are exploring phase #3 where victims accept their place in society and do their best to uphold social contracts to protect the public. That could include teaching and supporting the highest functioning of systems. We are also discussing #4 Community Resilience in its effort to reduce future risks and build a thriving environment (hypothetically).

The following chapter discusses closed systems of corruption and ways to increase system resilience. Remember this is a thought experiment for learning purposes so take with a grain of salt. The beauty of this is that different people based on their socialized symbolism and background are going to see different things. However we should all learn to focus on creating environments where people thrive. We can learn from hypothetical examples and build models to enhance performance.

 Building Resilient Ant-corruption Systems

Menu, Event, Word-of-Mouth in Restaurant Selection UP Norh Lodge (UP Tourism)

 

The UP North Lodge Gwinn

The U.P. has unique restaurants and food establishmens cut into the wilderness. The UP North Lodge is a blend of rustic class perfect for those vacationing on one of the many lakes in the area or engaged in some commercial activities. 

The other day I drove from Escanaba to Gwinn for a meeting and as you have it I had the wrong day. Duh! Not wanting to leave empty handed I ordered something to eat and read my Kindle.  

According to this study menu, reputation, and word of mouth are important for restaurant selection (Chua, et. al. 2020). The choice being somewhat dependent the purpose such as casual vs. business. This place looks like it would fit multiple venues.

What this study seems to say is that the fundamentals of offering, venue and reputation count.

Customer Restaurant Choice: An Empirical Analysis of Restaurant Types and Eating-Out Occasions

Chua BL, Karim S, Lee S, Han H. Customer Restaurant Choice: An Empirical Analysis of Restaurant Types and Eating-out Occasions. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Aug 28;17(17):6276. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17176276. PMID: 32872267; PMCID: PMC7503372.

Gifted and Higher Ed (Education Theory)

Education for the gifted can be challenging because of the exceptional nature of some skills and abilities. That may put the student outside of normal learning processes as well as an outlier in many standardized assessments. With this population one might think they are looking at one thing but actually looking at something else through co-complementaries. Because education is often defined around a limiting structural elite standard the best and brightest who dont always give standard answers are sometimes forever lost to society due to boredom and inappropriate feedback. There are ways to improve education with an enhancement to standard curriculum that provides opportunities to chase alternative lines of logic to solve problems beyond initial assessments. Let them do it their own way in the way they process deeper knowledge.

Not all people develop in a linear fashion. The gifted often see complex problems and solve them in unique ways and that is why they make strong artistic outputs, excel in certain sports, become inventors, and scientists.

In online education one has the capacity to coordinate the deeper lines of development and opportunities based on their ability to differentiate, follow and solve problems beyond most other students. Thus the standard is a solid base but one can include additional opportunities for natural self selection of interests in problem depth and learning styles.

Since the student is the one who selects based on inner capacity there is no elite pre conditioning, wealth doesn't help one select the additional learning paths and thus the true gifted are more likely to be discovered for further development (theoretically). For now we will continue to limit human capital development based on the limitations of the designers versus the limitations in growth of the student. The best and brightest are often quantitatively and quantitatively different and it has nothing to do with superficial characteristics or wealth that others judge value on. It is deep and neural.

There are many ways to look at solving problems. If you can't see the possibilities and probabilities then you are bound to repeat.

“A diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.” James Madison

Giftedness and gifted education: A systematic literature review

ABaccassino Francesca , Pinnelli Stefania (2023) Giftedness and gifted education: A systematic literature review. Frontiers in Education, 7 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2022.1073007 DOI=10.3389/feduc.2022.1073007

What Might Communities Do After a Scandal? (Hypothetical Thought Experiment Stage 4 Commmunity Resilience)

We are discussing a hypothetical thought experiment example for philosophical learning purposes on hate and corruption. In the example a local group called "The Clan" contained some corrupt officials, justice decision makers, and a cultic social network of blind followers that harmed a number of people with actions including false rumors to outright threats and enrichment/financial exploitation. Those who put in official complaints were retaliated against, put on targeting lists, investigations into clan members blocked, so on and so forth. 

Yikes! 😬Good thing its just a learnimg example. 

Eventually many victims of similar behaviors that included hate, aggression, manipulation, sexual exploitation, freedom of speech violations, human rights rejection, putting kids in harm’s way, manipulating elderly for money, mistreating vets, etc. came forward and the dam of silence was broken. This happens over time as patterned behavior continues forward it creates many different victims.

A question arises on what a community does once they are aware that these scandals were going on for a long period of time and there are victims out there subject to horrific misbehaviors? They may have known something was wrong but generally had no ability to deal with it or formalize it. The victims have absolutely no recourse and that appeared intentional. Unexpectedly, what resulted that the perpetrators didnt expect was a sense of community to form where people began to commit to a perception of an invisible community and work toward making their economy and quality of lives better. As a species we are designed to adapt and improve so the deeper roots of social logic seem to be the best explanation of the good that can come from bad.

The study below indicates that an apology is helpful when scandals are finally uncovered. One might think an apology is helpful versus denial, but I believe it is the feeling associated with moving down a path of correction and in our example additional protection for the community members. It may also be a relief that the pain and suffering of the victims is no longer discarded and that greater alignment between word, action, and social contracts (i.e. artifacts of values in a community/nation) will in the future be more likely be upheld.

Further in this example, the victims will likely always have a sour taste in their mouth due to the grotesque nature of behaviors and events. Lack of correction due to inconvenience and lingering bigotries toward out-group members (typically by race, religion, politic). You can't undo what they have done and while people can forgive it is their duty to not forget. That duty is important for those who swear to a higher moral conscious and believe in their oaths to their people/community. It provides a sense of purpose. 

In this learning example we moved through a 1.) default in justice, 2.) dehumanization, 3.) acceptance of social order, and now including 4.) community resilience.

Thus, in a best case scenario the community adapts to improve the functioning of systems, they gain a sense of community and improve their economic/quality of life prospects, and the victims find purpose in the violations of social contracts. In this case they choose to teach, help, improve and enrich but they do not choose the path of being part of the problem with complacency. They are the night watchman/woman of our universal essential values. The unsung heroes of our time paving a bright future for the next diverse generation that must compete as a unified peoples like never seen in history prior.

Atoning vs. evading when caught transgressing: two multi-theory-based experiments investigating strategies for politicians responding to scandal

*This is a thought experiment philosophical hypothetical example for learning purposes. Take with a grain of salt as the example started a number of years to explore the power of democracy to adapt oranically; often a little messy. It is what has made many democracies strong and responsive to their full constituents needs . The orientation back to people and communities. What might be interesting is to discuss what a third party something like The Hypothetical Feather Party focused around essential values/mission, economic, quality of life, science, strategic management, evidence decision making and broad based growth might add to total system development and performance. This is just a story for learning explorations so once a few current projects of economic book and paper complete I can consider starting a book of leadership in an age of radical transformations. Maybe a type of modern The Republic philosophical dribble book based on ideals for pontification. Time will tell.

David E Clementson, Wenqing Zhao, Michael J Beatty, Atoning vs. evading when caught transgressing: two multi-theory-based experiments investigating strategies for politicians responding to scandal, Human Communication Research, Volume 50, Issue 4, October 2024, Pages 545–560, https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqae015

CEO Confidence High in Q12025 (Economy and Management)

CEOs are fairly optimistic so far in Q1, 2025. That confidence may come from a number of areas but likely primarily from their perception of the market and their opportunities within it. Such optimism will likely have an impact on investment and other prospecting behaviors. More importantly a business climate.

The report doesn't necessarily go into this level of depth, but it would be interesting to know which industries are more optimistic and the specific reasons they are. However, sometimes it is hard to put your finger on the precise reasons and in some cases the respondents might not know.

Therefore, some of it might come from financials but other aspects may come from business climate and personal feelings. This is why one would read multiple industry reports and surveys to gain a better understanding.

The Conference Board From cautious optimism to confident optimism

-44% CEO Economic conditions are better. 

-37% Conditions in own industry are better.

-56% CEOs expect economic conditions will improve. 

52% Conditions in their own industry to improve. 

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