Ron Desi, a professor at the University of Baltimore Towson, just posted an interesting analysis of "The Office" episode where: "Dunder Mifflin corporate asked Michael to gather some information on a competitor in a potential new market. Michael and Dwight decide to go “undercover” and obtain competitive intelligence. Michael pretended to be a potential client while Dwight pretended to be an interested potential employee." "I’ll be asking my MGMT 600 class to deal with this ethical dilemma and I’m sure some will fall on the side of Michael and other will say that everything he did was wrong. What would you do given the same situation?"
Hello, Bonnie, don't ask me where I've watched Prince Family Paper. It hasn't taken place at http://www.hulu.com/watch/54236/the-office-prince-family-paper recommended by Ron Desi because there I've got no more than the message "We're sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States". Never mind.
Well, whom do you regard the most culpable person in the episode Prince Family Paper? Your answer is "Dwight Schrute", I'm afraid. In my humble opinion the owner of that family business is the most culpable person. However, is he rally "a sucker"? I don't think so. He simply tries to do what the competitive nature of private industry tells him to do. According to him, the client list will help Michael to become the next top client of his ["You call any of them I trust you'll hear some good things" (12:17-12:21)]. Also his wife seems to be an eager (business) beaver when she lets Michael to shoot herself against a background of that map (10:28-10:49), which doesn't include classified information, I hope. ;-) Just Dwight at the beginning of the episode (00:04-01:24) proves himself what means to be alert to today's Competitive Intelligence. :-)
By the way, does Dwight watching that family business through his binoculars (04:28-04:59) remind you of another case of unprofessional behavior ["Racketeer Harney gives Derry (Kiley) a contract to hit Breech (Long), whose wife Connie (Francis) is a paraplegic. Derry meets Connie, helping her to play a bar jukebox. Sympathizing with Connie, Derry decides, for a price, to fake Breech's death by buying a mortuary corpse and staging an automobile smash-up. Derry expects Breech and Connie to abscond to Mexico City" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394022/plotsummary )]? My wife and I enjoyed Hitchcock's Blood Bargain at http://www.guba.com/watch/2000930589?duration_step=0&fields=23&... . Incidentally, who of us isn't charmed by that melody ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Eo3t7n2lU ) played during Blood Bargain not only with the help of that bar jukebox?
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Walter,
I can answer this one. Ok, first "big data" players usually means HP, Oracle, SAP, IBM. These firms are extraordinarily good at handling structured data (ie numbers) in relational databases, but they don't deal well with unstructured data,…
Oh, they are doing CI, lots of it, but they call it other things, like Data mining e.g. They solve many of the same problems but from an engineering perspective
Klaus
I've been turning this one over and can't find a satisfactory explanation.
Why don't we see more 'big data' players doing CI consulting. It seems to me that companies like Google, with absurdly comprehensive environmental data, doing more to move…
Hey Eric,
Very nice, I really like your critical dissection of the author's convoluted and ultimately flawed, thought process which you laid out very articulately. Precisely right, what exactly is the difference here? The issue of direct vs indirec…
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So, to take this author's point:
Gathering, analyzing and disseminating information sponsored by a major media source financed directly by a combination of pharma, oil, and automotive companies: ethically honorable.
Gathering, analyzing and dissem…