B U R N

[Update] There is now a post-event blog online, however, I doubt that the strange tribe members of the Academy will engage with it: A Turn to Ontology in STS?

I have been awaiting this week with great anticipation. Not only is Mr Ostrowski visiting from Denmark, but we have two conferences ahead of us.

A Turn to Ontology, bringing together a fabulous team of social scientific researchers to discuss whether and how organisations and people can address truth claims in practical ways.

Imagining Business, as noted previously, asks questions about how modern businesses use imagery as part of their everyday operations.

This may be old news to some people, and boring news to others, but I am once again organising the Ethics in Practice panel for this year’s joint EASST/4S Conference in Rotterdam, this time along with Dan Neyland.

Finally, I have been fortunate enough to secure Sarah Whatmore and Geoff Bowker as my examiners for the viva voce aka judgement day, two scholars of remarkable quality.

Traditionally, philanthropy and fundraising events have not taken on particularly important roles in Scandinavia due to the fact that the welfare state has provided such goods. In the UK, however, social problems, and their solutions, are of often left in the domain of private enterprise, whether corporate or individual. This post is about the latter category.

Recently, with the arrival of sites like justgiving, I find my inbox clogged up with requests to support this and that person in undertaking this and that ‘challenge.’ I am all for the principle of democratising and finding new ways of generating aid, and, the hypocrite I am, even set up a profile myself.

I have perhaps spent too long time in a business school now, but whenever I support something like this, I want value for money, i.e. the fundraiser in question should do something out of the ordinary vis-a-vis his or her skills, otherwise I might as well find a charity of my own liking.

So when you contact me because you are planning to run 10km, jump off a plane with a parachute on your back or take your mountain bike for a spin over a couple of hills please be warned, this bruva ain’t supporting ya.

Prior to putting it on the server, I would appreciate your feedback on this site; does it act up in your browser? does the navigation work? are all the pictures there?

Yes, Kevin Spacey will be a visiting professor at Catz next term, adding to a fine list of specimens such as Patrick Stewart and Cate Blanchett. Perhaps I should stick around a little longer…

The Guardian has asked Mark Haddon, author of the delightful book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, to write about current UK refugee policies. Reading it is like receiving a punch to the gut.

I ask Sergey what he wants from life. ‘For myself I want to be kind. If you are cold I can give you this jacket. But this jacket, it is rubbish. If you say you need money I have no money to give you. What has happened to me? I try to be kind, to be kind, to be kind. I want my two sons learning that. To be kind. To be polite. To be gentlemen. I am their father, I am the head of the family, but I cannot help. I am like a dead man here.’

Later this week I am addressing a very prominent crowd including His Excellency Dr Mugheer Al Khaili, Minister for Education of Abu Dhabi, The Lord Aldington, Chairman of Deutsche Bank, and Hugh Crisp, former CEO of Freshfields.

This would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that I have four minutes to talk about four years of research under the headline “Business Schools in the 21st Century - Delivering Outcomes that Matter.”

Maybe a Sound of Music themed presentation would do the job…

This month I am helping Lucy Kimbell document her project, How Strategic Have You Been This Week?

The installation, which is really a social experiment, offers passers-by the chance to answer this question by choosing and wearing one or several badges that are freely available in four five plastic tubes. In turn, as people make their choices, the tubes transform into physical bar charts reflecting the popularity of each option.

My task is to take a picture every day to keep track of the selections made. You can follow the development here.

The installation is part of a bigger exhibition leading to the conference, Imagining Business: Reflecting on the Visual Power of Management, Organising and Governing Practices. Check out the announcement here.

If you happen to be in Oxford, do drop by the Business School and, of course, help yourself to badges. The exhibition is on till June 29th.

You may recall the quirky movie Magnolia and the wonderfully surreal scene in which frogs start falling from the sky. While events like this would normally fall under the rubric of ‘freak’ or plain ‘weird,’ I have reason to believe that someone up there is actually playing tricks on me.

It started a year ago when I found a lobster(!) in my then back garden and came to the conclusion that a bird must have stolen it from a restaurant and dropped it whilst in flight. I live nowhere near the sea and the area happens to be fenced in. But there it was, a boiled lobster.

Yesterday, whilst having a barbeque, some guests heard the sound of an object hitting the ground, but did not notice anything unfamiliar. Five minutes later, though, we found a dead baby rabbit a few metres away from the table. I shall not go into too much detail, but it had obviously hit the ground pretty hard and was, no doubt, to blame for the sound earlier.

Before you start drawing conclusions about my sanity, rest assured that I have witnesses who would happily testify to the truth of both episodes.

I wonder what is in store for me the next time…