Corruption

The News Corporation/News of the World scandal has been described as a case study in bad management.

What was there about the company's organizational culture that led to "Murdoch's Mess"?

Many companies today operate like Russian nesting dolls, where one large figure is actually made up of many smaller ones. These organizations present a unified face to the outside world, but rely heavily on other, usually smaller, companies or external individuals to conduct many of their activities.

The London Metal Exchange (LME) has ordered Goldman Sachs, which owns a massively controversial 19-building metals warehouse in Detroit, to boost the rate at which it delivers metals for physical transfer.

The titans of international soccer are used to pampering. Motorcades. Police escorts. Five-star hotels. Lavish dinners. Cash allowances of $500 a day, and an additional $250 for their wives or girlfriends.

Honorary fees top $50 million over past two years

Maybe it’s time to do away with corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Not merely the words and the idea but the infrastructure: CSR departments, CSR reports, CSR conferences and CSR executives.

In 1995, I published a book called The World After Communism. Today, I wonder whether there will be a world after capitalism.

The game is up for Rupert Murdoch. The head of News Corp has held sway over Britain’s media industry for a generation. Prime ministers have feared and feted him. He has outwitted regulators and outgunned rivals. Now, suddenly, it is all unraveling. The media mogul has lost his touch. These things happen.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp, has strongly backed Rebekah Brooks, the executive at the centre of a phone-hacking scandal, even as he denounced the “deplorable and unacceptable” behaviour at the News of the World.

Over the July 4 holiday in the U.S., the Fox News Twitter account was attacked by hackers who left six tweets saying that President Obama had been shot to death in Iowa. Apple was also attacked over the weekend with a tweet directing readers to a list of user names and encrypted passwords from the Apple Business Intelligence web site. Citibank, Sony and even the CIA have also suffered data breaches in recent months, drawing renewed attention to cyber security and accelerating policy debate on how to protect critical information from hackers.