Page 246 - The Resilient Organization

Endnotes

PART ONE

1. See Sevón and Välikangas, “Of Managers, Ideas, and Jesters” (2009).
It appears to us that ideas are often much more powerful than
people who tend to succumb to their persuasion and act out or
perform these ideas. People often act in the name of some idea. Ideas
also tend to live longer than people do (think of such persisting ideas
as freedom or communism or fast food). You may wish to ask: Which
ideas command you? What ideas are you performing? Which ideas
have become you or your organization?

CHAPTER 2

1. Profits of the Fortune 500 companies were down 84.7 percent in
2008 compared to 2007 (Fortune, May 4, 2009: 137).

CHAPTER 3

1. The converse is often true too: an executive who has been badly
burned, almost losing his position, as a result of investing in a partic-
ular country will never again entertain the idea of investment in that
country. This is a sort of overlearning, or a Vietnam syndrome: never
again, another Vietnam War.

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