With respect to our Principles for Business, I noticed three recent developments of interest at three major global corporations:
1) In its first quarter since putting its shares on the public market, Uber has lost $1 billion. How do you value such a company?
2) The U.S. Department of Justice has taken preliminary steps towards reviewing the business model of Google for being too large in violation of anti-trust laws. We raised such a concern over a year ago in one of our commentaries.
3) The fatal flaws in the software used to correct the angle of ascent in Boeing’s 737 Max 8 aircraft arose from lack of communications and sharing of information among units in Boeing’s bureaucracy. We have noted the “friction” – a notion borrowed from Clausewitz – which inevitably arises in large bureaucracies and often leads to failures of corporate social responsibility, BP and General Motors being notorious previous examples.