Summer holiday is nearing its end. I am looking forward to starting in a new position and pursuing a number of research and teaching projects. I feel quite refreshed already, although am not particularly eager to pack and move all the stuff in my old HUT office.

My family has moved a lot during the summer, from one country location to the other. It is good to be home again. There was, however, an unfortunate incident of me losing my wallet this monday,. I had carelessly placed it into the package holder of our baby carrier, already full of groceries and library DVDs. The incident created a story which I wish to share with the emptiness of cyberspace.

Getting my wallet back and dealing with the after effects renewed my respect for the man in street, as well as government organizations. Conversely, it deepened my disrespect for a certain myltinational banking organization. My first pleasant suprise was that, not only did the person finding the wallet return it without trying to use my credit cards, he had actually returned the around 60 euros of cash within.

"Folks are basically decent, conventional wisdom would say. We read about the exceptions in the papers every day", wrote Neil Peart, the lyricist and drummer for my favorite band Rush. The song is contained on Hold your fire, and album published in the eighties, which I consider to be Rush's masterpiece. I must have listened to it a thousand times since I bought the first vinyl in the mid-eighties, and always find something new. For me, the album brings everything Rush had been striving for in its career, then spanning 20-years: the search for a lush, perfect sound, smart musical ideas, instrumental virtuosity. Yet, the songs are very focused, delineated and do not fall prey to megalomania. Most importantly, Peart's lyrics, initially ripe with grandiose science fiction ideas and metaphysics, had been condenced into little insightful gems, dealing with very human topics from a seasoned, yet compassionate perspective. For instance, I do not know a better way to sum up the pursuit for a lasting relationship than the verse in the song Open secrets:

"I find no absolution
In my rational point of view
Maybe some things are instinctive
But there's one thing you could do
You could try to understand me-
I could try to understand you..."

Anyway, the second pleasant suprise was with the police lost and found office. The lady was very helpful and pleasant in the process of returning my wallet and I left buth relieved and pleasantly suprised.

The bank was another story. I needed to get two credit cards renewed after cancelling them earlier after losing the wallet. I had to push the clerk through a number of stages, i.e.,

- determining where the renewed cards could be claimed (two different branch offices across town)
- determining whether they could be delivered to the same branch office (after being assured that it was unheard of to deliver them to my home location)
- determining the opening hours for the branch offices
- determining a branch office which would be open after 4 PM and close to the place where I work.

Achieving each step made the clerk moan in distress. I am not sure whether it is reasonable to expect that the clerk would voluntarily and actively do the footwork to find out the path of least effort to the customer in a situation where he needs help. All the management books I read at least emphasize the strategic importance of "customer orientation".

I find that it is often easier to find customer orientation in governmental organizations than in big old firms. Maybe they have found determination in fighting the red tape which is so often attributed to their customer service functions.

Spent four days at the European Group of Organization Studies (EGOS) conference in Bergen. There is a standing working group centered around Strategy as practice, that is, a new tradition of strategy research centered around what strategists in organizations do, that is, not primarily on what they should be doing (this of course is a gross simplification. This working group has been my home base for many years and it contains some of what I (and also some other people) regard as the most interesting kind of strategy research right now.

Scientific conferences are interesting, socially speaking. I have always enjoyed EGOS because the atmosphere is so open, friendly and encouraging. It is as if all participants acknowledge the notion that while during the academic year, we struggle over money, publications, administration and who knows what, the conference is a venue for celebrating science and our community of scientists. PhD students get the attention of, and encouraging feedback from, senior colleagues, everybody is interested in the kind of research you do and considers your work valuable.

There is, however, even at EGOS, always an implicit social order, maintained by various tacit tools and methodologies. Most importantly, there are degrees of insidership. Some people have published more and have been participating in the discussion longer to have created all sorts of norms of what is regarded as a proper topic or sentiment within a specific dialogue. I guess this is all about building a scientific paradigm, even scientific knowledge, and a drive to get more recognition certainly can be a positive motivational force for a junior colleague (such as myself). However, there are times when young people are crushed and pushed aside and this is regrettable.

I was impressed by the way the senior colleagues at our present working group invited the junior ones to participate. Seniors openly sought the company and collaboration of the juniors, seeking for their viewpoints, offering feedback, encouragement and suggestions on their work. This resulted in a very nice win-win situation where there was respect for the founding work by the senior people, who in turn invited dialogue from the junior colleagues. This dialogue in turn resulted in a feeling of progress being made, research thriving.

This makes me think of a lecture way back in 1994 when I was just beginning my undergrad studies. I attended the lecture on otherness by Esa Saarinen, a philosopher who was largely responsible for reinvigorating public interest in Finland during the 1990's. At this lecture he offered two "otherness principles". "When I'm old and grey, and you find me at a party somewhere", he suggested, "I want you to thank me for offering these two". "I better pay attention", I thought. This is how I remember the two otherness principles:

1. Every person is intrinsically afraid of the other
2. Every person is intristically most motivated to discuss his or her own affairs.

You can view the principles, which I later found to be derived from the work of some fundamental continental thinkers, from multiple angles. They can be the foundation for cynical exploitation and "networking", the domination of others through exploiting their vanities and fears. However, I don't think how they were meant. I think they were meant as personal challenges to be overcome. To not to be intrinsically afraid of others. To treat their interests as intrinsically interesting. I have worked on these principles as challenges and there is certainly more work to be done, especially on the second one.

Watching the senior people at our working group perform this year really provided an inspiration. The way they treated their juniors, seeking their company, inviting them to join, and treating their research as valuable and interesting was a personal inspiration.

A lovely two holiday weeks on the lakeside. Family time, comic books, football. Moods portrayed in photographs.