What Peter Drucker Would Be Reading
Recent selections from around the web that, we think, would have caught Peter Drucker’s eye:
1. Africa Must Get Real About Chinese Ties: China and Africa have become increasingly intertwined over the past few decades, with China buying Africa’s natural resources and selling Africa billions of dollars worth of consumer goods. Lamido Sanusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, asks his fellow Africans to be wary of the relationship. “I cannot recommend a divorce,” he writes in the Financial Times. “However, a review of the exploitative elements in this marital contract is long overdue.”
2. Family Planning Policy To Remain: For anyone trying to gauge demographic trends in China, an important new signal emerged recently. The National Population and Family Planning Commission will be merged with the health ministry, but the policy of one child per family is not going anywhere for the time being. The China Daily quotes Wang Feng, deputy head of the State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform: “The pressure facing residents and resources still persists in our country with such a huge population.”
3. Mexico Goes After Its Monopolies: Is the era of Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, turning into one of reform? Not long after the arrest of Elba Esther Gordillo, the notorious head of Mexico’s teacher’s union, Peña Nieto has unveiled a new set of laws that are intended to open up the telecommunications and television business to more competition. That means taking on Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man and a formidable presence in Mexico’s power structure. Reports The Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Slim’s spokesman at Telmex had no comment.”
4. Dx Comment of the Week: Last week, when we looked at sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and asked what might account for the church’s failures in damage control, reader Maverick 18 had the following to say:
[Church leaders] felt their first duty was to distance the Church from the problem and maintain Church doctrine, dogma, reputation and support. Plus, they never thought they would be caught.Church leadership is entirely out of tune with its membership, both philosophically and geographically, e.g. two thirds of theCardinals are old and from Europe and two thirds of Catholics are younger and from everywhere else. A situation very analagous to a board of directors and officers of a very large corporation that make decisions in favor of maintaining their positions without regard to shareholders, workers or customers.
All of this has nothing to do Jesus, except, of course, for a bunch of old men praying for forgiveness and guidance, and then doing things exactly as they have done before.