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sysadmin August 6, 2020 2 min read
The origin of playing cards has become a great debate in the modern era, because what has been recorded in history is the Europeans who first introduced it. However, there are historical records that show that Europeans discovered them on the way, while playing cards required a printing process. Printing on paper / cloth media at that time could only be done in China or Korea, long before Europeans could do it.
The origin of the 4 symbols on playing cards is also unique: hearts, diamonds, spades, curls
Type 4 forms were first recognized in the Middle East. The 4 forms include coins, cups, swords and sticks. These shapes eventually evolved over time: coins became diamonds, cups representing “love” became hearts, swords became spades and sticks became curly. The faces on the French deck are named and made to resemble historical figures. The king of hearts is Charlemagne, the king of diamonds is Julius Caesar, the king of curls is Alexander the Great and the king of spades is King David of the Bible. Playing cards is the most popular playing tool in France.
Because they involved faces and numbers in their card designs, playing cards began to be used as a fortune-telling tool. In addition, since ancient times, the game of forming buildings out of playing cards has been very popular. In 1992, for the first time, someone set a world record for the builder of the tallest card building. In ancient Europe, playing cards were used as one of the largest tax contributor products because of their popularity.
The facts and history of playing cards that have been mentioned are playing cards with original designs, not those that already have various designs including movie or anime characters
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Bill Gates is trying to dim the sun
| January 01, 2021 09:40 AM
Bill Gates is reportedly worth $118 billion. At least one estimate judges his worth to be $129 billion.
Either way, the man has leisure, cash, and a penchant for making everything his plaything. This might explain why he is funding an Icarian experiment to block out the sunshine.
With the help of Gates’s greenbacks, Harvard scientists are attempting to determine whether they can dim sunlight to cool down planet Earth. The administrators of SCoPEx, or Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, plan to test their sun-reflecting, particle-spraying balloon in Sweden in 2021, sans particle expulsion. The aim: “SCoPEx is a scientific experiment to advance understanding of stratospheric aerosols that could be relevant to solar geoengineering.” Run for your lives.
“It is not a test of solar geoengineering per se,” reads a summary. “Instead, it will observe how particles interact with one another, with the background stratospheric air, and with solar and infrared radiation.” The underlying assumption, so it seems, is that the sun is doing something wrong.
Fervent climate meliorists think up some wild ideas, but this one is next-level. Remember when the sun was appreciated, even worshiped, as the sustainer of life that it is? Or, at least, do you remember reading about it? “The law, say the gardeners, is the sun,” W.H. Auden wrote. Now, the sun is viewed as an existential threat.
People object to this experiment for different reasons. One Swedish greenie told Reuters that it could create the impression that continuing use of fossil fuels is possible. Presumably, that would only happen if the chalk dust works. (The scientists plan on using calcium carbonate.) Another says that it violates a U.N. global moratorium on geoengineering. Still others suggest it will shift global rain patterns.
This is from Science’s Paul Voosen: “Unlike sulfates, which can lead to ozone loss, calcium carbonate is not particularly reactive. But because it does not exist naturally in the stratosphere, models for its behavior are uncertain.”
Voosen refers to David Keith, one of the SCoPEx scientists, who also told Reuters, “‘There is a long history of people doing research on things that were socially unpopular at the time that we now see as important,’ he said, such as birth control.” That’s a peculiar example and a peculiar justification for his sci-fi methods.
But don’t mind Keith. Don't mind SCoPEx or Gates. They just want to do what climatism insists we must never, ever do in manipulating the environment.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bill-gates-is-trying-to-dim-the-sun
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Hackers Threaten to Dump Insurance Files Related to 9/11 Attacks
Posted on December 31, 2018 by BitShare
On Monday, New Year’s Eve, a hacker group announced it had breached a law firm handling cases related to the September 11 attacks, and threatened to publicly release a large cache of related internal files unless their ransom demands were met.
The news is the latest public extortion attempt from the group known as The Dark Overlord, which has previously targeted a production studio working for Netflix, as well as a host of medical centres and private businesses across the United States. The announcement also signals a slight evolution in The Dark Overlord’s strategy, which has expanded on leveraging the media to exert pressure on victims, to now distributing its threats and stolen data in a wider fashion.
In its announcement published on Pastebin, The Dark Overlord points to several different insurers and legal firms, claiming specifically that it hacked Hiscox Syndicates Ltd, Lloyds of London, and Silverstein Properties.
“Hiscox Syndicates Ltd and Lloyds of London are some of the biggest insurers on the planet insuring everything from the smallest policies to some of the largest policies on the planet, and who even insured structures such as the World Trade Centers,” the announcement reads.
It is unclear what exact files the group has stolen, but it is trying to capitalize on conspiracy theories around the 9/11 attacks.
“We’ll be providing many answers about 9.11 conspiracies through our 18.000 secret documents leak,” the group tweeted on Monday.
Got a tip? You can contact this reporter securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.
A spokesperson for the Hiscox Group confirmed to Motherboard that the hackers had breached a law firm that advised the company, and likely stolen files related to litigation around the 9/11 attacks.
“The law firm’s systems are not connected to Hiscox’s IT infrastructure and Hiscox’s own systems were unaffected by this incident. One of the cases the law firm handled for Hiscox and other insurers related to litigation arising from the events of 9/11, and we believe that information relating to this was stolen during that breach,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
“Once Hiscox was informed of the law firm’s data breach, it took action and informed policyholders as required. We will continue to work with law enforcement in both the UK and US on this matter,” they added. Lloyds of London did not respond to a request for comment.
The hacking group published a small set of letters, emails and other documents that mention various law firms, as well as the Transport Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Aviation Administration (The TSA could not provide a statement in time for publication, and the FAA told Motherboard in an email it was investigating.) Those documents themselves appear to be fairly innocuous, but the group says it may release more.
In its extortion note, The Dark Overlord included a link for a 10GB archive of files it allegedly stole. The group also provided a link to this archive to Motherboard before publishing its announcement. The cache is encrypted, but the hackers are threatening to release the relevant decryption keys, unlocking different sets of files at a time, unless the victims pay the hackers an undisclosed ransom fee in Bitcoin.
“Pay the fuck up, or we’re going to bury you with this. If you continue to fail us, we’ll escalate these releases by releasing the keys, each time a Layer is opened, a new wave of liability will fall upon you,” the extortion note reads.
The Dark Overlord is also claiming to be offering to sell the data on a dark web hacking forum, and is attempting to blackmail individuals who may be included in the documents themselves.
“If you’re one of the dozens of solicitor firms who was involved in the litigation, a politician who was involved in the case, a law enforcement agency who was involved in the investigations, a property management firm, an investment bank, a client of a client, a reference of a reference, a global insurer, or whoever else, you’re welcome to contact our e-mail below and make a request to formally have your documents and materials withdrawn from any eventual public release of the materials. However, you’ll be paying us,” the group’s post reads.
As The Dark Overlord’s announcement notes, the breach itself was previously reported in vague terms by a specialist legal publication, and Hiscox Group pointed Motherboard to the firm’s own April 2018 announcement of a data breach.
“Hiscox recently learned of an information security incident affecting a specialist law firm in the US that provided advice to Hiscox or its policyholders on some of its US commercial liability insurance claims. The incident involved illegal access to information stored on the law firm’s server, which may have included information relating to up to 1,500 of Hiscox’s US-based commercial insurance policyholders,” that earlier announcement reads.
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Aero Vodochody 145 / Ae-45
Aero Vodochody Super Aero 145
Super Aero 145
Development began 1946 and was accomplished by the technical designers Jiři Bouzek, Ondřej Němec and František Vik. The design bears a superficial resemblance, viewed nose-on, to the German Siebel Si 204 which, among other German aircraft like the Messerschmitt Bf 109, were produced in Czechoslovakia while under German occupation. The prototype (registered OK-BCA) flew for the first time on 21 July 1947 and the second, registered OK-CDA, one year later. Flight testing ran without incidents and the type was released for series production in 1948. The model number of "45" was not a continuation of Aero's pre-war numeration scheme, but a reference to the 4/5 seats in the aircraft.
The Aero 45 had a sleek, teardrop-shaped fuselage, with a rounded, extensively-glazed nose affording excellent visibility. It had a low wing on which the engine nacelles were mounted, and a conventional tail. The main undercarriage was retractable but the tailwheel was fixed.
Ae-45 prototypes were widely advertised abroad. In August 1949 Jan Anderle won the Norton Griffiths Race in Great Britain (Ae-45 registration OK-DCL). They also set several international records. As a result, apart from Eastern Bloc countries, the plane was also bought by Italy and Switzerland. On 10–11 August 1958 Dr. Pier Paolo Brielli flew an Italian Ae-45 3000 kilometers from South America to Dakar across the southern Atlantic (as the first Czechoslovak-built aircraft). In 1981 Jon Svensen flew Ae-45S (390 sold) from Europe to the USA.
Ae-45S Super Tourer
This type was used in Czechoslovakia and was exported to the People's Republic of China, East Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Soviet Union and Switzerland. Hungary was a major customer, where the aircraft was known as the Kócsag (Hungarian: "Egret").
Aero Vodochody produced the aircraft in 1947–1951, after which the Let Kunovice rolled out these planes until 1961. In 1958 the Ae-45S became the first Czechoslovak plane to cross the Atlantic Ocean. It was the first product of the nation's postwar aviation industry and proved a great success, with many of the 590 produced being exported.
Among operators were Interflug (4), Hungarian Police and Hungarian Air Ambulance Service, LOT Polish Airlines operated three Ae-45 in 1952–1957, Polish Air Ambulance Service operated Ae-45 and Ae-145, Aeroflot, Aeroclub Ajdovščina, Vietnam Civil Aviation Department – later as Vietnam Civil Aviation (now Vietnam Airlines), East German Air Force, Hungarian Air Force, Romanian Air Force, and Czechoslovakian National Security Guard. The Czechoslovak Air Force operated aircraft under designation K-75, for liaison purpose, and the Indian Air Force operated a single aircraft gifted by the Czech government
In the People's Republic of China the People's Liberation Army Air Force operated license-built Suingari-1 variant. The Vietnam People's Air Force operated three Ae-45 from 1956 (acquired from China).
irst production version built in Aero factory.
200 built between 1948 and 1951.
Aero 45S "Super Aero"
Improved variant produced by Let in Kunovice factory, among others with better navigational equipment.
228 aircraft built between 1954 and 1959.
Aero 145
Version with engines changed to supercharged Motorlet (Walter) M332
Produced later as Avia M332s.
This version was developed and built by Let
Engines: 2 × Avia M 332-III, 100 kW (140 hp) each
Propellers: 2-bladed Type V410, electrically-operated metal 4-position variable-pitch
Propeller diameter: 1.9 m (6 ft 3 in)
Wingspan: 12.25 m (40 ft 2 in)
Wing area: 17.1 sq.m (184 sq ft)
Airfoil: Aero No.58-64
Length: 7.77 m (25 ft 6 in)
Height: 2.3 m (7 ft 7 in)
Empty weight: 960 kg (2,116 lb)
Gross weight: 1,500 kg (3,307 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 1,600 kg (3,527 lb) (full fuel)
Fuel capacity: 324 l (86 US gal; 71 imp gal)
Maximum speed: 282 km/h (175 mph, 152 kn) at 1,600 kg (3,500 lb) AUW
Cruise speed: 250 km/h (160 mph, 130 kn) at 1,600 kg (3,500 lb) AUW
Range: 1,700 km (1,100 mi, 920 nmi)
Service ceiling one engine out: 2,200 kg (4,900 lb)
Rate of climb: 5 m/s (980 ft/min)
Wing loading: 87.8 kg/sq.m (18.0 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 9.5 kg/kW (15.7 lb/hp)
Take-off run to 15 m (49 ft): 460 m (1,510 ft)
Capacity: 3-4 pax
Sungari-1
Chinese unlicensed copy of the Aero Ae 45S, produced from 1958.
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pantone earth green
November 11, 2020 General
[71], Harlequin is a pure spectral color at approximately 552 nanometers on the visible spectrum when plotted on the CIE chromaticity diagram. The first recorded use of malachite green as a color name in English was in the 1200s (exact year uncertain).[58]. Pantone Farbe Des Jahres der letzten zehn Jahre. PANTONE 13 … Displayed at right is the color bright mint. The first use of mantis as a color name in English was when it was included as one of the colors on the Xona.com color list, promulgated in 2001. Its complementary color is magenta. [40], The first recorded use of tea green as a color name in English was in 1858.[41]. Seit mehr als 30 Jahren ist Pantone vertrauensvoller Partner für Modedesigner und deren Produktionspartner. My mum used to give me a Haliborange pill every morning when I was a kid, and they were the inspiration for the cover text of Sideburn #11 which is on it's way to the printers. [81] Another name for this color is English green. Bei Lackbeschichtungen steht das Suffix TPG für „Textile Paper Green“. [32], Shamrock green is a tone of green that represents the color of shamrocks, a symbol of Ireland. [76], Bottle green is a color in Prismacolor marker and pencil sets. Inspired by materials themselves, the textures of nature are merged with elements of decomposition and experimentation. Displayed on the right is the color bright green. GO green was the color used for the brand of GO Transit, the regional commuter service in the Greater Toronto Area. Friendly and joyful, an optimistic yellow offering the promise of a sunny day. A stirring blue hue that awakens a vision of Paris in the springtime. The first use of English green as a synonym for Brunswick green was in 1923.[82]. Bright green is a bright shade of green. If you want to keep your designs in vogue, weâve selected some top items from Envato Elements featuring the stunning color trends that Pantone have predicted to pop this fall... Mint green evokes a sense calm, freshness and lightness. The May birthstone is emerald. [30] However, modern colors marketed under this name are usually a blend of other pigments, commonly with a basis of Phthalocyanine Green G.[31] Sap green paint was frequently used on Bob Ross's TV show, The Joy of Painting. In a celebration of organic matter, designers and artists striving to become one with the ways of nature are learning all they can reap from earth’s biodiversity. Chip Replacement Pages | Coated & Uncoated - SOLID CHIPS Coated, Pantone LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of X-Rite, Inc. © Pantone LLC, 2020. Between 1967 and 2013, the brand and color that has adorned each of its train, buses, and other property generally remained unchanged. Green takes up a large portion of the CIE chromaticity diagram because it is in the central area of human color perception. To the right is the color dark pastel green. Pantone 2015 Dusk Blue. It is also the color of a wild asparagus plant blowing in the wind of the 1949 classic film Sands of Iwo Jima. It is a representation of the color of brewed green tea, i.e., the color of the hot green tea after the green tea leaves have been brewed in boiling water. [78] Another name for this color is Bangladesh green. The first recorded use of laurel green as a name of a color in the English language was in 1705. Along with anchoring earth tones, exuberant pops of vibrant colors also appear throughout the collections. Raw materials reflect the beauty of nature’s natural state. The color defined as green in the CMYK color system used in printing, also known as pigment green, is the tone of green that is achieved by mixing process (printer's) cyan and process (printer's) yellow in equal proportions. The color displayed in the color box above (color sample #136 on the ISCC-NBS color list) matches the color called, Color names that clash between X11 and HTML/CSS, New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, flag of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, "W3C TR CSS3 Color Module, HTML4 color keywords", "Retsof online version of ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Colo(u)r Names - Aa through Az", "SVG Color Keywords, CSS3 Color Module, W3C Candidate Recommendation 14 May 2003", "Color Conversion Tool set to hex code of color #BFFF00 (Lime)", ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Color Names (1955)--Color Sample of Mint Leaf (color sample #140), "Dark moss green / #4a5d23 Hex Color Code", "California Code, Government Code – GOV § 420", "Tea green / Caparol 28/11 / #d0f0c0 Hex Color Code", "Pot growers thrive in Northern California: Cash crop now accounts for two-thirds of Mendocino County economy", "Pigments through the Ages - History - Emerald green", "Emerald Green or Paris Green, the Deadly Regency Pigment", "The History of Green Dye Is a History of Death", "Tintbooks – Get Accurate CMYK Color Results For Your Printing Projects", "Pantone TPX Pantone Color Finder—Type the word "Green" into the indicated window on the Pantone Color Finder and the color will appear. It is based on the approved color specifications to be used for the seal of the university. ... PANTONE 18-1631 TCX Earth Red. Spanish green is the color that is called "verde" (the Spanish word for "green") in the Guía de coloraciones (Guide to colorations) by Rosa Gallego and Juan Carlos Sanz, a color dictionary published in 2005 that is widely popular in the Hispanophone realm. Coral, described by Pantone , as “ the more approachable and softer orange ”, has embraced 2011 in a rather big way. The source of this color is the "Pantone Textile Paper eXtended (TPX)" color list, color # green C, EC, HC, PC, U, or UP—green.[64]. The color indicated is only approximate as the colors of printing inks may vary. Green (Crayola) Green (Crayola) Color coordinates; Hex triplet #1CAC78: sRGB B (r, g, b) (28, 172, 120) CMYK H (c, m, y, k) (84, 0, 30, 32) HSV (h, s, v) (158°, 84%, 68%) Source: Crayola [citation … The three additive primaries in the RGB color system are the three colors of light chosen such as to provide the maximum range of colors that are capable of being represented on a computer or television set. If web developers are using green on a university website, they are encouraged to use Castleton green. Pantone is on a roll this year. Inspiration mariage champêtre douceur - pantone corail - @croquezlapomme #fairepart #mariage #croquezlapomme. [116], The first recorded use of rifle green as a color name in English was in 1858.[117]. 0 171 132 HEX/HTML. It is also one of the school colors of Lane Technical College Prep High School in Chicago, the other being old gold. Der PANTONE FASHION, HOME + INTERIORS Passport ist eine tragbare Referenz aller 2.310 PANTONE FASHION, HOME + INTERIORS Farben, inklusive 210 neue Farben, für Designer, Produktionsleiter und Koloristen auf dem Sprung. Pantone's 2017 Spring Colors are kale, hazelnut, lapis blue, niagara, primrose yellow, greenery, flame, island paradise, pink yarrow, and pale dogwood. Another name for this color is green W3C or office green. Seattle is sometimes referred to as the Emerald City, because its abundant rainfall creates lush vegetation. Wenn Sie immer noch mit dem TPX-System arbeiten, sollten Sie unbedingt ein Upgrade auf das TPG-System vornehmen. Previously, rifle green uniforms had been issued to Hiram Berdan's elite 1st and 2nd United States Sharpshooters during the American Civil War. [10], Forest green refers to a green color said to resemble the color of the trees and other plants in a forest. Hunter green is a color that is a representation of the color worn by hunters in the 19th century. Varieties of the color green may differ in hue, chroma (also called saturation or intensity) or lightness (or value, tone, or brightness), or in two or three of these qualities. 6. Pantone Swatches Color Swatches Pantone Colour Palettes Pantone Color Colour Pallete Colour Schemes Pantone Green Pantone 2015 Use E Abuse. Another name for this color is artichoke green. The natural color system is a color system based on the four unique hues or psychological primary colors red, yellow, green, and blue. Aus folgenden Gründen verlassen sich so viele auf Pantone: Pantone ist der globale standard. It is displayed on the right. A different shade of green has been designated as "dark green (X11)" for certain computer uses. The color defined as green in the NCS or Natural Color System is shown at right (NCS 2060-G). [55] The source of this color is the ISCC-NBS Dictionary of Color Names (1955), a color dictionary used by stamp collectors to identify the colors of stamps, now on the Internet—see sample of the color Persian green (color sample #159) displayed on indicated web page: Type the words "Rifle green" into the indicated window on the Pantone Color Finder and the color will appear. PANTONE CANVAS is a place to share creativity and inspiration. Similarly, it can mean anything multicolored or prismatic, such as opals or other precious gems which are highly variegated in color and hue. The official color was chosen based on the traditional darker Spartan green found on the original university varsity letter jackets and marching band jackets. The first recorded use of myrtle green as a color name in English was in 1835.[26]. [121] The term appears to refer to the medium shade of green worn by most regiments of the Imperial Russian Army from 1700 to 1914. [48] It was notorious for causing deaths due to it being a popular color used for wallpaper. The first recorded use of jungle green as a name of a color in the English language was in 1926.[13]. A different color, also called Brunswick green, was the color for passenger locomotives of the grouping and then the nationalized British Railways. It is said to represent tranquility to many people, bringing to mind feelings of wellness and peace of mind. Hooker's green takes its name from botanical artist William Hooker (1779–1832) who first created it particularly for illustrating leaves.[54]. Variations in value are also called tints and shades, a tint being a green or other hue mixed with white, a shade being mixed with black. The Munsell colors displayed are only approximate as they have been adjusted to fit into the sRGB gamut. Get in on the fun and download your free copy.” Every year, we eagerly anticipate Pantone's Color of the Year, as well as their seasons…. Pastel colors are typically associated with warmth, flowers and Spring. Green-yellow is a mixture of the colors green and yellow. The X11 color green is somewhat similar to bright green, with a hex triplet of #00FF00, compared to bright green's triplet of #66FF00. The purpose of the CMYK color system is to provide the maximum possible gamut of color reproducible in printing. The use of the term as a color name occurred at least as far back as March 1911 when it appeared in the Boston Globe and newspapers across the country as the new color of fashion.[107]. In the U.S. armed forces, the green beret may be worn only by soldiers awarded the Special Forces Tab, signifying they have been qualified as special forces soldiers. Meet the Makers: Envato Authors On the Creatives Who Inspire Them, Meet the Makers: Our Authorsâ Creative Journeys with Envato. © 2020 Envato Pty Ltd. In July 2013, GO Transit updated its look to a two-tone color scheme.[95]. In order for all the colors to be spaced uniformly, it was found necessary to use a color wheel with five primary colors—red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Free UK / EU / US Shipping over £100 / €120 / $150, British 'summer' weather is getting to my bones, time for some sun drugs to feed my pasty complexion.
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Mike54 on Horizon Album
Mike54 on Somera Album
Mike54 on Phoenix Album
Mike54 on Moodburst Album
FireDragon23 on Horizon Album
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Catholic schools most disproportionally diverse in Country
More than one in five black children now attend a Catholic school. That’s according to the latest research which shows the Catholic Church to be the most ethnically diverse provider of education in the country.
With roughly 10% of schools, the Catholic Church is the second largest provider of education in the country. However, this tenth of provision now educates more than fifth of all black pupils in the country.
The figures, which are part of the annual Catholic Education Service’s Schools Census, also reveal the extent the Catholic Church is helping to integrate Eastern European migrants with British society, as almost one in five pupils from minority white backgrounds go to a Catholic school.
Across the board, Catholic schools educate 21% more pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds compared to other schools.
Statistics also show that ethnic minority pupils in Catholic secondary schools perform better at GCSE than the national average.
Paul Barber, Director of the Catholic Education Service commented: “For another year running, Catholic schools are the most ethnically diverse in the country.
“What’s more, Catholic schools are not just more diverse but disproportionally more so. The fact that a tenth of all schools educates a fifth of certain ethnic minorities is an incredible achievement.
“With Catholicism being a largely immigrant faith in England, Catholic schools have a strong track record of taking in children from a wide range of ethnic minorities and producing well-educated, open minded, citizens.
“It is very easy for secularist campaigners to claim that religious ethos schools are divisive and segregate communities but the evidence for this simply doesn’t back this up.”
There are more than 2200 Catholic Schools in England and Wales.
The Catholic sector is the second largest provider of education and currently educates 852,321 pupils.
There are a total of 307,663 ethnic minority pupils in Catholic schools (36.1% of pupils).
One in seven ethnic minority pupils in England and Wales attend a Catholic school
Read 6476 times Last modified on Friday, 02 December 2016 11:41
More in this category: « Parents overwhelmingly favour acts of collective worship in Catholic schools Catholic Schools' Census 2016 »
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This blog explores a range of topics, issues, people, and organizations of all sorts related to the design, development, management and leadership of work organizations that love their people and seek to live in harmony with nature.
What Do We Mean by Organizational Learning
What Do We Mean by Organizational Learning?
There are, of course, many commentaries and books written on exactly this subject; so, I do not consider mine to be definitive in any way. But, I want to address seven subjects that have been on my mind me regarding the field:
1. The exhausting thrill of multiple perspectives
2. A simple model of learning
3. The centrality of feedback and the forces that oppose it
4. The power of vision and hope
5. The complexity introduced by various units of analysis
6. Whole system sight
7. Post-materialism and the future of Organizational Learning
The Exhausting Thrill of Multiple Perspectives
It is a gross understatement to describe organizational learning is an interdisciplinary field.
When I file my yearly tax return, my accountant regularly complains about the items I include as business expenses that enhance my practice:
Neo and Trinity
CPA: How could going to see first run The Matrix possibly be a business expense?!
MS: Well, it’s got a lot of great stuff about futurism which is always great to talk about with clients. It presents an incredible hero myth in the person of Neo and his crew, which is key to understanding what it takes to be a leader. It’s got betrayal because one of the team members doesn’t get his needs met, which points up the need for better recruitment processes and the criticality of getting to know your teammates. I could go on.
CPA: Okay, okay. But Keanu Reeves, I mean, come on!
MS: Actually, he’s quite good in the role, and both he and Carrie-Anne Moss kill in leather!
The way I look at it, virtually anything and everything is grist for the mill of organizational learning. OL is a field of boundless curiosity about socio-technical systems. The hard sciences, the social sciences, management science, the “dismal science” of economics, the humanities, architecture, urban planning, ethnic studies, poly sci, philosophy….you got an “-ology”, there’s a role for it to play in that beautiful and somewhat chaotic field of OL!
And that is totally as it should be! Let 3,863,452 flowers bloom! The disciplines that contribute to the understanding of how and what those human systems called organizations learn are probably as multifaceted as the human project itself. Even though there are a number of commonalities and essential patterns to organizational life, (e.g., gathering inputs, through-putting input, and outputting product and services), there have been all kinds of systems over the course of human history, and they have done a heck of a lot of different things.
Lee Bolman
Specialization does present a problem to the field, however. It is relatively easy to find plenty to do in a relatively small cubbyhole and end up thinking that you’ve found the magic key to the kingdom of deep understanding of everything. Nobody since Leonardo has gotten to take that big a bite of the Tree of Knowledge. Thought leaders like Peter Senge, Lee Bolman and Terry Deal have done a big favor to the field by classifying various sorts of inquiries into categories that help us orient our research and our work as practitioners. Reframing Organizations, The Fifth Discipline and The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook are something guides that everyone should pack before lighting out into the OL territory. Without a map of the whole, it’s pretty easy to get lost in the particulars. (You might want to bring a copy of Peter Drucker’s Management along too.)
A Simple Model of Learning
Given the number of tributaries feeding into the sea of organizational learning, it does seem to me that those of us attempting to set a course ought to be able to describe what we mean by OL in pretty straightforward terms.
The framework developed by Don Schön and Chris Argyris in their masterwork, Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, has served me well. They looked at learning as an perpetual cycle of action.
Þ Discover where learning needs to occur. The need could be simple [How to redraw a graphic for a training program to make it more understandable] or overwhelming [How bringing about an end to war]..
Þ Invent an experiment that might respond to the need that’s been discovered.
Þ Produce and test the experiment in circumstances where it will have results.
Chris Argyris
Þ Generalize the results to extract learnings that can be applied in a range of circumstances: Was it easier or harder to use the training exercise after redrawing the graphic? Did disarmament make war less likely?
Þ Completing the loop, generalization leads to new discoveries.
There are wheels within wheels in this learning cycle. The more one engages in each of these practices the better one gets at it.
Don Schön
Organizational learning in Argyris and Schön’s framework, results from people skilled in “collaborative inquiry”, i.e., the ability to know less and listen more especially when dealing with emotional stressful topics surrounded by ambiguity. Collaborative inquiry comes from consistent and intentional attention to the Discover —> Invent —> Produce —> Generalize learning cycle. The more widely this competency is distributed among the actors in a system, the greater the organizational learning.
The point: it is useful to see learning as a cyclical process. To paraphrase an old dictum, even if practice in learning doesn’t make perfect, paying close attention to your practice moves actors and organizations in that direction. Gregory Bateson referred to this sort of learning from practice as “deutero-learning”. By that he meant learning what the context is within which one is acting so that one is able to act in an increasingly more effective fashion. Bateson uses a trained porpoise that comes to understand his wider context as an example. At first, the porpoise learns that responding to a whistle in a water tank will result in getting fed a fish. But, then, the porpoise discovers that there is no whistle, and flaps his tail in annoyance and a bit of confusion. And, lo and behold, this results in getting fed. Then, the porpoise comes to see that neither responding to a whistle nor flapping a tail will necessarily result in getting fed, but other, new behaviors will. And, ultimately, the porpoise realizes that it’s not a specific behavior that will result in getting fed but behavior that neither the trainer nor the audience has ever seen before that results in the reward. Innovation is rewarded. The porpoise has “learned to learn”.
Children go through deutero-learning within the context of their family. They learn what the culture of the family is and what it expects of them. In some families, the children are supposed to be funny, and the more inventive the humor is supposed to be in a family, the more a child is likely to become a comedian or to suffer insecurity because he or she didn’t pass the family’s test. In other families, children are expected to be physically adventurous, and, if they’re not, they’re disdained. In some, the context that must be understood is about religiosity. And so on.[1]
Organizations face a similar sort of contextual learning challenge, and the more they become a recognizable brand, the greater the learning requirements:
Apple is known to be a highly innovative company. It goes through one quarter where it doesn’t introduce a new product and the price of its stock falls 25%.
Greenpeace has earned a reputation as an aggressive defender of the environment. When the organization implements some numbskulls idea of trampling all over the Plains of Nazca in as a massive ad for the organization, its supporters are horrified and its detractors delighted.
Coke wants to be seen as a fun drink, but it’s becoming clear that sugary sodas are a primary contributor to increasing rates of diabetes and obesity. Not fun.
In each of these instances (and in countless others) the context demands that the organization understand and respond to requirements that may be ambiguous, hard to determine, and rapidly changing.
Organizations and systems of all sorts must contend with contextual requirements as well. The United States advertises itself as the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Inspiring words that leave the country susceptible to derision whenever it doesn’t live up to its high sounding principles. China’s Communist Party presents itself as the “vanguard of the proletariat”, but it looks pretty ridiculous when the top 1% of the vanguard turn out to be exceedingly corrupt. The bigger the game a system wants to play, the harder the hill it has to climb.
Argyris and Schön encourage systems to play big games, but point out that the less a system knows about itself, the less it studies itself, the more vulnerable it becomes to losing its way. A family may think of itself as deeply loving, but if it doesn’t notice the occasions where family members aren’t very generous or courteous with each other, it can end up moving farther and farther away from its ambitions for itself. Ditto for any and every other unit of social system analysis (team, division, organization, industry, community, etc.)
Double Loop learning is an antidote to being on automatic as a system. Such learning requires the constant consideration of the why a system is doing what it’s doing and reflection on how well it’s doing it. Here’s a graphic from LeadershipNow.com on the topic:
Single-loop learning is common. Objectives are set and they are met or missed. Lots of common strategies designed to improve results derive from single-loop learning. Prices are cut, expenses are cut; marketing and R&D budgets are increased, etc..
Double-loop learning is much rarer. It entails attention to contexts and how they are changing. For example, globalization and the resistance to it are two of the strongest forces coursing around the planet today. Cultures are slamming into each other. Assumptions about how the world work and how it ought to work are under great stress. A great deal is up for grabs. The double-loop learning agenda is full, and, yet, it is hard to do -- both because there is so much to learn and because systems practiced in learning are so uncommon.
Organizational learning is double loop learning.
The Centrality of Feedback to Double Loop Learning
An Action/Feedback cycle is the key element distinguishing single and double loop learning but this kind of learning seems to be relatively rare. What are the forces opposing it? To answer this, we need to observe and analyze two feedback features of every human system: structure and agency.
Structure refers to the policies, procedures, protocols and institutions that facilitate feedback. Many organizations that systematically collect data for quality improvement and process analysis have some of the ingredients for good feedback activities already in place. The entire quality movement is designed and intended to produce organizational learning. But, in the context of Wall Street’s attention to quarterly earnings and the glare of media attention on organizations that are in motion, frequently there isn’t enough time to analyze mountains of information, understand their meaning, assess the implications and implement change.
For example, let’s take the issue of privacy and social media:
Facebook, Google, Instagram and other outlets have repeatedly upset privacy advocates. Hell, Facebook was created as a result of Zuckerberg’s deliberate violation of the privacy of a woman who rejected his advances. All of these organizations are engaged in probes and corrective measures regarding privacy. Google wants to provide us with street views of every corner of the planet, no matter how remote, but it agrees to blur out the faces of every person that might appear in its footage (subsequent to a bunch of lawsuits). The National Security Agency and other intelligence organs in the US and elsewhere want access to information that Facebook, Apple and other networks keep private, but the companies are fighting tooth and nail to keep governments from gaining access that they are or will be using for targeting advertising to their users. The situation is in flux. And yet, there is an absence of thoughtful conversation at a mass communications level on the dilemmas surrounding privacy. Yes, elites are engaged in these conversations at academic centers and in thoughtful media convesations, but the billion plus people who are using Facebook aren’t actually engaged in a dialog about what privacy ought to look like in the 21st century.
At present, there are no structures that can facilitate reflection in an intentional fashion. Of course, the “market” is a structure, and it’s enough for a lot of folks, but its not really set up to generate learning such as this. The market is dominated by what is exciting, popular and profitable at the moment, regardless of whether it’s a good idea from a longer-term perspective.
Structures that support such learning are difficult to imagine. Putting the topic in a double-loop learning context, what privacy is, where is came from and where it is going are examples of underlying assumptions that aren't really being explored. Whether Robert Durst murdered a bunch of people and what price he’ll pay for it if he did, that is being thoroughly explored. What act of insanity will be committed next by ISIS, that is being investigated. The opinion of anyone and everyone on the teams that will be part of the Sweet Sixteen, that is the focus of a massive communication structure. Is Hillary Clinton too old to be President, this inquiring minds want to know, but what is going to happen to privacy…too complicated.
Agency has to do with the choices made by organizations (and the individuals and groups that act as their representatives) regarding the content of feedback channels and how feedback is expressed.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of data to demonstrate that most of us tighten up and protect ourselves in emotionally tense feedback situations. Argyris described this communications posture as a network of automatic defensive routines that happen beneath the level of full self-awareness. While this is not the setting to go into great detail regarding Argyris’ view of interpersonal and organizational dynamics, a quote from Strategy, Change and Defensive Routines provides a look into his critical perception of many, if not most, organizational communication processes:
We are programmed to deal with other’s or organizational defensive routines by bypassing them and acting as if we are not. The others tend to collude because the bypassing behavior is usually seen as being thoughtful and civilized; no one will be embarrassed. The collusion is reinforced by the culture of the organization as well as the larger culture in which the organization exists. That is, one set of defensive loops reinforces each other.
The next set of defensive loops is related to the professionals who are supposed to help clients overcome the defensive routines. Management consultants (internal or external) often use the same bypass routines when they deal with threat. Thus, professionals collude in creating another defensive loop.
In other words, most of us don’t like to get bad news, and a lot of us don’t like delivering it either. We hide critical information because we’ve been highly trained to experience that as painful, impolite, inappropriate, and/or immature.
This is a profound dilemma: organizational learning requires feedback and the discussion of valid data, but doing so evokes defensiveness and polarization that makes organizational learning difficult or impossible. So, what we get are half-measures where a little learning happens, but everyone agrees it’s “not nearly as rich as it would have been if only so-and-so would be willing to listen to some honest feedback.” Alternatively, we get escalating polarization as folks who disagree with each other dig in and (sometimes literally) throw grenades at their opponents.
Bottom line, structure and agency combine to yield low learning in a multiplicity of situations…
Þ from frozen O-rings that many Morton-Thiokol engineers knew were a big problem before Challenger blew up
Þ to an Iraqi invasion based on demonstrably false information about uranium cake
Þ to violent predators being released from prison into society even though there is no doubt that they will harm others again
Þ to parents continuing to deprecated their kids even though that clearly constitutes bad parenting
Þ to traffic jams that happen as regularly as clockwork
Þ to bankers repeatedly violating the same laws against insider trading and facilitating tax evasion that they’ve already been fined for several times previously.
At present, in many situations, we have neither the communication structures nor the human will to engage in the feedback processes we need to achieve organizational learning.
Maybe I should end this thought piece right here and put my head in a plastic bag!
The Power of Vision and Hope
Fortunately, when I look at all of the social and scientific innovation happening across the world and at all the positive, generous and kind people doing all manner of projects, I am saved from the swamp of pessimism.
When a person or a collective of people confront something or someone that they are truly passionate about, that they truly believe in, they are willing to move past the boundaries created by defensiveness and the limitations of existing communication structures and step up to honesty and new opportunities. I have seen this many times in my own life and in my observation of others.
Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs returns repeatedly to Jobs’ ability to “distort the reality field” of people with whom he interacted. He showed them that things they didn’t think were possible were, in fact, very much realizable, as long as one could “think different”. This ability to remake the eyes with which one and others see the world strikes me as a fundamental ingredient of visionary leadership.
There are a lot of people individually, collectively and organizationally telling their truths. Sometimes the truths people tell are in direct opposition to each other. In philosophy, these juxtaposed truths are called antinomies, a contradiction between two apparently equally valid principles or between inferences correctly drawn from such principles. For example, “Welfare state saves millions of lives” versus “Welfare state enslaves millions into a life of dependency.” Both positions have strong and articulate adherents. When I listen closely and with something like an open mind to each view, I get a headache!
But, that’s beside the point. When people and organizations argue persuasively for and against a multitude of ideas, products and services, they sway others, they incline others to do more than they might have thought themselves capable of doing, more than they were actually capable of doing.
Love, vision, idealism, and hope impel and compel people and organizations to transcend the constraints of structure and conformity. If the channels aren’t there to facilitate communication on critical topics, people will build them, even in places like Israel and Palestine where acrimony and suspicion are the rule rather than the exception. If you really believe in someone or some institution, if you love someone, you’ll take a hard lesson from him, her or it. If you think that the product or service you’re working on will make a difference that matters, you’ll go through hell to see it through. If you have to become simultaneously psychologically tougher and more sensitive to have a relationship with another person, another group, another organization, a new public to achieve a highly desired goal or state of being, you can. You must.
Organizational Learning’s Unit of Analysis
A unit of analysis refers to the scope of the system or organization that is supposed to be engaged in a learning process. The more complex a system, the bigger its learning challenge. Its vision must be highly compelling and its structures for integration have to work very well.
Assume a simple system, a small business employing 30 people supplying a fairly specific service, e.g., a dental office in a bedroom community owned by two male dentists who are also relatives. Its learning requirements are neither trivial nor massive.
Here are a few of the learning needs that such an organization might face:
• Its personnel must be professional in both their technical skills and in the quality of their interaction with patients.
• Its tracking and record keeping systems must be efficient.
• Its leadership must assure quality communication between hygienists, assistants and administrative staff members.
• Attention must be paid to new clinical developments and technological advances (e.g., the role remote monitoring and the internet of everything will play in dentistry).
• The community being served should be well understood and the outreach campaign to establish and maintain relations with that community should be well thought-through and maintained.
• A succession plan involving the right parties needs to be thought through.
• The dynamics of each owner’s family life will affect the enterprise and, therefore, need close consideration.
Within the practice, there are several potential units of analysis:
• Each of the dentists: what is their curiosity about themselves as clinicians and as a leader of a practice/business?
• The dentists as partners: how open are they with each other about issues in the practice? How skilled are they at engaging in conversations that open their partnership up to learning rather than polarization?
• Each of the staff functions (i.e., hygienists, assistants, administration): What are their expectations for their own development as professionals
• Each of the functions in their relationships with the owners: How well do the players do at empathizing with the challenges that each position in the system faces?
• Each of the functions in their relationships with one another: How well do they do at identifying inefficiencies and inadequacies in their relations with each other and in fixing those problems themselves
• The interaction of all of the internal players with patients
• Various patient groupings (e.g., children, teenagers, middle-aged adults, elderly)
• The practice’s interaction with its community or communities
Considering these units of analysis from a double loop learning perspective, one might want to know: What is the quality of learning happening in each of these domains and in the system as a totality? What are the structures that support learning? How much inquiry and openness is expressed in the conversations between the players in the system? Is the system as a totality united by an overarching vision of service and professionalism that is actually manifested in practice through the identification of gaps between the vision and present outcomes in a spirit of joint inquiry?
This brief and incomplete excursion into the world of dental practice is only meant to highlight the complexity of what it means to establish a learning organization. Imagine the challenge of achieving the ambition of double-loop learning in a huge system like a multinational corporation, a state government, an international agency, etc..
Of course, the more complicated the system, the stronger one would expect the mechanisms for organizational memory, feedback and learning to be. Data collection and processing protocols would probably be codified and routinized, for example. Staff meetings and data analysis sessions would be commonplace and regularly scheduled. Management consultants would be running around improving systems and offering insightful suggestions.
But, ultimately, we are still looking at human beings and their level of engagement with the systems they are part of, their willingness and their ability to reflect together on past events and future possibilities, their openness to the ideas and perspectives of others, their curiosity about their internal processes and their behavior together, etc.. So, the more complex the system, the larger the unit of analysis and the more challenging the job of comprehending and/or improving the nature of organizational learning. If one expects a system of 100,000 to operate as an effective, focused learning entity, the job of assessing how it’s doing is a daunting one.
Whole System Sight
Yet, very large systems do learn. Francis Fukuyama’s most recent book, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, describes six interrelated elements of all political systems that need to work together well in order for a state to be successful, i.e., deliver high quality goods and services to its citizens and residents who manifest their happiness in being part of a state by high levels of social engagement. Very briefly, these are:
Economic growth, i.e., that there is some degree of dependable economic robustness and security
Social Mobilization, i.e., that the members of a social system participate in activities related to the functioning of that system
Idea/Legitimacy, i.e., that people within a society believe in something that makes the functioning of the state legitimate
The State itself, i.e., the workings of the governing institutions
The Rule of Law, i.e., the extent to which everyone in a society is subject to the same set of rules that have been codified
Democracy, i.e., the degree to which there is public participation in the structuring of the state.
Fukuyama asserts that learning and development have clearly occurred in the last three of these factors, State, Rule of Law, and Democracy. Both in this volume and its companion, The Origins of Political Order, Fukuyama describes many, many centuries of experimentation that make a system mature or immature and demonstrates how the strength or weakness of Economic Growth, Social Mobilization and Ideas/Legitimacy impact the particular ways in which the other elements unfold and vice-versa. In other words, the elements of the system of political order interact in ways that reinforce learning and productivity or chaos and poverty.
It’s beyond the scope of this note to address the richness of Fukuyama’s argument (other than to say that it’s a great book, in my opinion), but I do want to note one point that he makes repeatedly about the development of the State, which is relevant to the question of learning in highly complex systems. He makes it very clear that a professionally trained and competent bureaucracy is critical to the success of states. The people who work at the IRS have to know how to add and subtract! More seriously, government and administrations of all sorts need to be based on meritocracy and well-considered standards of practice.
This was absolutely not always the case and, in many places today, the qualifications of bureaucratic personnel remain anything but professional. For example, prior to the Progressive Era and innovations by the two Roosevelt presidents in particular, the Federal bureaucracy in the United States was almost completely a “clientistic” operation, i.e., political machines promised people jobs in governmental departments in exchange for the delivery of votes. This began to change in the US in the late 1800s, in part because of the effectiveness of German bureaucracy. The German state, which was still significantly autocratic, delivered in ways that the US did not. The US had to learn to change the operation of its Federal bureaucracies, which happened as a result of extensive legislative analysis and debate. The decisions that improved the functioning of the agencies of the American state strengthened both the Rule of Law and the Democracies of both society, while supporting Economic Growth, Social Mobilization, and Ideas/Legitimacy.
Fukuyama is one of a large, but pretty rarified, group of observers and commentators who think in whole system terms. STRATFOR’s George Friedman with his geographically based view of geo-politics is one. Jared Diamond’s comparison of learning processes in longitudinal versus latitudinal continents is another. Marx is a significant figure in a fairly long line of systems thinkers who map the evolution of economic systems by looking at the forces that alter the locus of power between different classes of actors. Peter Senge’s presentation of system archetypes provides a very powerful analytical framework for looking at organizational blind spots at a whole system level, such as the automatic tendency to over-invest chronically in existing business lines while systematically ignoring new developments.
The firm Anika Savage and I created, Art of the Future has presented its own way of thinking about how whole systems operate in our book Life Sustaining Organizations — A Design Guide, which concentrates on the rigor and robustness of an organization’s approach to anticipating the future. Our thesis is that the more open-minded an organization is about the diverse pathways to alternative futures, the better job it will do at recruiting and keeping creative talent who will function well in a range of scenarios. We have described a whole systems approach to considering future possibilities and “interrogating” these possibilities for actions to take in the present.
Barry Oshry, the designer of simulations that have constituted a database for his research over the last 40+ years, offers another powerful way of seeing entire systems at both the organizational and societal levels.
Barry Oshry
According to Oshry, organizations can be stripped down to a basic four-player model:
Tops, who have overall responsibility for the functioning of the organization
Bottom, who do specific work within the organization and report to others
Middles, who manage some of the Bottoms and report to the Tops
Customers and other members of the organizational environment, who depend on the organizations goods and services for what they want to do and/or need the organization to function in particular ways
Oshry points out people existing in each of these organizational positions face a particular set of vulnerabilities and opportunities. Inattention to the vulnerabilities is characteristic of organizations on automatic, which don’t do well over time. Understanding the vulnerabilities and paying conscious attention to their management is characteristic of organizations that value partnership and learning. It is a powerful and simple way to understand complex organizational dynamics.
Oshry’s whole systems thinking also includes a way of assessing the vulnerabilities and “robustness” of a system based its management of two dialectal axes[2]:
The Integration/Differentiation axis concerns the degree to which a system coheres around a set of principles or a mission versus the degree to which it is subdivided into different parts or power centers pursuing their own objectives.[3] The Individuation/Homogenization axis refers to the degree to which a system encourages self-expression at a multiplicity of levels versus the degree to which it requires uniformity in behavior.[4] These axes are like a gyroscope for systems: if any one node gets overweighted even slightly the whole system can start to destabilize and tip over. A robust system is one in which there is enough balance between these poles to tolerate a wide range of different behaviors and impulses without faltering. I’ve found it very useful to have this model of what a whole learning system should look like.
Obviously, these comments about seeing the whole system are impressionistic and meant only to highlight the importance of holistic thinking for the advocate or assessor of organizational learning. The agent of organizational learning needs to have a full repertoire of frameworks for seeing whole systems. This is extremely helpful in assessing whether an organization as a totality is learning, what kind of learning it’s doing and how it is accomplishing it. There are so many perspectives to work with in this field. Like I said, organizational learning is exhausting fun!
What the Disappearance of the Bottom Line Means for Organizational Learning
To achieve its full promise, I believe that the field of organizational learning must embrace a post-materialist vision of the future. What does that mean and why do I say it is so? I believe that humanity is standing on the edge of at least two great oceans of change and mystery that must be seen and addressed for our species to move forward. Both expanses of the emerging future require us to give up certain mental models and defensive patterns.
A Trash Mountain in Mumbai
One concerns the dialectic between the global environmental crisis and the need to adopt technologies that can transcend our present limitations and to develop a deeper practice of conservation on a global basis. Virtually every day innovations are being developed that could revolutionize patterns of energy consumption, transportation, pollution, and waste of resources. And, every day, most things remain pretty much the same. New technologies aren’t adopted. Most current models of the “good life” continue to emphasize material success and consumerism. Those whose lives would be upended by a shift away from the status quo understandably deny the need for change and remain in power in many if not most political arenas.
There is a very real chance that we are not only burning up the planet by over-consuming its resources and underinvesting in paths forward, but we are also risking an endless sea of war as millions of armed people are driven to the wall by poverty and hopelessness.
The maturity advised in 1 Corinthians is relevant:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Our species and our planet are dealing with a variety of pressing crises. It is the responsibility of organizational learning as a field to embrace the challenge of these big, messy, wicked problems. Of course, it is pleasant to have nice things and a comfortable lifestyle, but organizational learning professionals should resist the blandishments of material success for their own sake, if they take us away from our roles as agents of inquiry and learning. Too much of the energy of organizational learning practitioners is devoted to supporting a political-economic system that has no ultimate objective beyond making a small group of people very rich and another larger group of people relatively comfortable.[5] In my opinion, that kind of collusion with the status quo misses the point of the field: we are supposed to see and work with the new context, the wider whole. The times require, if not heroic action, then at least a life lived, at least partially, in concert with the seriousness of the era. The paths toward a sustainable future are clearly marked. We have to be part of the leadership that starts walking down them.
While the first of the great challenges requires learning in the face of resource limits and the need to invest in long-term solutions, the second compels us to confront infinity. Both our planet and our individual consciousnesses have become pilgrims in unfathomable and uncharted oceans of the unknown. At a planetary level, we have discovered that we are on Spaceship Earth and in the last fifty years we have begun actively to probe the vastness of space and time that our forbearers could only dream of or explore theoretically. At the level of our own being, physics is demonstrating that our assumptions about the nature of reality itself are only that, assumptions that are increasingly up for grabs. Certainly, there is and will be an interaction between the discoveries that are occurring in inner and outer space.
It takes a highly developed degree of curiosity, imagination and openness even to begin to think about engaging infinity as a fact, not as a mental construct. The films Interstellar and Contact offer some sense of what it means to be the new person who can see emerging new truths. I can only begin to speculate on the consequences of what is emerging in the science of the universe and the study of the self on the practice of organizational learning, but I know that they are profound. They require a future mind that unifies science and wonder.
A new era is unfolding, one that seems to necessitate both retrenchment and expansion simultaneously. The discipline of organizational learning has a great deal to offer those undertaking this adventure. The horizon is vast; let us move toward it.
[1] For a fuller discussion of Bateson’s ideas on levels of learning see his work directly in publications such as Steps toward and Ecology of the Mind or Guide to Emergent Learning by Marilyn Darling, Heidi Sparkes Guber and Jillaine Smith.
[2] For a more detailed description of Oshry’s thinking see his work directly, e.g., Seeing Systems, or my “The Power of Position: A Diagnostic Model” in Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader, 2006.
[3] Think of General Electric’s Works Equation: “We have a relentless drive to invent things that matter: innovations that build, power, move and help cure the world. We make things that very few in the world can, but that everyone needs. This is a source of pride. To our employees and customers, it defines GE.” versus the fact that the company has been identified as the fourth largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States and has been repeatedly fined and criticized for causing environmental damage. Obviously, there are occasions where the company isn’t working together as a unit in service of its high-minded mission.
[4] Think of a creative arts high school in which one might observe scores of individual fashion statements daily versus a parochial school requiring a specific uniform.
[5] For a thorough, data-based assessment of trends in inequality and their consequences, see Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Harvard University Press, 2014.
Posted by Michael Sales and Anika Savage at 5:12 PM No comments:
About Art of the Future
Michael Sales and Anika Savage
Art of the Future is a strategy firm that supports anticipatory leaders as they guide their organizations from practices that have worked for them in the past into the ways of being and acting that will succeed in the future. We focus on the design of life-sustaining organizations that respect and support their people, their own integrity and their environment. Structural Dynamics is a strategic learning approach that anticipatory leaders can use to lead their organizations into the future. Structural Dynamics combines the creativity of scenario planning with systems thinking and analysis. Our experience and expertise derives from sixty years of combined practice in leadership and consulting positions in organizations across many sectors of economic activity. This blog is a periodic reflection on an eclectic set of topics related to life-sustaining organizations, the future of work and systemic thinking.
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Opa's iPod
One of the recent jobs I worked on was making an image for a poster for an exhibition in a museum called De Dubbelde Palmboom.
De Dubbelde Palmboom is a museum especially for children. It's situated in an old warehouse in Delfshaven, a small harbour in the city of Rotterdam. This might be of special interest to those descended from the Pilgrim Fathers. Delfshaven was actually the starting point of the voyage of the Pilgrims to the New World. They set sail to Southampton on board of the Speedwell in 1620. In Southampton they boarded on the Mayflower and the rest of the story is all too well known.
Well, that's enough history class for now!
The exhibition in De Dubbelde Palmboom is called Opa's iPod (Grandad's iPod) and is all about apparatus which are familiar to today's grandparents, but most likely unknown to the youth. This exhibition give these ignorent young brats the oppurtunity to observe and even experience those wonderful devices of yesteryear.
The children can play with the first Atari computergames, listen to the radio (with broadcasts dating from various decades), send morse codes and they can even have a go at an old fashioned telephone switchboard.
There's also a grammophone player on which the youngsters can spin some records, although I have to say - being a passionate record collector myself - the record collection of the museum is not much to go for. I guess that won't bother the youth of today in the least though.
Unnecessary to say that the exhibition will be lots of fun for kids and probably their parents and grandparents too.
I think it's also great fun to combine a drawing with a photograph and so I was very pleased the museum asked me to do something like that for the exhibition. These pictures are going to be used for promotional purposes.
That's it for now, dear blogfriends. Next time something quite different!
Batmobile part 1
Some of the visitors of my website and this blog will recognize my name from the record sleeves I did for the Dutch rockabilly trio Batmobile. I did those sleeves many many years ago and, as you can imagine, I have improved myself quite considerably over the years.
Although the record sleeves of Batmobile are not representive for the work I make nowadays, I thought it would be a nice idea to open this weblog with the six album covers I've made in their good ol' vinyl years.
Mind you, those three geezers gave me my first real paid assignment way back in 1985 and gave me the oppurtunity to make a little name for myself, whilst hopping along on Batmobile's road to world fame.
Batmobile's debut album was released in 1985. The original artwork was stolen from the archives from the record company by an ex-employee and sold to someone else. I don't know who has the original artwork nowadays, but I know who stole it. Shame on you!!!
"Bambooland”, Batmobile's second album, was issued in 1986. I'd made seperate working drawings for each colour, but they were so complicated that the printer preferred to use the colour sketch I made to make the colour seperations clear. Luckily I did a good job on a very detailed sketch, but I still had to learn a lot about technical requirements for a printer. Ah well, that's the price you have to pay being self educated. You learn while you're doing it.
I used a black and white postcard for inspiration on the “Amazons From Outer Space” album from 1989. Alas, I don't have the postcard anymore and I forgot which British village or town was pictured on the postcard. Nevertheless, the shop of J. Sowden, fish salesman and fruiterer, did - or even so still does - really exist!
Unfortunately, the original artwork of this album also mysteriously disappeared. If anybody happens to know where the original is now, I would appreciate it if that person could inform me of its whereabouts. I hope it didn't end up in a trashcan. I spend many, many hours working on this album cover!
When I made the sleeve of “Batmobile is Dynamite” in 1990, I was very much inspired by a Dutch cartoonist duo known as Windig and De Jong. Be sure to learn more about these ever so funny men on this weblog in the future.
The figure with the chef's cap on the right might seem a bit perculiar for those not familiar with Dutch folklore. However, those who are well acquainted with our folklore will immediately recognize Flipje, a character trademark of a Dutch brand of jam. I notice now that I made a few slight mistakes in the detailling. The original Flipje has curly orange coloured hair and his hands are made out of leaves. I guess I couldn't find a picture of the little fellow at that time and had to do it all from memory. The cat on the album cover is in fact my dear beloved pet named Ora, who sadly passed away in 1992.
The sleeve of “Sex Starved”, also from 1990, is made in a period when I experimented with a much more expressive style. I tried it for a few years, but in the end I concluded that it wasn't my cup of tea after all and returned to a clean cut cheerful style, which suits me much better.
Again the original artwork dissappeared without a trace, so if you can give me any clue ...?
With the making of “Hard Hammer Hits” in 1992 I got some help from a befriended graphic designer. With his help I was able to live up to all the specific requirements of the printer and the result was excactly as I hoped it would be.
Please note that the explicit photographs of certain parts of the human body on the back of the album cover were not my idea. You have to thank the sophisticated gentlemen of Batmobile themselves for that.
One might notice that the front sleeve is much influenced by the work of Preston Blair, probably best known for his work for Walt Disney Productions. I'd bought an instructional book for animation by his hand. Although I never made an animation, I can tell you that I sure have learned a lot studying the book over and over again.
Preston Blair died in 1995, so he will never read this blog. Nevertheless, I sure would like to thank Mr. Blair for sharing his knowledge and craftsmanship.
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The powers of a company as set forth in the Third Schedule to the Companies Act, shall apply to the Company 5. The liability of the members is limited 6. The share capital of the Company is RM2,,,/ Adopted by- divided into 10,,, ordinary shares of RM each. The change came inthe form of a new section inserted into the Companies Act , namely, section 67A. Section 67A, which came into for~e on I September , allows public companies to purchase its own shares under certain circumstances. The Company Act of was made to govern and administer formation of companies and their functioning. This act gives any person(s) the right to form any type of company or corporate organization.
Section 67 companies act 1965 malaysia
[Dealing by a company in its own shares, etc. (COMPANIES ACT (REVISED - ) - ACT ) (1) Except as is otherwise expressly provided by this Act no company shall give, whether directly or indirectly and whether by means of a loan, guarantee or the provision of security or otherwise, any financial assistance for the purpose of or in connection. Names of companies. Section Change of name. Section Omission of "Berhad" in name of charitable and other companies. Section Registration of unlimited company as limited, etc. Section Change from public to private and from private to public company. Section Default in complying with requirements as to private companies. Section LAWS OF MALAYSIA Act COMPANIES ACT ARRANGEMENT OF SECTIONS PART I PRELIMINARY Section 1. Short title 2. (Omitted) 3. Repeals 4. Interpretation 5. Definition of subsidiary and holding company 5A. Definition of ultimate holding company 5B. Definition of wholly-owned subsidiary 6. When corporations deemed to be related to each other 6A. Home Malaysia Law Acts Malaysian Companies Act, Section 51 to of Malaysian Companies Act, This page deals with the Section 51 to of Malaysian Companies Act, Section Requirements as to statements in lieu of prospectus Section Dealing by a company in its own shares, etc. Section 67A: Purchase by a company of. The powers of a company as set forth in the Third Schedule to the Companies Act, shall apply to the Company 5. The liability of the members is limited 6. The share capital of the Company is RM2,,,/ Adopted by- divided into 10,,, ordinary shares of RM each. The change came inthe form of a new section inserted into the Companies Act , namely, section 67A. Section 67A, which came into for~e on I September , allows public companies to purchase its own shares under certain circumstances. Section of the Companies Act provides statutory relief for an aggrieved member of a company in case of oppression. Federal Court maintains wide scope of Companies Act in. Companies Act (Revised ) (part 3) (5) If default is made in complying with the provisions of this section relating to the lodging with the Registrar of the statement in the prescribed form, the company and every officer of the company who is in default shall be guilty of an offence against this Act. The Company Act of was made to govern and administer formation of companies and their functioning. This act gives any person(s) the right to form any type of company or corporate organization. | AMENDMENTS TO THE COMPANIES ACT (ACT ) By: Shahfeezal Mohd Nor Associate Corporate Commercial Practice Group + INTRODUCTION. The Companies (Amendment) Bill passed by Parliament on the 23rd of May brings about significant changes to the corporate governance framework in Malaysia.] Section 67 companies act 1965 malaysia (1) Except as is otherwise expressly provided by this Act no company shall give, whether directly or indirectly and whether by means of a loan, guarantee or the provision of security or otherwise, any financial assistance for the purpose of or in connection with a purchase or subscription made or to be made by any person of or for any shares in the company or, where the company is a subsidiary. LAWS OF MALAYSIA ACT COMPANIES ACT (REVISED - ) Incorporating latest amendment - Act A / First enacted: (Act No. 79 of ) Date of coming into operation: [Throughout Malaysia 15 April , P.U. /] Reprinted: First Reprint , Second Reprint , Third Reprint Revised up to. THE COMPANIES ACT, MALAYSIA _____ PUBLIC COMPANY LIMITED BY SHARES _____ MEMORANDUM And ARTICLES OF ASSOCIATION Of SUNWAY CONSTRUCTION GROUP BERHAD (Company No. W) Incorporated on the 10th day of September LAWS OF MALAYSIA Act COMPANIES ACT ARRANGEMENT OF SECTIONS PART I PRELIMINARY Section 1. Short title 2. (Omitted) 3. Repeals 4. Interpretation 5. Definition of subsidiary and holding company 5A. Definition of ultimate holding company 5B. Definition of wholly-owned subsidiary 6. When corporations deemed to be related to each other 6A. This page deals with the Section 51 to of Malaysian Companies Act, Section Requirements as to statements in lieu of prospectus; Section Restrictions on commencement of business in certain circumstances; Section Restriction on varying contracts referred to in prospectus, etc. The Company Act of was made to govern and administer formation of companies and their functioning. This act gives any person(s) the right to form any type of company or corporate organization. The law inMalaysia relating to the subject of companies dealing in its own shares is found insection 67 ofthe Malaysian Companies Act, The general prohibition which is contained in section 67(1) of the Companies Act (the Act), states as follows: Except as is otherwise expres ly provided by this Act no company shall give, whether. Companies Act (Revised ) (part 3) Companies (b) the consent of a person is required under section 45 to the issue of the prospectus and he either has not given that consent or has withdrawn it before the issue of the prospectus. The 23 separate amendments the Companies (Amendment) Act seek to amend the Companies Act ("Act ") in the following manner: 1. Clause 2 of the Companies (Amendment) Act seeks to amend section 11A of Act to allow a statutory declaration to be filed or lodged with the Registrar electronically and to empower the Registrar. Every Company having a share capital is required by section of The Companies Act, to prepare an annual return, which must be made up to the date of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the company in the year, or a date not later than 14th day after the date of the AGM. SSM e-Info Services is an Internet based service to provide search and purchase of registered company (ROC) and business (ROB) information online. This is an alternative to over the counter transactions. Everybody can access this service with Internet connection using online payment such as Prepaid, Credit Card (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX). Structure. The Companies Act , in its current form (15 August ), consists of 12 Parts containing sections and 10 schedules (including 36 amendments). Changes to the Companies Act There are many major changes to the Companies Act during the Companies (Amendment) Act which came into force in 15th of August year The amendments falls into a few categories which involve the: Directors and officers (Section , S, SA, SB, SC, SE, S). Reform in the Malaysian Corporate Landscape Share Capital and Capital Maintenance No-Par Value Regime The current Companies Act requires Malaysian companies to issue shares with a par value or nominal value. The Act (Section 74) introduces the no-par value regime where shares of a company shall have no par or nominal value. Companies (Amendment) 3 LAWS OF MALAYSIA Act A COMPANIES (AMENDMENT) ACT An Act to amend the Companies Act [] ENACTED by the Parliament of Malaysia as follows: Short title and commencement 1. (1) This Act may be cited as the Companies (Amendment) Act (2) This Act comes into operation on a date to be appointed. What is treasury shares? Explain the requirement under Section 67A, Companies Act for share repurchase. Did Bina Power Bhd repurchase their shares during the year and how many? What is the accounting method used by the company to account for share repurchase? 4. However, Section 67A (1) of Companies Act (Malaysia) provides that a public company with share capital can buy its own shares. So, section 67A (1) has made an exception to section 67(1) of Companies Act. A company cannot provide financial assistance to any person to buy shares in the company.
Section 66 ( reduction in share capital ) of the companies act 2013
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In February 1953 the allied powers cancelled part of Germany’s debt. What about Greece?
24 February 2019 by Eric Toussaint , Hervé Nathan
The following interview of Eric Toussaint by the French weekly Marianne was first published in February 2015. It remains just as relevant in 2019 on the anniversary of the London Agreement on German External Debts of 27 February 1953 which enabled Germany to benefit from the cancellation of more than 60% of its debt. Many Greeks still claim that they should receive war reparations from Germany as well as repayment of the debt that the Nazi régime contracted with the Bank of Greece in 1941.
Eric Toussaint interviewed by Herve Nathan, of the French weekly Marianne
Marianne. When it came to power, the SYRIZA party referred to the cancellation of German debts in the context of the London agreement some sixty-two years ago (27 February 1953). We were reminded that the Federal Republic might owe huge amounts to Greece… Can you explain?
Eric Toussaint. Actually there are two different kinds of debt. The first is the result of the war loan bonds that the Nazi occupiers forced on the Greek government between 1941 and 1944, some 476 million Reichmarks (the German money of the time) making Greece pay the cost of its occupation. This loan has never been repaid. With a moderate interest Interest An amount paid in remuneration of an investment or received by a lender. Interest is calculated on the amount of the capital invested or borrowed, the duration of the operation and the rate that has been set. rate of about 3% a year this debt, the repayment of which has been requested by several Greek governments, would amount to €12 to €15 billion today, which may be compared to the €15 billion that Berlin agreed to loan to Greece at an interest rate of 4.5% as part of the first memorandum in 2010. Today the German government is Greece’s creditor for €15 billion [and vice versa]. On the other hand the Federal Republic of Germany did not have to pay for war damages to countries that were occupied by the 3rd Reich. Along with Poland and the USSR, Greece was one of the countries that suffered the most, much more than France, Belgium or the Netherlands. If we add up the 1941 war loan and war damages Germany owes between €100 and €200 billion to Greece, between one or two thirds of Greece’s current public debt…
This is huge indeed, and we may wonder to what extent Greek people are aware of this German debt.
Greece never formally relinquished its right on this debt. During the 1953 London conference on the German debt, compensations for WWII war damages were left to be settled in peace treaties between Germany and the countries that had won the war, and because of the Cold War with the Soviet bloc they never materialized. In 1981, when Greece joined the European Community (now the European Union), the government, led by PASOK didn’t raise the issue, since the country benefited from substantial European structural funding. But the 2010 crisis and the very harsh conditions enforced by lenders including Frau Merkel’s Germany have brought the issue back into the political limelight!
Greece has thus been treated very differently from the Federal Republic of Germany…
Indeed. During the London conference The young Federal Republic’s creditors examined debts accumulated by Germany since the 1920s (including those that were to stand for WWI compensations as enforced by the Versailles treaty) and those contracted between 1945 and 1953. Signatories, i.e. Western allies (the US, France, the UK...) not only reduced West Germany’s debt (interests and capital) by 62.5%, but they also created the conditions that permitted the country to recover as rapidly as possible. Repayments were not to exceed 5% of export revenues, interest rates Interest rates When A lends money to B, B repays the amount lent by A (the capital) as well as a supplementary sum known as interest, so that A has an interest in agreeing to this financial operation. The interest is determined by the interest rate, which may be high or low. To take a very simple example: if A borrows 100 million dollars for 10 years at a fixed interest rate of 5%, the first year he will repay a tenth of the capital initially borrowed (10 million dollars) plus 5% of the capital owed, i.e. 5 million dollars, that is a total of 15 million dollars. In the second year, he will again repay 10% of the capital borrowed, but the 5% now only applies to the remaining 90 million dollars still due, i.e. 4.5 million dollars, or a total of 14.5 million dollars. And so on, until the tenth year when he will repay the last 10 million dollars, plus 5% of that remaining 10 million dollars, i.e. 0.5 million dollars, giving a total of 10.5 million dollars. Over 10 years, the total amount repaid will come to 127.5 million dollars. The repayment of the capital is not usually made in equal instalments. In the initial years, the repayment concerns mainly the interest, and the proportion of capital repaid increases over the years. In this case, if repayments are stopped, the capital still due is higher…
The nominal interest rate is the rate at which the loan is contracted. The real interest rate is the nominal rate reduced by the rate of inflation. were between 0.5% and 5%, and the public debt could be partly repaid with German money (deutschemark), which was of little value for international transactions at the time. It meant that creditor countries (Belgium, France, the Netherlands, the US) could only use those revenues to buy German goods. In this way they contributed to the fast recovery of German corporations such as Thyssen, Siemens, IG Farben…, those very corporations who had helped the Nazi war effort in the first place. The German debt served to develop the export market for the country. Finally creditors’ disputes were to be taken to German courts. All the opposite of what the EU, the ECB ECB
European Central Bank The European Central Bank is a European institution based in Frankfurt, founded in 1998, to which the countries of the Eurozone have transferred their monetary powers. Its official role is to ensure price stability by combating inflation within that Zone. Its three decision-making organs (the Executive Board, the Governing Council and the General Council) are composed of governors of the central banks of the member states and/or recognized specialists. According to its statutes, it is politically ‘independent’ but it is directly influenced by the world of finance.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/html/index.en.html and the IMF IMF
International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.
When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.
As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).
The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.
http://imf.org imposed on Greece.
Sure, but the London agreement was part of a wider legal and ideological context, to assure Western Europe’s economic recovery …
Germany had to be reconstructed as fast as possible as a bulwark against the Soviet bloc. The means were found to help allied countries, France, Belgium and the UK also had US debts cancelled and $13 billion were granted as part of the Marshall Plan Marshall Plan A programme of economic reconstruction proposed in 1947 by the US State Secretary, George C. Marshall. With a budget of 12.5 billion dollars (more than 80 billion dollars in current terms) composed of donations and long-term loans, the Marshall Plan enabled 16 countries (notably France, the UK, Italy and the Scandinavian countries) to finance their reconstruction after the Second World War. assistance (worth about $100 billion today), including $1.5 billion for Germany ($10 billion today). This gesture resulted from considerations developed by the Roosevelt administration before Europe was liberated on the advisability of awarding loans or grants. The US had decided for grants so as not to compel European countries to export their goods to the US in order to obtain the dollars they needed to repay their debts. This was a generous decision, but actually a protectionist measure. US companies would not have to compete with European goods in their home markets. Grants on the other hand would make it possible for them to sell their machine tools, assembly lines, or farming equipment to West Europeans, thus maintaining full employment in the US, as had been the case since 1942. The choice proved favourable to all until the mid-1950s. The lesson to be drawn from that era is that prosperity has to be shared.
Is this what is called a virtuous circle?
Exactly. Lessons had been drawn from the terrible mistakes of the Versailles Treaty and of the policies in the 1920s, as shown by John M. Keynes. It was also a time of regulation. In 1944 the IMF was created to supervise the stability of monetary exchanges and control capital flows; the World Bank World Bank
WB The World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states’ contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.
It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :
1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;
2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;
3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.
As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries’ payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF’s therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates.
was to finance economies that had to start anew. This would result in the boom decades after 1945, thirty years of economic growth and full employment in the Western world, while the EU today is caught in a downward spiral because of its restrictive policies, its insistence on fiscal balance Balance End of year statement of a company’s assets (what the company possesses) and liabilities (what it owes). In other words, the assets provide information about how the funds collected by the company have been used; and the liabilities, about the origins of those funds. , lower and lower wages, the irrevocability of debts, and because it comforts stronger economies at the expense of weaker ones.
But why do the Germans cling to these policies when their failure is so obvious?
Angela Merkel clings to this absurd logic because she considers that Europe, with Germany at its hub, must be more competitive than the US, China or any other emergent country (Russia, Brazil, India). She has one objective: take wages to even lower levels and reduce more workers to poverty, in and outside Germany. Matteo Renzi in Italy and François Hollande in France do not challenge this position. They actually duplicate the Harz reforms that were the undoing of the German social model from 2003-2005. In Italy with the Law on Labour, and in France with the ‘Macron’ law, they just demand less fiscal efforts.
However, is it a good thing for the SYRIZA leaders, who wish to negociate with the EU, to bring up Second World War issues? Isn’t it like telling them: you must pay for your past mistakes?
German people are not responsible for the Nazi regime. There is is no ‘collective debt’ of the Germans’. On the other hand it is unacceptable that Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble should present their demands on the Greeks as “generous”. With the Greek crisis the cost of Germany’s 10 year government bonds fell from 3.4% in 2010 to 0.4% in 2014. This 75% cut allowed Germany to save €63 billion, because the markets did not want to take any more risks and rushed to buy ‘Bunds’. This is also true for France. The German government, the ECB, or the IMF, whose Managing Director Christine Lagarde claims that debts have to be paid, manipulate public opinion. Michel Sapin has the same discourse. Citizens have to be mobilized so as to keep Greece on its knees. Conservative leaders want to defeat Tsipras so as to prevent the Spanish people from electing Podemos at the end of the year. Economists falsify history when they claim that the euro crisis started because of Greece. Greece was indeed the weaker link but it was the euro zone that had been badly designed in the first place. From the moment the euro was introduced significant money transfers from countries of the North to countries of the South (Portugal, Greece, Italy, Spain) were replaced by loans from major banks in the big countries (Germany, France, Italy…) to countries at the periphery. Banks grabbed mortgages and thus blew up the speculative bubble Speculative bubble An economic, financial or speculative bubble is formed when the level of trading-prices on a market (financial assets market, currency-exchange market, property market, raw materials market, etc.) settles well above the intrinsic (or fundamental) financial value of the goods or assets being exchanged. In such a situation, prices diverge from the usual economic valuation under the influence of buyers’ beliefs. until it exploded. In 2012 the Greek debt was restructured and bank loans were replaced by loans from governments, i.e. from taxpayers. And this money - €240 billion – was used to repay the financial institutions in the North…
Translated by Mike Krolikowski and Christine Pagnoulle
is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France.
He is the author of Debt System (Haymarket books, Chicago, 2019), Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc.
See his bibliography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ric_Toussaint
He co-authored World debt figures 2015 with Pierre Gottiniaux, Daniel Munevar and Antonio Sanabria (2015); and with Damien Millet Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, Monthly Review Books, New York, 2010. He was the scientific coordinator of the Greek Truth Commission on Public Debt from April 2015 to November 2015.
Other articles in English by Eric Toussaint (544)
Series: Adverse International and Local Conditions for Sub-Saharan Africa (Part 3)
The China Factor
22 October 2019, by Eric Toussaint , Patrick Bond , Ishmael Lesufi , Lisa Thompson
Global Economic Volatility and Socio Political Reactions
Swiss Franc Mortgages: Illegitimate and Illegal
8 October 2019, by Eric Toussaint
South African Special Economic Zones : History of Limited Successes
8 October 2019, by Eric Toussaint , Patrick Bond , Ishmael Lesufi , Lisa Thompson
Yanis Varoufakis’s Account of the Greek Crisis: a Self-Incrimination
Tsipras and Varoufakis advance towards final capitulation
The Credit Crunch is Back and the Federal Reserve Panics on an Ocean of Debt
25 September 2019, by Eric Toussaint
The Banking Sector and the Global Crisis
Nicaragua 1979-2019
18 July 2019, by Eric Toussaint , Nathan Legrand
In the debt system, it’s the people that lose out
5 July 2019, by Eric Toussaint , Cristina Quintavalla , Vittorio Lovera , DIRE - news agency
ReCommonsEurope: Manifesto for a New Popular Internationalism in Europe
26 May 2019, by Eric Toussaint , Esther Vivas , Catherine Samary , Costas Lapavitsas , Stathis Kouvelakis , Tijana Okic , Nathan Legrand , Alexis Cukier , Jeanne Chevalier , Yayo Herrero
Hervé Nathan
Debt in Northern countries
David Graeber discusses Strike the Debt and Detroit
3 September 2020 - CADTM, David Graeber, Jonas Nunes de Carvalho
Capitulating to adults
31 May 2020 - Michael Roberts
A book that reads almost like a thriller
11 May 2020 - Philippe Poutou
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Blue Maven Law
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Why You Should Review Your Important Contracts Before You Sell Your Business
by: Brian Rogers April 15, 2014 April 14, 2014 Due Diligence
A company’s key contracts represent a valuable business asset. Thus, it’s crucial that the contracts remain in force as a business changes hands from the seller to the buyer when the business is sold.
As I’ve written elsewhere on this blog, the sale of a small business is usually structured as either an equity sale or an asset sale. In an equity sale, the buyer purchases the equity from the owner(s) of the company being sold (commonly referred to as the target company) — stock in the case of a corporation and membership interests in the case of a limited liability company. The business is transferred to the new owners, corporate or limited liability company entity and all, and the target becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of the buyer. There is no change in the status of the target entity itself, and its contracts, assets, and liabilities remain with the entity.
In an asset sale, specified assets are transferred from the target company to the buyer, while the corporate or limited liability company entity remains in place and continues to be owned by its equity holders. The assets transferred might be all or substantially all of the target’s assets, or they might be more limited in scope. Similarly, some or all of the target’s liabilities might be transferred to the buyer or retained by the target company, although most of the liabilities often stay with the target. The contracts of the target company are transferred to the buyer by assigning the contracts to the buyer.
Anti-assignment and change of control provisions
It’s common for commercial contracts, leases, and other agreements to include anti-assignment provisions, which prohibit assigning the contract. Of course, this is exactly what you do in order to transfer the contracts to the buyer in an asset sale. In addition, bank credit agreements, distribution agreements, and other contracts often contain change of control provisions. A change of control is what takes place when a deal is structured as an equity sale. So whether you structure the deal as an asset sale or an equity sale, the sale of the business could be a breach of a target’s important contracts — which is not a good situation.
That’s why it’s important for the buyer and seller to review the target’s important contracts early in the transaction process to determine whether such provisions exist.
Anti-assignment provisions
In an asset sale the target’s contracts are transferred to the buyer by means of assigning the contracts to the buyer. The default rule is generally that a party to a contract has the right to assign the agreement to a third party (although the assigning party remains liable to the counter-party under the agreement). However, contracting parties often want to have the right to control who they do business with, so they include a clause in their contracts that prohibits the counter-party from assigning its rights or delegating its duties under the contract absent prior written consent.
These provisions pose a problem in the context of an asset sale. Because the target doesn’t have the right to assign a contract containing an anti-assignment clause absent its counter-party’s agreement to permit the assignment, the target is dependent on the counter-party’s willingness to agree to the assignment. The failure to obtain consent to assign a material agreement could jeopardize the transaction as the buyer is likely to refuse to close if it won’t receive the benefit of a contract that is important to the business.
The process of obtaining consents can be time-consuming and should be started at the earliest practical moment. It’s not unusual for a counter-party to extract some value in exchange for agreeing to the assignment. Sometimes the counter-party is somewhat opportunistic and sees a chance for a windfall. In other cases, the need for the target to obtain consent for assignment is an opportunity for relief from a disadvantageous agreement. In such cases where the contract is advantageous to the target (e.g., if the target is able to purchase products from a supplier at prices below market under a long-term supply agreement because it locked in low prices and the market prices have subsequently risen), the counter-party will often be unwilling to consent to the assignment of the agreement absent concessions.
The need for obtaining consents from counter-parties is often obviated in the context of an equity sale, because equity sales don’t require the assignment of contracts to the buyer. In an equity sale the target’s assets, including its contracts, are not transferred to the buyer; rather, the entire corporate or limited liability company shell is transferred to the buyer with its assets and liabilities remaining intact. Sometimes the only way to accomplish a transaction is to structure it as an equity sale if it’s not possible to obtain consent to assign a crucial contract.
Change of control provisions
The target’s material contracts should be reviewed early in the process even when the transaction is structured as an equity sale, because change of control provisions, which have the same effect as anti-assignment provisions, are triggered by an equity sale. Such provisions are common in contracts where the counter-party requires a great deal of control over who its does business with. Change of control provisions are common in credit agreements, where the borrower’s financial wherewithal is crucial to the lender; commercial leases, where the tenant’s financial stability is an important aspect of its ability to pay rent over the course of the lease; and distribution agreements, where a manufacturer is dependent upon the skills of current ownership and management to distribute its products in a particular territory.
Material contracts that contain change of control provisions require the parties to deal with the counter-party to the contract because the provisions will be implicated in both asset sales and equity sales.
Due diligence implications of anti-assignment and change of control provisions
Sellers should review their important contracts for anti-assignment and change of control provisions before taking their company to market. If an important contract contains such a provision and the counter-party is not willing to agree to the transaction on reasonable terms, the deal will look much different — and less attractive — to the buyer. It’s good to know early in the process that there’s a problem so the seller can plan accordingly, and so it can devise a strategy for overcoming the challenge.
Buyers should review the target’s material contracts to identify anti-assignment and change of control provisions as part of their due diligence efforts. It would be imprudent to hand over the purchase consideration when the buyer would not have the benefit of one or more crucial contracts.
Whether a transaction is structured as an asset sale or an equity sale, the buyer and seller should pay close attention to anti-assignment and change of control restrictions in the target company’s important contracts. Failure to do so could delay or endanger the closing of the transaction or even leave the buyer with less of the business than expected. That’s a recipe for trouble.
Image credit: Shutterstock. Image may not be copied or downloaded.
Tags: anti-assignment, change of control, contracts
Brian Rogers is the founder of Blue Maven Law, LLC, a law firm that focuses on small business mergers and acquisitions as well as advising small businesses on legal issues. A contracts aficionado, Brian publishes theContractsGuy blog and frequently gives presentations on mergers and acquisitions, contracts, and other business and legal topics. Brian was named by Small Business Monthly in 2014 to its list of 100 St. Louisans to know to succeed in business and was recognized by the newspaper each year from 2015 through 2018 as a top M&A adviser.
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