The COVID-19 crisis is already dramatically reshaping our economy, at a macro and micro level.

From a macroeconomic standpoint, the next few months will be a culling of the herd. Businesses in some key industries that have invested in digital transformation will come out of this crisis stronger, both from having seen their core revenue streams grow and having seen some of their competitors dry up. We’ll also see some of the biggest players get bigger: Big Tech will consolidate its foothold on American life; Amazon will accelerate its takeover of small businesses around the country.

EconomicsCaleb GardnerMarch 24, 2020Economics, Technology

Diary of a Viral Apocalypse

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how I’m feeling, as we watch this slow motion viral apocalypse unfolding. If I’m honest with myself, I’m scared for the future—not just for myself and my family, and the impact an economic crash could have on us, but for my parents and in-laws’ health, for my friends who have been laid off already, and more generally for the impact this is going to have on the most vulnerable around us—and because I don’t know what tomorrow holds, how bad this is truly going to get, I’m constantly anxious.

PersonalCaleb GardnerMarch 19, 2020Personal, Economics

So long, Friedman

Know your business history: this podcast episode from The Daily gives a nice run down of the transition from managerialism to shareholder primacy to where we are now, a moment when both the biggest investors and most influential CEOs are saying that employees, customers, and society should matter at least as much as shareholders.

ManagementCaleb GardnerAugust 28, 2019Economics, Management

Can a corporation be good?

Last week I attended a one-day conference called “Leading For Good” at Loyola’s Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise and Responsibility, aimed at bringing together social and civic minded corporate executives from around the Chicago area. The connections and conversations were good, but in all honesty, I left frustrated that the conversation still mostly centered around whether or not a business should be doing good, rather than how it should go about doing it.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. We have no common definition of business “purpose”, and no shared ethical framework for how to evaluate whether or not the decisions made by a business can be considered “good.”

EthicsCaleb GardnerMarch 5, 2019Economics, Ethics, Management

Let us be dissatisfied

On a day when politicians and public figures tend to glorify Dr. King and his message while whitewashing his more radical ideas — let’s never forget that two-thirds of Americans had an unfavorable view of him in the year before he died — I always try to go back to his actual words, both to remind myself of what he was fighting for, and to remember how far we still have to go.

PoliticsCaleb GardnerJanuary 21, 2019Justice, Economics, MLK

What's wrong with work?

A few weeks ago I re-read an article by the management thinker Peter Drucker from 2001 called “Will the corporation survive?” In it, he talks about his assumptions about the next phase of business. Since the 1970s, the economy had shifted to depend on “knowledge workers” — workers who make meaning out of information — and Drucker saw this shift putting power back into the hands of workers.

ManagementCaleb GardnerJanuary 8, 2019Management, Economics, Work

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