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Opinion

Columnists

Korea's cultural recipe for failure

By Jason LimHierarchical bureaucracy was a social invention created as an efficient means to organize human activities for specific ends. It originated with governments but began to expand rapidly during the Industrial Age to define how work was done in any large organization and firmly took hold as the default power structure for corporations.As I wrote before, bureaucratic hierarchies excel in coordinating and controlling resources across relatively stable systems. When objectives are clear within a consistent environment, coordination through hierarchy has been the preferred method of org...

2014-11-14 17:00

The story of Rene's face

At first, I thought it was a prank. When social media started erupting with Rene Zellweger's before and after photos a few weeks ago, I thought it was some clever prank gone viral. Until it wasn't.

2014-10-31 16:29

Creatively destroying economy

Recognizing that Korea has reached the limits of its export-driven economic model, President Park has been championing the expansion of a “creative economy” in Korea based on innovation and entrepreneurship. A key element of this strategy is to create an ecosystem that encourages and nurtures risk-taking for start-up, which is especially challengingin Korea where the huge conglomerates called "chaebol" dominate the playing field.

2014-10-17 15:49

Are Asian men undesirable?

To its credit, Google has been very transparent about its diversity issues - 70 percent of Google's employees are male while 62 percent of its U.S. employees are white while 30 percent are Asian - and has carefully examined its hiring process and implemented unconscious bias training for its employees.

2014-10-03 15:08

Korea's marshmallow society

Pamela Druckman of the New York Times recently recounted a legendary experiment run by Columbia University psychology professor Walter Mischel 50 years ago where he offered a group of five-year olds irresistible treats such as marshmallows, cookies, or candies with a catch; they would get two of the treats if they could resist what was in front of them for 15 minutes.

2014-09-19 16:25

Does a corporate name change equal a cultural change?

On Aug. 27, Daum and KakaoTalk shareholders approved a merger of the two companies into a new one that will be called "DaumKakao." Most analysts believe that this merger is a "no-brainer," as KakaoTalk's leading mobile presence in Korea could act as a pipeline for Daum's content and ads to reach those who are increasingly moving to smartphones and tablets as their main gateway to the Internet.

2014-09-05 15:10

The 'K-Pope' phenomenon

Forget K-pop. The public fervor surrounding the visit by Pope Francis outdid anything for K-pop or hallyu by a long shot. Even Psy would have been hard pressed to get some attention with the Pope around. The overwhelmingly positive reaction belied the fact that only about 10 percent of the population professes Catholicism.

2014-08-22 17:03

Can Korea Inc. go from good to great?

In his best-selling book "Good to Great," Jim Collins emphasizes the essential presence of a Level 5 leader for a company to go from good to great. The two indispensable and paradoxical characteristics of a Level 5 leader are his deep humility and unshakeable professional will. These characteristics are counterintuitive in that personal ambition and strong ego, two characteristics that often typify effective business leadership that characterize Level 4 leaders, actually obstructs one's rise to Level 5 leadership.

2014-08-08 16:43

Korea, the eternal victim

Several years ago, I listened to a well-known Korean expert on foreign policy argue that Korea’s history of non-aggression uniquely qualifies the country to be the leading candidate to be a peacemaker in the region. In other words, since Korea has never invaded any of her neighbors throughout history, no country has any historic bad blood with Korea that would predispose them to distrust Korea. Of course, non-aggression doesn’t mean that Korea never wanted to conquer new territories, but that it never had the war-making capacity to invade neighboring countries. Whatever the reason, Korea as ...

2014-07-25 16:29

Geun-hye as the new Gwanghae

In his speech at the Seoul National University, Chinese President Xi Jinping referenced how the Ming Dynasty helped drive Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Japanese army from the Korean Peninsula during the 7-Year's War. While he was trying to point out the historical camaraderie between China and Korea against Japanese aggression, he inadvertently highlighted in stark terms South Korea's choice between a rock and a hard place.

2014-07-11 16:04

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