Tuesday 27 June 2006

Jargon -- muddying the waters to make themselves appear profitable

Maybe there's a point to bullshit and 'MBA-speak' (but perhaps I repeat myself?) The Goodness points out a new study written up in The Age with an unsurprising finding:
Apparently there's a simple reason why annual reports are hard to read: managers, in many cases, are trying to hide something.

The study, Annual Report Readability, Earnings and Stock Returns, found that the annual reports of underperforming companies are harder to read than those of companies that are performing well. . .

How 'bout that, huh? The Goodness has a good comment from George Orwell that this brings to mind. Nietszche nailed it with a certain type of poet and academic, and perhaps it applies too to MBAs and managers: They muddy the waters to make themselves appear deep.

LINKS: Optimisation of cliché synergies - The Age
Performance and obfuscation correlation framework analysis - The Goodness

TAGS: Nonsense, Economics

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