Stanford University Press Blog

The Downfalls of Data

Our future successes will rely less on data and more on decisive action.

by JULIAN BIRKINSHAW and JONAS RIDDERSTRȦLE

 

We live in the information age—a period in human history in which data is the gospel and information is touted as the preeminent source of competitive advantage—for individuals and companies alike. In today’s business landscape many observers say the power to harness information is the key to future success. The McKinsey Global Institute has called big data the “next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity,” while technophiles like Google’s Ray Kurzweil say the basis of advantage in the years ahead is simple: more data, more information, more knowledge.

But, where some see a world of accelerating change, we see the seeds of creative destruction taking hold. To be clear, technological innovation is a big part of our future, and harnessing information will continue to be an important part of every firm’s strategy—but we believe the case for big data and advanced analytics is overstated. Information overload at the individual level leads to distractedness and poor decision-making. At a corporate level, we end up with a bias toward rational, scientific evidence at the expense of intuition or gut feel. These pathologies have a deleterious effect, lessening the quality and speed of decision-making. What’s more, as data becomes ever more ubiquitous and search costs trend to zero, the capacity of information to provide any leading edge declines.

To be clear, technological innovation is a big part of our future, and harnessing information will continue to be an important part of every firm’s strategy—but we believe the case for big data and advanced analytics is overstated.

Great Father Rising

From Jackson to Trump, American conservatism is animated by a paternalistic logic.

by JEFFREY R. DUDAS

Donald Trump in the Oval Office, January 2017. Public domain.

From the perspective of political stagecraft, the 2016 Republican National Convention was a catastrophe. The presumptive nominee was the subject of continuing opposition from party officials and luminaries, including the sitting governor of the state in which the convention was held. In spite of the nominee’s boasts that the event would feature high-wattage star power, the best that he could offer audiences was the endorsement of an aged thespian best known for portraying a male nanny on a decades-old sitcom. Worst of all, his fiercest rival for the party’s nomination was given a prime-time speaking slot—and then not only refused to endorse the nominee but intimated that American conservatives would do well to withhold their support as well. By contrast, his opponent’s nominating convention the next week was a masterclass in political messaging.

But in hindsight it is clear that the Republican National Convention accomplished for its nominee precisely what it intended. For the point of the event was not to display Donald Trump’s devotion to conservative principle but instead to envelop the candidate in the particulars of conservative identity. The goal, after all, was to portray Donald Trump as a great biological and national father—a singular figure who would rescue the nation from what is, for a great many Americans, the nightmare of multicultural politics. And, at that, the convention was a manifest success.

Modern American conservatism is obsessed with the influence of American fathers past and present.

Indeed, modern American conservatism is obsessed with the influence of American fathers past and present, with the legacies of both the nation’s historical “founding fathers” and its actual, biological fathers. As Raised Right argues, this obsession manifests, in practice, as a paternal rights discourse that emphasizes that American democracy exists for “good” American citizens, who can be trusted to exercise their rights to self-governance and autonomy in responsible ways. Conversely, those Americans who, lacking the influence of paternal authority (whether biological or historical) never learned self-discipline and cannot be trusted to exercise their rights in mature ways. Thus does modern American conservatism employ the standard of paternal authority to cast citizens as either virtuous and worthy of governmental support or vicious and worthy of governmental discipline, of law and order. And, apropos for a multicultural nation, these categories of virtuous and vicious tend to be inflected with gender and race-based dynamics.

The Hand Work of the Footbound

Chinese women practiced footbinding for centuries—why is still too little understood.

by LAUREL BOSSEN and HILL GATES

Old woman in traditional clothes with woven basket. Yunnan Province, China 2009. Photo by Hu Jing.

People love to tell stories, preserving—and also confabulating—our pasts. The story of footbinding in China is an intriguing case in point: the curious practice has been given the full romance-sex-and-violence treatment, inviting us to cry over and thrill to the image of women sacrificing years of agony, ostensibly for beauty, self-expression, and a desirable husband. In recent years, news reports have periodically announced the discovery of the last surviving footbound women in one or another remote village of China, or the demise of the last shoemaking company that produced specialized shoes for footbound women, proving that this now defunct but once prevalent custom—the wrapping, warping, and crushing of young girls’ feet—continues to fascinate and remains mysterious. How could a civilization have supported such a deleterious custom that left tens of millions of Chinese women hobbling throughout their lives?

How could a civilization have supported such a deleterious custom that left tens of millions of Chinese women hobbling throughout their lives?

The most common explanation given is that small feet were considered beautiful and improved a girl’s marriage prospects. The practice has been treated as one type of “oddity” in the human experience of bodily deformations, and interpreted as a form of status-seeking behavior motivated by the quest for beauty and improved social standing. Many writers and scholars have portrayed the practice as a phenomenon largely limited to urban, non-laboring elites who lived in cities and towns where fashion and status took precedence over pragmatism and economic necessity. But this is not the whole picture.

One common assumption about footbinding is that footbound women couldn’t work. They were assumed to be status-giving trophy wives whose leisure reflected positively on their husbands. The assumption of footbound female leisure survived in part because there is so little visual or textual evidence regarding the way footbound women lived. The photographs from the early twentieth century that depict footbound women nearly all show them seated or standing in a formal pose, often in a studio, alone or with family members, and usually wearing their best clothes. While photographs of village men working outdoors are abundant, photographs of footbound village women out of doors in public places, or working at anything are extremely rare.

Women and the World in Academia

How the global character of higher education has given women a leg up in STEM fields.

by KATHRIN ZIPPEL

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute. Photo by Rhoda Baer. Public domain.

International collaborations and the mobility of academics that makes such collaborations possible are both more important but also more politically charged today than they have been in recent years. The Trump administration has unveiled a new executive order banning immigration from six Muslim-majority countries after his initial order, which threatened the movement of students, researchers, and professors (among many others) from the targeted countries, was blocked by the judiciary. Meanwhile, university lawyers have advised members of the academic community already in the United States to postpone any travel outside of the states; and travel outside the country for all foreign nationals is now considered a risk. Researchers at U.S. universities have already expressed fear that they will not be able to continue their research abroad.

The premier reputation boasted by U.S. universities (particularly in science and technology fields) has been precisely because U.S. academia has been open to the world.

These developments are causing great concern in the academic community as the premier reputation boasted by U.S. universities (particularly in science and technology fields) has been precisely because U.S. academia has been open to the world. This openness attracts top talent and extends research collaborations across the globe. Immigrants have long been crucial to making U.S. science “great,” including Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany and escaped the Holocaust. Without immigrants, the United States would have won nearly one-third fewer Nobel prizes and not a single one in 2016 when all six winners were immigrants. Much less discussed, however, is the adverse impact closing national borders may have on the academic careers of women in particular, whose successes in academia have long been shaped and bolstered by having access to international opportunities.

What’s Wrong with Paid Family Leave?

Without broader cultural changes paid family leave is only a Band-Aid—or worse yet, a stigma.

by SARAH COTE HAMPSON

Public domain via Pixabay.

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is “Be Bold for Change”—a premise that is as much a call to action as it is a reminder that change still needs to happen, that women’s equality is still not a reality in our world. As I write this, a bill is making its way through the legislature in my state that aims to address at least one of the challenges women face in establishing equality with their male peers: if passed, the bill would establish a public insurance scheme to fund paid family leave. Indeed, Washington State is not alone in this effort. Over 20 other states, and an even greater number of municipalities, are actively considering or have recently passed some form of paid family leave legislation. California was the first state to pass such legislation in 2002, and its insurance scheme to help fund paid family leave for both women and men has been in place since 2004.

Numerous scholars and others have pointed out just how inadequate the Family and Medical Leave Act is for meeting the needs of working parents.

State, municipal, and employer-level family leave policies have bubbled forth in the vacuum left by an absence of a robust federal family leave policy. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is currently the only federal policy governing the rights of men and women who need to take time off work to care for new children or sick family members. Introduced in 1993, the FMLA allows workers who have been employed for more than one year to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off for the purposes of supplying this family care. However, numerous scholars and others have pointed out just how inadequate this policy is for meeting the needs of working parents. Because the leave is unpaid, most of the leave-eligible workers who do not take it report not being able to do so because they are unable to afford unpaid time off work. Additionally, even if they could afford to take unpaid time off, more than 40 percent of American workers are not even covered by the policy, since it only applies to employers with 50 or more workers.