Paul Orfalea's Blog

Pointless Pollution: The Chlorine Whitewash

Paper mills dump tons of dioxins - byproducts of the chlorine bleaching process - into American streams and rivers. Dioxins accumulate in fat cells, and have been implicated in higher cancer rates, as well as reproductive and developmental harm in both animals and humans. If paper mills only had to bleach a very few premium products, how much less dioxin would be released into the environment?

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Categories: Environment | Optimism | Corporate Culture | Leadership

2 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 9:56 AM

May 2 2010

Why You Should Study Accounting

When a person living in a small village in India buys a can of Campbell's soup, that act triggers an elaborate economic scorekeeping system that both describes and empowers worldwide commerce. The scorekeeping system is called accounting, and the score is a measure of rewards owed to people along the value chain for their effort, ideas and investments.

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Categories: Finance | Economics | Education | Entrepreneurialism

3 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 10:40 PM

Apr 22 2010

Firing People is Easy

Many supervisors feel tremendous angst when they must fire a coworker. But there are two groups for whom the termination process is easy: bad supervisors and great supervisors.

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Categories: Management Skills | Leadership | Corporate Culture

2 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 9:38 AM

Apr 9 2010

Other People's Money at the Game

I've written in the past about Manhattan's opulent restaurants, crowded to capacity at lunchtime as executives treat each other to lunch on the shareholder's dime. I also find it outrageous that people brag about their $2,500 Lakers tickets. Companies purchase expensive tickets because they are tax deductible - those fancy skyboxes are taxpayer-subsidized entertainment.

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Categories: Ethics | Corporate Culture | Economics

1 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 2:07 PM

Apr 9