S-Trip was the quintessential family business….Five years in, “the business was booming, but it had become extremely stressful for the staff and partners bearing the load,” recalled S-Trip co-owner Alexandre Handa in The Globe and Mail May 16. The fast growth was stalling because of inefficiency and widening communication gaps….It’s a common predicament for entrepreneurial companies, said Douglas Cumming, professor of finance and entrepreneurship at York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto. “It’s very common that entrepreneur-run companies grow so quickly that the founders can’t keep track of everything, no matter how many hours they’re working every day.” But there’s really no formula for determining when they reach a stage where there are so many responsibilities they need to delegate some, he said. Read full story.
Excerpt: Historical reformers: Why and how democratic institutions change
The following is an excerpt from York University political science Professor Dennis Pilon’s new book, Wrestling with Democracy: Voting Systems as Politics in the 20th Century West, which examines why voting systems have or have not changed in western industrialized countries over the past century, reported Rabble.ca May 16. “For historians, sociologists, political theorists and many others, democracy is recognized as a fundamentally contested concept. Political scientists, by contrast, tend to treat democracy as fixed and unproblematic, equating it with regular elections, multiparty competition and the existence of commercial media.” Read full story.
Concordia honours seven outstanding individuals
Concordia University will grant seven honorary doctorates during Spring Convocation ceremonies, to be held from June 10 to 12 in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts….Joyce Zemans is being honoured for her invaluable work in art history and cultural policy in Canada and internationally. An art historian, she is currently the director of the MBA Program in Arts & Media Administration at York University’s Schulich School of Business and was formerly the director of the Canada Council for the Arts, reported Concordia University May 15. Read full story.
Venturing into venturing
It is always heartening to see scholars loudly and publicly disagreeing with each other. When Douglas Cumming, a professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business, examined a 2006 paper on venture capital and government investment in Europe, he concluded that the methods used are “completely incorrect” and the conclusions “completely unsupported by the data”. In academia, them’s fighting words, reported The Economist. Read full story.
Students show off bilingual ability
Seven students from the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board showed off their bilingual ability when they won awards this past Saturday at “Le concours/festival d’art oratoire”, an annual French public speaking contest, reported Mississauga News May 15. The contest is organized by Canadian Parents for French and the Ontario Modern Languages Teachers Association, and it was held at Glendon College, York University’s bilingual campus. Read full story.