Jerry Marlow, MBA
Persuasive Writing about Complex Issues

Writing Samples

A Time of Change is
A Time of Opportunity
In all endeavors there occur periods
of great activity, rapid change, and remarkable accomplishment. These periods occur when people with talent and energy are given opportunities and resources to translate their ideas into action. For those who take part, these adventures of achievement can be richly rewarding— professionally, intellectually, and personally.

Today, the managers and users of technological resources at Bankers Trust Company believe that just such a time is in the making at Bankers Trust. They see strategic decisions matching technological resources to business opportunities in ways that will make the years to come at Bankers Trust ones of dramatic transformations. MORE


To Harness the Engine of Capitalism and Free Markets...
Factory workers and managers have become inured to a system in which the market value of finished goods is often less than the value of the raw materials that go into their manufacture. Economists refer to this practice as creating negative value-added.

To succeed in the new conditions that are being created, managers, executives and prospective entrepreneurs need to learn not only that profit equals price minus cost, but also the dynamics of what determines cost and what determines price. They need to learn entrepreneurial ways of thinking and behaving. They need opportunities to grasp the implications and consequences of shifting decision-making power from central ministries to managers, entrepreneurs, investors, lenders and consumers. MORE


Academic Freedom and the Moral Landscape of Killing
To demonstrate well known principles of physiology and pharmacology, most medical schools in the United States today use computer graphics, computerized robots or computer simulations. At a few schools, however, physiology and pharmacology professors still have students vivisect dogs specifically bred and raised for this purpose. In the demonstrations, typically, employees sedate and truss the dogs (usually beagles). A professor cuts open the dogs’ chest and abdominal cavities. Students observe the beating of the dogs’ hearts, the flow of blood, and the effects of different drugs. At the end of the demonstrations, employees kill the dogs and throw them in the trash.

Many people find dog vivisection for demonstration purposes to be morally repugnant and have urged all universities to bring these practices to a halt. To justify their continuation, professors responsible often cite neither scientific necessity nor educational benefit but academic freedom: They claim that, as tenured professors, they are free to teach their courses however they please (and kill as many dogs as they want). When the University of California San Diego still ran dog labs, one professor there went so far as to suggest that, were he not defending academic freedom, he already would have stopped killing dogs for demonstration purposes.

The invocation of academic freedom to justify unnecessary killing and killing unnecessarily to defend academic freedom create a clash between an abstract value— academic freedom— that everyone in academia cherishes and an act— unnecessary killing— that many consider evil. At universities where medical-school professors still use dog vivisection for demonstration purposes, the university communities face the task of resolving the disharmony between unnecessary killing and academic freedom. How can they do so?

To resolve the clash or quiet the dissonance, each university community must answer several questions: Is dog vivisection for demonstration purposes morally repugnant? Does academic freedom protect unnecessary killing? Who decides? And, if universities elect to continue to use dog vivisection for demonstration purposes, how might the professors who run the dog labs make the practice more morally acceptable? We address these questions in turn. MORE



You Can Earn a Higher Return
on Your Construction Projects
Avoiding costly delays and mistakes on any construction project would be difficult enough even if all parties worked in harmony and had your best interests at heart. But the parties upon whom your project depends have divergent personalities and competing self interests. Successfully completing your project means integrating the work of:
The eternal optimist— an architect for whom beauty may be truth (and time and money may be vulgar nuisances);
A pack of pessimists— the squadron of engineers who are always telling you why things can't be done;
The consummate conniver—a contractor who knows the more cheaply he can fulfill his contract, the more money he makes; and
The ultimate pragmatist— a banker who says, "No milestone achievement, no draw."

The contending agendas of these parties easily can exacerbate the risks inherent in any large project. The compounding of multiple risks with multiple agendas can consume more and more of your money and take more and more of your time away from other projects. MORE

  

Jerry Marlow, MBA
Freelance Writer
(917) 817-8659

jerrymarlow@jerrymarlow.com

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