Personal Blogs

This International Mens' Day inspired me to do some much-needed searching for one of Hilary Scarlett's Neuroscience textbooks - directly from the Open University Library. I also have to commend the Medium Editorial team for sharing a post about the Neuroscience of Flow via e-mail this weekend.

As it turns out, according to our Library team here, when a book is not in stock or available via an e-resource, Open students can gain complimentary access to the resources of other Libraries. I jumped at the opportunity to join SCONUL access to Universities such as the London School of Economics and Birbeck. But while I skimmed the list of Libraries I could access, I noticed that Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) seemed to be outside of the SCONUL scheme's remit - which is completely understandable. 

I had to contact Oxford's Bodleian Libraries on Friday, separately in order to enquire into the possibility of engaging with specific reading materials from their collections as part of their service to Non-Oxford taught postgraduates during the summer and vacation periods. The response thus far has been positive, across the board.

Now, for the other reason for this post, bear with me.

Someone anonymously shared something in the Open University's Discord channel that made me think about HR's role in contract termination (again). The share was related to the dismissal of OpenAI's former top cat, Sam Altman. Now, I have reported on hundreds if not thousands of executive appointments, and as an HR postgraduate, there are several aspects I would like to comment on here.

1) Within a well-functioning company, the Chief Executive's performance should always be subject to review. In my opinion, if a termination is to take place, it should not be as abrupt, messy, and public as the case of Mr. Altman. However, this all depends on what has been agreed in the contract of employment.

2) Was Mr. Altman unfairly dismissed? Mr. Altman is an American. But even if he were British, this would still not be an aspect I personally would be able to comment on, without a considerable set of reasons available for making him walk. Mr. Altman does appear to have an argument though. It does seem like a rather knee-jerk decision, even with his performance review taken into account.

3) What now for OpenAI and its leadership? Well, with the rise of generative artificial intelligence, OpenAI is fast becoming a popular and systemically important organisation. The company, within a matter of a few days, has moved to announce Emmett Shear as a successor to Mr. Altman. In terms of succession planning, this is an unusual set of affairs and probably not the best way to proceed if a competent board wishes to enact an orderly transition of leadership - for various reasons.

I have two important meetings this week. The first is an AGM with the Peckham Branch of the Constituency Labour Party, where I hope to learn more about the elected role of Trade Union Liaison Officer, and the second is a meeting with scholar and author, Hilary Scarlett, whose recently published Kogan Page textbook: "Neuroscience for Organisational Change: An Evidence-based Practical Guide to Managing Change" (2019) is all the rage. I remember our first encounter almost like it was yesterday. We were first introduced to ourselves in mid-2016 when I managed to find the time to go to an in-person annual HRM conference event at Westminster Business School, where Hilary spoke very impressively to a packed audience in one of Westminster's many lecture theatres on the topic of the intersection between organisational change, neuroscience, and the subject of post-merger integration alongside Ted Smith of the Wellcome Trust. Hilary's work on change has been very well summarised by Julie Lister from Westminster in the literature available in the Library. I am hopefully going to get the opportunity to ask Hilary a lot of questions about the influence of neuroscience on change. She's probably the world's foremost authority on the subject.