{"id":5934,"date":"2014-06-05T05:54:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T11:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5934"},"modified":"2014-06-05T05:54:08","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T11:54:08","slug":"business-jargon-squaring-the-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5934","title":{"rendered":"Business jargon: Squaring the circle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A href=\"http:\/\/m.bbc.com\/news\/business-27512405\">Howard Mustoe<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Putting together the pipelines,&#8221; was how Pfizer chief executive Ian Read explained his proposed takeover of British drugmaking rival AstraZeneca.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;&#8220;Let&#8217;s make sure we get good capital allocation&#8230; build a culture of ownership&#8230; flexible use of financial assets&#8230; productive science&#8230; opportunity to domicile&#8230; putting together the headcount,&#8221; were among his phrases as he faced MPs last month, much to the frustration of committee members.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;&#8220;I asked a simple question,&#8221; committee chairman Adrian Bailey said at one point.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;Use of jargon is not a new phenomenon, but businesses are leaving their customers and even their own staff scratching their heads about where their firms are going and where they themselves stand.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;&#8220;This jargon is tribal and reinforces belonging,&#8221; says Alan Stevens, director of Vector Consultants, which advises companies on culture. &#8220;It&#8217;s part of the psyche. But it&#8217;s not useful.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Mustoe: &#8220;Putting together the pipelines,&#8221; was how Pfizer chief executive Ian Read explained his proposed takeover of British drugmaking rival AstraZeneca.&nbsp;&nbsp;&#8220;Let&#8217;s make sure we get good capital allocation&#8230; build a culture of ownership&#8230; flexible use of financial assets&#8230; productive science&#8230; opportunity to domicile&#8230; putting together the headcount,&#8221; were among his phrases as he faced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5935,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5934\/revisions\/5935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}