{"id":3097,"date":"2025-12-30T07:21:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T07:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=3097"},"modified":"2026-01-02T08:26:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T08:26:30","slug":"the-year-of-the-fire-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=3097","title":{"rendered":"The Year of the Fire Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Harvard Business School is well-known for its case-based learning model, which includes real-world examples of companies and organisations that failed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Universities are brand-driven institutions. Brand-dependent organizations unravel quickly when misconduct and corruption is exposed. The 21 Group predicts in ten years time, there will be Harvard Business School MBA course on “The Decline and Fall of Consigliere University”<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what the next few months hold<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two leading members of Consigliere University’s Human Resources and Legal divisions are facing charges of defamation and malicious falsehood after doctoring references in a promotion case involving a junior Professor. The matter throws into question the integrity of promotion processes at Consigliere. Junior faculty who don’t toe the line can be managed out of contention for promotion through reputational damage inflicted under the guise of due process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A major whistleblowing scandal is about to break involving the two most senior administrators at Consigliere University, the Vice Chancellor and the Registrar. Instead of protecting the whistleblower who intervened to protect the life of an individual, they pursued him with the help of trumped-up allegations from a Professor “in their pocket”. When the whistleblower sued for defamation, the University paid the legal fees of the compliant Professor, while distancing itself from any responsibility for the harm caused. They lost. The senior administrators are now facing allegations of misuse of public funds and governance failure, as well as violations of the Public Interest Disclosure Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major scandal is poised to erupt following the dismantling of a leading medical research group on the basis of completely false allegations. Consigliere University\u2019s Human Resources department aligned itself with the bullies and perpetrators, as usual. The senior Professor concerned has initiated High Court proceedings after severe disruption to his research career. The contracts of multiple postdoctoral researchers and graduate students were terminated when the University shut down the entire research group under false pretences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The HR Director at Consigliere University has stated she doesn\u2019t believe in getting evidence before launching a major disciplinary process. She prefers instead to let the machinery grind first and find the evidence later. Elsewhere, this might raise concerns about procedural fairness, but at Consigliere it’s deemed to fall comfortably within accepted custom, requiring neither explanation nor remedy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A major plagiarism scandal is on the brink of breaking at Consigliere University. One of the institution\u2019s celebrated young \u2018media stars\u2019, widely promoted as a story of redemption and intellectual brilliance after a difficult start in life, is now at the centre of serious allegations. Like other stories people were eager to believe, the myth has eclipsed the evidence. The Professor\u2019s PhD thesis contains substantial plagiarism; several published papers lack supporting data; and there are claims of routine appropriation of students\u2019 and other academics\u2019 work. Despite this, the pro-Vice Chancellor of Narrative Control at Consigliere \u2014 invested in the cultivated image \u2014 has continued to support him vigorously. The University has retained high-profile legal representation and reputation consultants to burnish the image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ever-gullible pro-VC of Stakeholder Engagement at Consigliere breezily reassures everyone that there is \u201cnothing to see here,\u201d all the while keeping one eye on the exit. He\u2019s marking time, hoping a VC post elsewhere materialises before all the scandals finally surface and blow his career to smithereens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, salaries at Consigliere have gone through the roof — for those at the top, not for those doing teaching, mentoring & research, natch. Over the five-year period from 2019 to 2024, the total of staff on basic salary above \u00a3150,000 increased from 35 to 170. This has resulted in an increase in total compensation to senior staff from\u00a0~\u00a37 million to ~\u00a335 million — a nearly 5-fold increase. The Vice Chancellor of Consigliere University has benefited handsomely from this era of fiscal enlightenment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We are coming to the end of 2025, which was the ‘Year of the Snake’<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2026 is the ‘Year of the Fire Horse’. Let the Fire Horses be unleashed at Consigliere University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harvard Business School is well-known for its case-based learning model, which includes real-world examples of companies and organisations that failed. Universities are brand-driven institutions. Brand-dependent organizations unravel quickly when misconduct and corruption is exposed. The 21 Group predicts in ten years time, there will be Harvard Business School MBA course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3097"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3135,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions\/3135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}