Reverse Engineering Public Criticism

Good piece in the Harvard Blogs.   In particular with a useful retail example: Wal-Mart.  Which also includes criticism of how the company has handled things,.   "... Good companies always strive to be better and a potentially useful way to catalyze such improvement is to consider how analyst and public criticism might be used to institute corporate change. By parallel, managers themselves might similarly benefit from "reverse-engineering" the criticism of not only outsiders but of their own colleagues: considering both parties as their benefactors on the road to greater performance. In both cases, however, constructive use of criticism only requires a dose of humility and an honest desire to make things better ... "