Managers are supposed to be good at giving and receiving “feedback”. To help make this a reality the “open door policy” has many fans. So what to make of the action by workers at Michelin’s tyre factory in Toul in north-eastern France, where feedback consisted of the doors being shut on two senior HR managers, who were then held hostage for three days in protest at the company’s plans to close the plant?

This startling intervention by militant trade unionists raises two important questions. First, how long does an HR manager have to be held captive before anyone notices that he or she is missing? And second, did the terms of this imprisonment allow for the usual three-course lunch to be served?

There are, I suppose, other questions we could consider here as well, such as “are we entering a new era of muscular trade union activism?”, or “is the employer-employee relationship in the developed world bound to come under ever-increasing strain?”

The history of industrial relations weighs heavily on managers and employees alike. A collective folk memory is at work here, often at a subconscious level. Even as we try to look ahead and focus on future challenges, the tug of the past brings us back. As in other kinds of relationships, cumulative experience counts for a lot and colours judgments made today.

Which is all a rather grand way of saying that bosses are often on the look-out for signs of a resurgence of worker unrest – although actually getting locked in their own offices is probably not something they expect. You have to hand it to the French: it is a fine demonstration of how to make the element of surprise work for you.

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Can a leopard change its spots? Has Microsoft converted to the spirit of open innovation?

Hardly. But what the software giant has said it will now do is, for this particular company, a pretty big step.

Microsoft has announced that it will create “open connections” to its most highly-used products, make it easier for customers to shift their data out of Microsoft software packages, act “more transparently” over its use and adoption of industry standards, and try to build better relations with others in the software industry.

Sceptics and rivals are, as you might expect, unconvinced. This is all a far cry from genuine openness and “co-creation”.

But why should we always think the worst of people? And why should Microsoft bother to make any further effort to change and open up if their first nervous steps in this direction are mocked and rejected?

Give the kids from Redmond a chance, I say.

“What, me worry?”, asked the cheerfully gap-toothed and freckle-faced Alfred E. Neumann from the front cover of Mad magazine all through my youth. I wonder how long his outlook would last if he spent any time reading today’s newspapers.

Last week, for example, my colleague Martin Wolf took us through Professor Nouriel Roubini’s “12 steps to financial ruin” scenario, a scarily plausible account of how the world could be facing a deep US recession soon. By step eight I had to take a time-out and head to the canteen for a doughnut. What, me worry? You betcha.

On returning home later that same day I finally opened a threateningly bulky package that had been sitting by the front door for a few days and, guess what? Panic-relief was at hand.

The padded envelope contained a book called Just Enough Anxiety, which, its sub-heading informed me, is “the hidden driver of business success”. The cover of the book shows a rubber band being stretched – not too much of course – by a mystery pair of hands. The not terribly subtle point being made by the use of this image is that people (and organisations) are a bit like rubber bands: we have to be stretched to perform a useful function, but stretch us too far and we will snap.

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Hello and welcome to the FT’s latest contribution to the blogosphere – the management blog.

This is the place to come and read about the ideas, trends and fads that are preoccupying managers around the world. Here you will find discussions and debate about what is working – and what isn’t – in businesses and organisations. You will be able to read excerpts from under-reported (but useful) academic papers. You will get a snapshot of the realities of managers’ working lives today.

It is also the place to share your observations, and sound off about your own concerns. Perhaps you are a high-flying VP well on the way to the boardroom. Maybe you are a newly-minted MBA, about to launch yourself on the next stage of your career. Perhaps you are just looking for inspiration and want something interesting to read for the next five minutes.

Whoever you are – welcome. And, this being a management blog, of course we want your feedback.