A wide-ranging reconsideration of long-held ideas about doing business.
Business journalist Murray examines the growing idea of the socially conscious company.
When Bill Gates, “capitalism’s greatest victor,” argues that corporations should help improve the lives of people less fortunate than he, then you know that the worm has definitely turned. For generations, thanks to the hold that the economic ideas of Milton Friedman once exerted on business thinking, it was a tenet of market fundamentalism that the sole duty of a corporation was to maximize profits for its shareholders. But not long ago, as Murray meaningfully puts it, “capitalism got a second look.” One manifestation was a joint statement announced by the attendees at a 2016 conference, among them representatives of Ford, IBM, Siemens, and Dow Chemical, that capitalism needed “to do a better job demonstrating its value to society.” The Covid-19 pandemic has only sharpened that need, as workers leave unsatisfying jobs and as decision-making becomes increasingly decentralized such that managers are needed mostly to articulate corporate values and set goals. The flavors of this reenvisioned capitalism are many, Murray writes, including Whole Foods founder John Mackey’s “conscious capitalism,” Chase leader Jamie Dimon’s insistence on looking at big-picture issues such as diversity and inequality, and GM head Mary Barra’s climate change–oriented pledge to “eliminate all tailpipe emissions from new GM cars by 2035.” Murray isn’t exactly a cheerleader, but he offers positive news for those seeking to take part in this evolving market. As he writes, 75 million jobs will be eliminated by new technologies worldwide in 2022, but 133 million will be created—good reason, he adds, to insist that socially responsible companies help “reskill” their workers to meet changing times. He hammers on a few themes, such as the decline of shareholder supremacy, a time or two too often, but business readers will find plenty to ponder.
A wide-ranging reconsideration of long-held ideas about doing business.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5417-8908-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
