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
A satisfyingly heartfelt tribute to a thoroughly remarkable man.
Investigative reporter Franklin recounts the life of the free-spirited millionaire entrepreneur who used his fabulous wealth in the fight to save nature.
One constant in the epic life of North Face founder Doug Tompkins (1943-2015) was his enduring love of the outdoors. The son of a successful antiques dealer, he grew up in the countryside of Millbrook, New York (Timothy Leary was a neighbor), where he cultivated his love of the natural world. His contrarian ways eventually led to his expulsion from high school just weeks before graduation. Tompkins headed West, where he baled hay in Montana, raced Olympic skiers in the Rockies, and took up rock climbing in California. He also “hitchhiked by airplane throughout South America.” Tompkins ended up in San Francisco, where, by the mid-1960s, the skiing and climbing supplies business he started with the help of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard suddenly began to boom. He was a charismatic businessman, and every one of his ventures after that—from his wife’s Plain Jane dress company to his own Esprit clothing brand—was successful. But his Midas touch never changed his passion for travel and adventure—e.g., flying his Cessna, sometimes with his family, but often, to the detriment of his marriage, solo. In the early 1990s, Tompkins bought property in southern Chile and fell in love with its pristine beauty. His outrage over the resource extraction–based nature of the Chilean government’s policies fueled his desire to protect the land. In the years that followed, he became an outspoken, sometimes reviled conservationist dedicated to using his fortune to transform thousands of acres of Patagonia into national parks. The great strengths of this timely, well-researched book lie not just in the author’s detailed characterization of Tompkins’ complex personality, but also in the celebration of his singularly dynamic crusade to save the environment.
A satisfyingly heartfelt tribute to a thoroughly remarkable man.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-296412-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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