A thorough, incisive account of the changing moral landscape of business.
A chief executive reconsiders the relationship between a corporation’s success and its commitment to social responsibility.
According to debut author Valenzuela, the business world has been changed by a trio of historical forces: globalization, the digital revolution, and a newfound emphasis on sustainability. These shifts have produced a “New Normal,” an age in which technological innovation demands a strategic accommodation of the extraordinary transparency delivered by a new online community of “collaborative consumers.” This “environment of intense scrutiny,” Valenzuela compellingly argues, demands a radical reassessment of the ways in which companies articulate their responsibilities to stakeholders and their places within society as a whole. The author provides a detailed history, including concrete case studies, of the ways in which companies have accomplished this—some have simply organized themselves around the priority of profit (Apple), tried to combine a commitment to profit and a societal obligation (Unilever), or made their principal mission the satisfaction of some greater good (Patagonia). Valenzuela ultimately proposes a new model that envisions a company’s societal mission deeply embedded within every province of the organization, a pervasive diffusion of its core values. To that end, he recommends the creation of a new position, a connecting leader, a “Society Proxy,” who manages the social contract that delineates a company’s duties not just to consumers, but also to the greater world it inhabits. The author is a visiting professor at the Cass Business School and the founder and chief executive of his own company, and his knowledge of the subject matter is unimpeachable. He thoughtfully and persuasively argues that the old social contract that once defined a business’s sense of its moral obligations is now obsolete, and a new covenant has replaced it. In addition, he writes in accessible prose, largely unencumbered by the turbid MBA-ese that contaminates so many business books. Valenzuela’s discussion of “authenticity,” though, is a touch anodyne—it seems to simply mean an earnest versus purely strategic devotion to a corporation’s societal obligations. It’s unclear how this translates into counsel since sincerity is not so easily willed.
A thorough, incisive account of the changing moral landscape of business.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1250-1
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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