More readable than most studies of its kind, Lindblom’s overview raises as many questions as it answers—and offers much food...
A roundabout but illuminating attempt to define a slippery economic construct.
“Although the market system is roughly familiar to all of us,” writes Lindblom (Economics/Yale Univ.), “not even economists wholly understand it.” That is understandable, given all the things that the market system is, at least in the author’s account: an “extraordinary social process,” a motivator and coordinator of human activity, a peacekeeper and cause of conflict, an ally and enemy of freedom, a destroyer and producer of inequalities. Lindblom observes that all existing societies make use of markets, but not all have developed mechanisms whereby the conjunction of buyer and seller takes precedence over any program of state planning; the market system, in his definition, involves the “societywide coordination of human activities not by central command but by mutual interactions in the form of transactions.” His insistence on the supremacy of individuals is not mere libertarian cant; he recognizes that certain market-state hybrids have proved effective, that the state can perform certain needed tasks that the market cannot, and that individuals and corporations are capable of extremely bad faith. But, he adds, at its best the market system is a pattern of cooperative behavior where people somehow overcome naked self-interest to act in ways that yield mutual benefit, and where individuals, by voting with their wallets, have a direct influence on how that behavior is conducted. The leading enemies of that cooperative system are not the statist ideologies of old, Lindblom suggests, but instead “reckless banking and incompetent governmental regulation of financial markets,” which can instantly undo the efforts of millions. But even where relatively unhindered and apparently smoothly functioning market systems prevail, and even where consumer goods are more and more available in an ever more marketized world, he notes that people are declaring themselves to be increasingly less happy—yet another of many puzzles that the market poses.
More readable than most studies of its kind, Lindblom’s overview raises as many questions as it answers—and offers much food for thought.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-300-08752-7
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
An informative and creatively multilayered Google guidebook from the businessman’s perspective.
Two distinguished technology executives share the methodology behind what made Google a global business leader.
Former Google CEO Schmidt (co-author: The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business, 2013) and former senior vice president of products Rosenberg share accumulated wisdom and business acumen from their early careers in technology, then later as management at the Internet search giant. Though little is particularly revelatory or unexpected, the companywide processes that have made Google a household name remain timely and relevant within today’s digitized culture. After several months at Google, the authors found it necessary to retool their management strategies by emphasizing employee culture, codifying company values, and rethinking the way staff is internally positioned in order to best compliment their efforts and potential. Their text places “Googlers” front and center as they adopted the business systems first implemented by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who stressed the importance of company-wide open communication. Schmidt and Rosenberg discuss the value of technological insights, Google’s effective “growth mindset” hiring practices, staff meeting maximization, email tips, and the company’s effective solutions to branding competition and product development complications. They also offer a condensed, two-page strategy checklist that serves as an apt blueprint for managers. At times, statements leak into self-congratulatory territory, as when Schmidt and Rosenberg insinuate that a majority of business plans are flawed and that the Google model is superior. Analogies focused on corporate retention and methods of maximizing Google’s historically impressive culture of “smart creatives” reflect the firm’s legacy of spinning intellect and creativity into Internet gold. The authors also demarcate legendary application missteps like “Wave” and “Buzz” while applauding the independent thinkers responsible for catapulting the company into the upper echelons of technological innovation.
An informative and creatively multilayered Google guidebook from the businessman’s perspective.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1455582341
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Business Plus/Grand Central
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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