A well-crafted, personal tale of business gone bad.
A true corporate David-and-Goliath story from an insider’s perspective.
Tales of Wal-Mart’s unsavory business practices (witness the class-action suit currently before the Supreme Court) are fertile ground for business books, television and film documentaries and the like, and this book is one more entry into the field. What makes Hood’s tale different is the fact that he owned a business that was literally driven into bankruptcy by the retailing behemoth. The story revolves around a product Hood’s company devised called the “Shopper’s Calculator,” which attached to a shopping cart, helping shoppers determine what they were spending. The product could also serve up advertising for various name brands as well as for Wal-Mart’s store brands. Through a detailed account that includes references to letters, phone calls and meetings, Hood documents the sorry story of how Wal-Mart management, at best, ineptly implemented a promotional program that they agreed to support, and, at worst, sabotaged it because of a perverted ego- and profit-driven arrogance Hood calls “egonomics.” In diary-like entries, Hood presents dates of specific occurrences and includes copies of documents that are hard to dispute, resulting in a uniformly unfavorable view of Wal-Mart’s way of doing business. In fact, the story culminates in Hood’s company filing a $40-million lawsuit against Wal-Mart, which he says was settled for “the discounted amount of $23.5 million.” Even after the lawsuit, however, Hood’s company continued to do business with Wal-Mart and, remarkably, the same people who initially undermined the relationship, says Hood, held “very cooperative and productive meetings” over the next two years. Nevertheless, Hood suggests Wal-Mart’s decision to cancel the contract after three-and-a-half years was premeditated and vindictive, as research proved the program did work. Clearly, Hood is anything but an objective observer and occasionally his emotion gets the better of him. But he writes well and tells his story with equal doses of irony and outrage. It will likely be difficult for the reader not to accept the author’s claim that Wal-Mart is a corporate villain after reading this book.
A well-crafted, personal tale of business gone bad.Pub Date: April 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456456009
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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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
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