A highly useful primer for investors and board members alike.
Economist Moyo, who serves on numerous corporate boards, explains their inner workings in admirably clear language.
“Strong and successful corporations are in the best interest of society. Indeed, the centrality of corporations to human progress cannot be overstated.” So writes Moyo, gainsaying those who argue that corporations are evil, outmoded, or both. As a board member, the author writes that she has seen numerous failures short of bankruptcy and just as many successes, even in difficult times. Agreeing that corporate boards need more diverse membership while arguing against quota appointments, Moyo holds that boards have an overarching function that is often ignored: While a CEO is in charge of daily operations, a board of directors and its various committees are collectively responsible for setting and maintaining long-term goals and visions, with “an important and central role to play in navigating global disruption.” The author is at her best when she focuses on that disruption and its many sources—e.g., competition from China, the imposition of trade barriers and other protectionist measures, the fallout from Brexit, Covid-19, the ascent of social media. For all that, she also notes that boards must fight the temptation to micromanage and to enter the realm of short-term thinking rather than long-term strategic decision-making. Boards must also become more aware of the life cycle of a business. Corporations typically last as long as mortgages do these days, not centuries as in the days of old, and even Jeff Bezos has predicted that Amazon and other large companies of today will be gone in 30 years. Finally, Moyo notes, corporate boards are increasingly called on to safeguard values, enforce ethics, and address social concerns such as gun control, data privacy, and mental health. “Society is holding companies to account precisely because these issues are important and not going away,” she writes. “In fact, the emphasis is likely only to increase.”
A highly useful primer for investors and board members alike.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5416-1942-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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