A serviceable account best appreciated by students of business and veterans of the airline wars.
An insider’s account of the disastrous challenges that faced American Airlines, a combination of events that led to the creation of the world’s largest airline.
In a workmanlike behind-the-scenes narrative, Kennedy, the company’s general counsel from 2003 until his retirement in 2013, and Maxon, a retired Dallas-based airlines reporter, describe the turmoil and chaos that befell AA following 9/11. Though certainly of interest for those involved in the airline industry, the saga, full of jargon-laden descriptions of lawsuits and mergers and acquisitions, may be lackluster for general readers. NFL legend Roger Staubach, who served on the company’s board during those tumultuous years, introduces the book by referencing the company’s 2011 bankruptcy as “a Hail Mary pass” to save the airline and return it “to health and prosperity.” From there, the authors pick up the story, as Kennedy recounts his long history at AA and the events leading up to 9/11. During that tragedy, AA lost both Flight 11 in New York City and Flight 77 at the Pentagon. (AA would be involved in another tragedy just two months later when Flight 587 crashed in Belle Harbor in Queens.) The authors explain the complex business circumstances surrounding those events, including the acquisition of TWA’s assets and liabilities and the subsequent recession of 2001. They also provide an accounting of the cost of doing business in the airline industry, referencing fights with labor unions and the federal government, a revolving door of executive leadership, and tussles with competitors like Southwest Airlines over gates at Dallas’ Love Field. It all culminates in the courtroom drama of the company’s bankruptcy and subsequent merger with U.S. Airways. It’s not always riveting, but it does portray the risky landscape that large companies in a public space must navigate among regulators, the market, and their own people and how American just managed to survive.
A serviceable account best appreciated by students of business and veterans of the airline wars.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68261-488-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Savio Republic/Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
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
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
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