Nothing earthshakingly new here, but an interesting and entertaining excursus that, in this post-truth era, may prove of use...
How can I mislead you? Let me count the ways.
Macdonald (The Hummingbird Saint, 2016, etc.), described as an “expert in business storytelling,” opens with an instructive look at one of the avenues by which dubious information becomes enshrined as fact—namely, good intentions. His case study is the lowly Andean grain called quinoa, discovered a couple of decades ago by health-conscious eaters and celebrated as a superfood. So popular was it that quinoa prices tripled in South America, followed by “rumors that local people could no longer afford to eat their traditional food because of the insatiable demand from North America and Europe.” Yes, but the unstated part of the equation was that this demand brought enough money into the economy that Bolivian farmers could eat something more expensive. Chalk up a “partial truth,” then, which may or may not be sufficient to explain why something is the way it is, even when ventured for “the noblest of reasons.” Usefully, Macdonald examines not only partial truths—incomplete for reasons ranging from good aims to obfuscation—but also other categories of “competing truths,” among them subjective and unknown truths, as well as truths that are not strictly factually provable but are so because we act on them as if they were. In the end, no matter what category our various mendacities and half-baked notions fall into, one is impressed by how much activity centers on them. In a particularly pointed example, the author examines the use of the word “natural” when applied to a fizzy drink in which cane sugar took the place of the former corn syrup and the regulatory quandaries thereby exposed, eventually causing the company to drop the term. “You know your marketers have lost touch with reality,” Macdonald writes, “when they need ‘detailed regulatory guidance’ on how to use a word like natural.”
Nothing earthshakingly new here, but an interesting and entertaining excursus that, in this post-truth era, may prove of use in helping unpack a specious claim or two.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-51082-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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