A shocking, sobering story—and, given the current anti-regulatory mood, one likely to be repeated.
An exposé of the scandal that threatened to bring one of the world’s greatest automobile manufacturers to ruin.
By installing “defeat devices” and software designed to underreport automobile emissions, Volkswagen executives violated international laws and protocols. What surprises most about that decision, writes New York Times European economic correspondent Ewing, is that there was no clear motivation for it: the people responsible were not enriched by it, and indeed they took “enormous risk for such a modest gain” given that the unit savings were so small. Something larger than mere gain must have motivated them. But what? In this thoroughgoing account of the affair, the author ventures a few guesses. Mostly, though, this is straight reportage, a narrative that begins with the discovery of a crime by graduate students who proved that an ordinary, street-level Jetta “was producing way more nitrogen oxides than a modern long-haul diesel truck.” Ewing’s discussion can get deeply technical at times, given that “pollution control systems,” as he writes, “are complex rolling chemistry labs” and that sometimes all it takes is a stuck valve or a glitch in the car’s computer to ruin the performance of those systems. Still, those control systems were selling points for diesel cars, with one early VW line boasting “a particularly elegant combination of fuel injection, turbocharging, and electronics that could be produced cheaply enough for midrange cars.” What went wrong went badly wrong, and it was especially enraging to environmentally sensitive buyers who had bought Passats, Golfs, and other models precisely to do their part in saving the planet. Meanwhile, as the author reports in a narrative that soon turns to true crime, albeit of the white-collar variety, it was VW’s foot soldiers who took the fall, at least at first, despite the $15 billion fine imposed for violations of the Clean Air Act and other laws.
A shocking, sobering story—and, given the current anti-regulatory mood, one likely to be repeated.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-25450-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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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