Slick, sunny-side-up profiles of 50 flourishing industrial enterprises. Some brief connective commentary apart, Jasinowski (president of the National Association of Manufacturers) and Hamrin (a freelance economic consultant) rely on anecdotal evidence to make their principal point: that American manufacturing has staged a remarkable, competitive comeback from its near-death experience during the 1980s. In addition, the achievements of every organization in their 50-company sample are attributed to one of ten paths to success: employee empowerment; training and retraining of workers; rewarding performance; exceeding customer expectations; envisioning new products and markets; going global; total quality management; achieving environmental excellence; speed and agility; and shaking up the organization. While the authors round up many of the usual world-class suspects as exemplars of latter-day excellence (Chrysler, Emerson Electric, Ford Motor, Intel, Motorola, Searle, and Xerox, to name but a few), they have showcased some less familiar outfits as well. Cases in point range from Great Plains Software through Johnsonville Foods, Kingston Technology, Remmele Engineering, Thermo Electron, and Wadia Digital. On the minus side of the ledger, the relatively rigid format Jasinowski and Hamrin use to present their summary case studies soon grows tiresome. Nor could all selections pass a cognitive-dissonance test. By way of example, the authors include happy-talk rundowns on USX-US Steel as well as three of the nimbler rivals (Chaparral, Nucor, Oregon Steel) that have poached on its traditional preserves in recent years. Although Jasinowski and Hamrin cover a handful of corporations that have made a virtue of environmental necessity, moreover, they stand mute on the score of those that may have overcome less edifying problems with product recalls, racial discrimination, or sexual harassment. The bottom line: These relentlessly upbeat vignettes of US business are to management guides what fast food is to haute cuisine.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-50756-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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
IN THE NEWS
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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