by John Browne with Robin Nuttall & Tommy Stadlen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2016
A timely and provocative discussion of big business and its uncertain future.
Former BP chief executive Browne (Seven Elements that Changed the World: An Adventure of Ingenuity and Discovery, 2014, etc.) teams with McKinsey & Company principal Nuttall and former McKinsey consultant Stadlen to call out some systematic failures of businesses, including the failure to learn from the past.
The authors interviewed more than 80 corporate leaders from companies around the world, and McKinsey's research and surveys back the work. High on the authors’ list is the absence of adequate corporate policies and methods to deal with potentially catastrophic issues involving the communities in which they operate. They prominently flag environmental issues, including climate change in general and specific events like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Also significant are corporate corruption, scandals, and criminality. To demonstrate the convenient amnesia of corporate leaders, the authors pair recent developments—Europe's 2013 horsemeat scandal—with historical precedents such as the dreadful conditions of the meatpacking industry in early-20th-century Chicago. Browne believes that the community outreach programs known as Corporate Social Responsibility are ineffective because they are “disconnected from commercial activity and from the needs of real people.” What are the actual roles of corporations, ask the authors, “if they are no longer the drivers of employment in their industry or their local community?” Through their interviews, the authors portray a world in the midst of social upheaval and technological revolution; one result has been the large-scale loss of lesser-qualified and unqualified positions. Artificial intelligence technology, robots, and software-driven platforms—e.g., Uber, which is greatly disrupting the taxi industry—are likely here to stay. As the authors rightly note, government still has a role to play. The authors cogently argue that businesses must develop more focused “mapping” of their operations. Clearer, more precise conceptions of aims and purposes are also necessary, and outreach must be more finely honed at every level.
A timely and provocative discussion of big business and its uncertain future.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61039-697-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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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SEEN & HEARD
by Enrico Moretti ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2012
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's...
A fresh, provocative analysis of the debate on education and employment.
Up-and-coming economist Moretti (Economics/Univ. of California, Berkeley) takes issue with the “[w]idespread misconception…that the problem of inequality in the United States is all about the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99 percent.” The most important aspect of inequality today, he writes, is the widening gap between the 45 million workers with college degrees and the 80 million without—a difference he claims affects every area of peoples' lives. The college-educated part of the population underpins the growth of America's economy of innovation in life sciences, information technology, media and other areas of globally leading research work. Moretti studies the relationship among geographic concentration, innovation and workplace education levels to identify the direct and indirect benefits. He shows that this clustering favors the promotion of self-feeding processes of growth, directly affecting wage levels, both in the innovative industries as well as the sectors that service them. Indirect benefits also accrue from knowledge and other spillovers, which accompany clustering in innovation hubs. Moretti presents research-based evidence supporting his view that the public and private economic benefits of education and research are such that increased federal subsidies would more than pay for themselves. The author fears the development of geographic segregation and Balkanization along education lines if these issues of long-term economic benefits are left inadequately addressed.
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's more profound problems.Pub Date: May 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-75011-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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