Scholarly in tone and approach but accessible and of interest to students of business history as well as to budding...
Survey history of the alt-commerce movement that connects some major players in the modern retail space with the counterculture of the 1960s.
Rejecting capitalism and the quest for money back in the day, many an activist nonetheless went into business. Some of them pursued avenues that were not likely to lead to wealth. One of Davis’ (History/Univ. of Baltimore) case categories centers on the founders of African-American bookstores in Harlem and other urban areas, places that they viewed “as free spaces or sites of liberation and empowerment,” not necessarily as profit centers. As it happens, he adds, according to a contemporary survey, only about a third of those stores ever showed a profit, which did not keep activists from opening them throughout the era. The feminist founders of Liberation Enterprises had more success with aprons bearing legends such as “Fuck Housework,” which found a ready market and proved a pioneering move in the specialty mail-order business, the germinal ground of the internet economy. Just as successful by any measure were the head shops of the 1960s, which begat activist organizations such as NORML and High Times, which begat—well, among other things, a culture that has made it possible for many states to permit marijuana use, either recreational or medical. And nearly ubiquitous in the modern economy is the offshoot of the organic produce store, with all its built-in tensions: organic food costs more, limiting the market to the better-off, which gives us, in the end, Whole Foods. Davis capably traces that evolution through forerunner organizations such as Erewhon, in its time “the country’s biggest wholesale purchaser of organic produce and grains,” and the Good Food chain of Austin, Texas, in which Whole Foods founder John Mackey cut his teeth.
Scholarly in tone and approach but accessible and of interest to students of business history as well as to budding entrepreneurs.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-231-17158-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 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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