Energetic, intrepid reporting by an insider.
Frank, fluid dispatches from her hometown by an Associated Press correspondent relocated to Rio de Janeiro just as the city was supposed to be poised for greatness—or was it?
Born in Rio yet moved about while growing up due to job changes by her oil-executive father, Barbassa transferred from her AP job in San Francisco to Rio in 2010, just as the city won its bid to host the 2016 Olympics. The city was sparkling and enthusiastic in its planning for the 2014 World Cup, which it would also host. A new police chief had broken the backbone of the Red Command gang, and people could finally walk freely in some of the previously gang-held favelas, thanks to the new Pacifying Police Units. Furthermore, the economy was soaring due to newly discovered deposits of oil, spurring a growing middle class and a hunger for consumer goods. However, as a dogged reporter, Barbassa dug deeper, aided by her Brazilian roots and language, and found many troubling undercurrents in the fast-changing city of the newly elected president, Dilma Rousseff. The author saw the “cracking and shifting of structures that had long been in place.” To find a suitable apartment required connections and reams of paperwork; a “labyrinthine tax system” thwarted all transactions; opening a new business involved an average of 13 procedures and 119 days; an immense open-air dump, Gramacho, and no recycling policy contributed to the massive contamination of air, water, and land (on certain days, many of the beaches were unsafe for swimming); the galloping construction for Olympic venues and hotel rooms has meant a relocation of poor favelas; and homophobia and violence against women increased despite the vaunted convivencia of the city. In addition, Brazil’s shameful loss at the World Cup (accompanied by popular demonstrations) seemed to have taken the wind out of Rio’s sails.
Energetic, intrepid reporting by an insider.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5625-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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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