A thorough and enlightening exploration of the importance of supply chain risk management that needs more examples for...
A research-driven assessment examines the role of supply chain risk management in the financial industry.
In this business book, vander Straeten (An Overture to Geofinance, 2018, etc.) makes a case for distinguishing supply chain risk management from general risk management in banking and financial organizations. The author explains why supply chain risk management is a crucial business process that ensures corporate stability and minimal disruption from rare but potentially disastrous events. Vander Straeten reviews and synthesizes much of the existing literature on the topic, and a lengthy bibliography supports the book’s detailed presentation of supply chain risk management research. The volume establishes the theoretical frameworks the author uses throughout the text, including the major difference between supply chains in service industries and those in enterprises that produce tangible goods (“Service supply chain deals with flow of information, capacity, and cash”). He then explains the various components of supply chain risk management, including service-level agreements, resilience, metrics, and the role of capital. After laying the groundwork for its arguments, the book contends that supply chain risk management should be an integral part of planning in the financial sector. According to the author, “Four primary external risk factors are driving the need for improved supply chain resiliency: (i) the demand-driven nature of today’s markets; (ii) environmental compliance; (iii) globalization; and (iv) increased market velocity.” Vander Straeten details why and how business leaders should incorporate this process into their strategies. Best practices for managing and responding to risks are also presented. The text is informative but extremely dense and most appropriate for readers with knowledge of financial and banking practices, although it does attempt to define the many specialized terms and concepts necessary to understanding the book. Readers will find that the author is extremely knowledgeable about the subject and has produced a volume based on substantial research. He makes a compelling case for an approach to risk management that acknowledges the unique position of the service industry supply chain, distinguishing it both from supply chain management for physical goods and the operational risk management that is part of a financial institution’s regular business processes. The prose is often clear and direct (“When the disruption has happened, KPIs can also be useful in monitoring the impacts and taking actions”; “Investment in risk management is designed to avoid something happening, rather than to make something happen”), but there are limitations. While the book is highly illuminating, it addresses its concepts primarily in general terms and is less effective at providing concrete examples of how the ideas it covers can be implemented in practice. There are few specific instances of how to manage risk in the service supply chain. This is one work where the addition of anecdotes—either stories of real companies instigating new procedures or case studies of fictional scenarios—would have made it a more useful tool for those looking to make risk management decisions. In addition, the volume would benefit from further editing, including cutting some repetitive sections. Vander Straeten has a tendency to repeat himself in detail—often word for word—at paragraph length (for example, the discussions of “mega-disasters...tsunami” on pages 21 and 110).
A thorough and enlightening exploration of the importance of supply chain risk management that needs more examples for readers.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Value4Risk LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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