An invaluable guidebook to disability law for American employers.
An overview of the history, strengths, and unforeseen weaknesses of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Shaw’s smart, comprehensive nonfiction debut deals with how the ADA, signed into law in 1990, drastically changed the landscape of American workplaces. Prior to it, the physically disabled faced a host of obstacles if they wanted to join or return to the workforce: they often encountered buildings that they couldn’t enter—it’s startling to remember, while reading this book, how recent entrance ramps and other handicapped-access features are—and they faced the perception that they were lesser employees or even lesser people. Since the ADA’s passage, this situation has changed greatly, but Shaw believes that, in many cases, the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction—particularly as the concept of “disability” has expanded to include psychological and emotional disorders. This has led to increased possibilities for fraud, the author contends, which has brought American employers to a crossroads: “We need and want to do what’s right for workers, while still adhering to the ADA,” she writes. “However, the influx of requests increasingly include those filed by workers who are not disabled.” She goes on to offer a systematic analysis and playbook for employers who might face overstated or false disability claims. She also specifically runs through the kinds of accommodations that employers are legally obligated to provide under the ADA and what may or may not constitute “reasonable accommodations.” Shaw effectively takes readers through different situations that employers may encounter, including dealing with especially litigious claimants and outright malingerers; her writings on mental disabilities, in particular, will likely be very useful. Shaw’s prose is clear and encouraging throughout, and she adroitly manages a tricky balancing act between skepticism and advocacy. As a result, she comes off as both a champion of the disabled and a mentor for businesspeople looking to avoid fraudsters.
An invaluable guidebook to disability law for American employers.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5447-0859-1
Page Count: 244
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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