Especially following a historic banking crisis, this is a timely lesson on the importance and commercial value of ethical...
A practical business guide that advocates a correlation between success and integrity.
Author Silverstein (No More Excuses, 2015) has devoted his career to building successful corporate cultures centered around the principle of accountability—his previous works are all attempts to catalog and systematize his life’s labor. In his latest book, he documents the extraordinary success of the Happy State Bank, headquartered in a tiny town called Happy in the Texas Panhandle. The work is the result of interviews he conducted with the bank’s CEO, J. Pat Hickman, who attributes its success—even during the recent dark days for banking—to a belief system built around what he calls “non-negotiables,” basic moral principles unconditionally held. “Some people use the word belief as though it’s a moving target,” says Silverstein. “I believe that hidden deep within the deepest meaning of the word belief are the words conviction, trust, and faith. That kind of belief means you don’t sway when something or someone pulls at you.” Rather than merely moral prohibitions, Hickman interprets nonnegotiables as instruments of greater control and freedom, premised upon a reflection on which parts of life can be mastered and which are matters of chance. For all its inspirational rhetoric, the book maintains a healthy pragmatism regarding its message: “You can’t have a non-negotiable for something you can’t control.” The underlying moral of Silverstein’s examination is that an uncompromisable moral worldview is necessary to achieve true accountability and is, therefore, an indispensable ingredient in prosperity. The culmination of the work is the list of Hickman’s own nonnegotiables, some of which might be too vague to be all that helpful (“Do what’s right”), while others seem especially timely in an age of notorious malfeasance (“Don’t forget that it’s other people’s money”). Silverstein’s writing is clear and straightforward, making this both an accessible and actionable book.
Especially following a historic banking crisis, this is a timely lesson on the importance and commercial value of ethical commitment.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0768407242
Page Count: -
Publisher: Sound Wisdom
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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