Despite some boggy, unspecific acronym-speak, the authors offer useful examples and takeaway advice.
Former leader of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq lends his gutsy insight to the management breakdown of that effort, which ushered in huge changes from the top down.
Replaced in 2010 as head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan for his outspokenness, now retired from the Army and teaching leadership at Yale, McChrystal, along with three co-writers, fashions an engaging narrative on how the traditional centralized management style of the American forces no longer worked against the fluid, agile enemy of jihadi terrorist networks. His work is essentially a chronicle of his ability to lead a sea change in military management style between 2003, when he joined the Task Force, and the triumphant assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of al-Qaida in Iraq, in 2006. Frustrated by the protean nature of the enemy, which constantly undermined the rigid discipline and superior force of the U.S., McChrystal and his cohorts had to step back and take stock of some leadership models in history—e.g., British Adm. Horatio Nelson engineered a stunning victory over a superior Franco-Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 by creating chaos and uncertainty in the enemy command. The authors also examine the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, who initially established the supremacy of the centralized business structure. In a showcase at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, Taylor introduced the art of “scientific management,” by which factory conditions moved like clockwork, where there was “the one best way” for production and all causes and effects were predictable. However, by the first Iraq War, the military had boxed itself into an outmoded Maginot Line rather than rewarding fluidity, agility, resiliency, and adaptive thinking. Creating teams and lateral trust altered an entire military culture.
Despite some boggy, unspecific acronym-speak, the authors offer useful examples and takeaway advice.Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59184-748-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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
SEEN & HEARD
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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