Despite shortcomings, the simple-to-understand narrative encourages deliberate reflection, an ethical act in its own right.
An easy-to-use manual for determining ethical behavior in our bewildering times.
Liautaud, who runs her own consulting company and teaches ethics at Stanford, proves that it’s possible to write a book about ethics without deploying the words virtue or utilitarian or the names Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Bentham, or Mill. Readers accustomed to historically grounded philosophical works of broad abstraction or technical argumentation will find this text less demanding. In one sense, the book is philosophy for the digital age: In promising that this “book will arm you with four straightforward steps to tackle any dilemma,” the author flirts with subsuming ethical deliberation to an algorithm. Applying her framework of identifying guiding principles, gathering relevant information, considering all stakeholders, and anticipating possible outcomes will direct an actor toward a decision. However, without normative standards for principles, ethics can quickly collapse to vested interests. The author sometimes reduces difficult philosophical questions to a series of bullet points that would fit nicely in a corporate PowerPoint presentation. Furthermore, if ethicists of the digital era such as Jaron Lanier and Tristan Harris have taught us anything, it’s that algorithms are not neutral. Liautaud neglects to interrogate some of the assumptions of her framework. Why, say, should we consider all stakeholders? Even if we allow applied ethics some lassitude with theory, the author runs headlong into the reality that we tend not to apply frameworks to our ethical dilemmas. Let’s say that after reading this book, we do apply the author’s framework but do not like the outcome it provides. Is it more likely that we will act against our intuitions or that we will plug some different principles into the framework until we get an outcome we feel better about? Liautaud provides several fascinating cases studies of recent ethical issues, which she analyzes with the kind of nuance we sorely need these days.
Despite shortcomings, the simple-to-understand narrative encourages deliberate reflection, an ethical act in its own right.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982132-19-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.
A program of cash-management techniques for aspiring entrepreneurs, aimed at a minority readership.
At the beginning of this business book, Mariga reflects on the birth of her daughter, Florence, and on the depressing prospect of returning to her corporate job and missing some of her baby’s early moments. She realized that she “wanted to show Florence…that I could, that she could, that anyone could be anything they wanted to be in this world.” To that end, she wanted to start her own business, and she “wanted to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses that provide opportunities for others.” In a sentiment reflected by others she’s interviewed, she says that she wanted to strengthen her family legacy, so she founded her own accounting firm. She paints a vivid picture of the hardscrabble early days of other minority business owners like herself, the child of an African American mother and a Chinese father who also had a family accounting business. She and others were “all hustling to acquire clients and build our businesses…and most of us had absolutely nothing to show for it.” She was inspired by Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First money management system, and the bulk of her book is devoted to an explanation of how to make this system work for minority business enterprises. (Michalowicz provides a foreword to the book.) One of the primary goals of Profit First is to build “a self-sustaining, debt-free company,” so a large part of Mariga’s work deals with the details of managing finances, building and abiding by budgets, and handling the swings of emotion that occur every step of the way. As sharply focused as these insights are, the author’s recollections of her own experiences are more rewarding, as when she tells readers of her brief time as a cut-rate accountant and learning that it was a mistake to try to compete on price. These stories, as well as financing specifics and clear encouragements (“Small changes and adjustments accumulate. Over time, they will lead you to your goal”), will make this book invaluable to entrepreneurs of all kinds.
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7357759-0-6
Page Count: 230
Publisher: The Avant-Garde Project, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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