A valuable briefing on an underappreciated business problem, but it could use a bit of Roosevelt’s hard-nosed attitude.
Should Amazon and Google be broken up like Standard Oil? Yes, argues legal scholar Wu (Columbia Law School; The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, 2016, etc.), but breaking up is hard to do.
The problem is a decadeslong warping of antitrust law, which the author details in this half history, half polemic book. The title comes from a phrase coined by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who agitated against Gilded Age monopolists like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. Together with President Theodore Roosevelt, who put enforcement muscle behind the Sherman Act, they persuasively argued that monopolistic practices are inefficient, stifle innovation as well as competition, and court abusive practices against workers. (Think of AT&T, Wu suggests, a longtime state-sanctioned monopoly whose breakup cleared the way for the mainstream internet.) For much of the 20th century, Brandeis' view was accepted regulatory practice, until the arrival in the 1960s of Robert Bork, who, as a federal judge, prescribed an exceedingly narrow interpretation of the Sherman Act: So long as consumer prices didn’t rise, no conglomerate qualified as a monopoly, regardless of market share. The Borkian argument, however far afield from Sherman’s intent, is now gospel, Wu writes, rendering Security and Exchange Commission antitrust regulators toothless. This has allowed Google to bloat with buyouts—though, as Wu points out, it was a beneficiary of antitrust enforcement against Microsoft—developing unchecked acquisitive instincts that have eliminated competitors, with Facebook and Amazon following its lead. The author convincingly draws parallels between the new “tech trusts” and the Gilded Age titans, but one wishes for more fire in the argument: Wu’s background about Brandeis is important, but the modern implications could be better woven into his narrative. As it is, his strongest cases for breaking up Google are tucked into dry concluding policy prescriptions.
A valuable briefing on an underappreciated business problem, but it could use a bit of Roosevelt’s hard-nosed attitude.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9997454-6-5
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf