An overstated case for the proposition that our socioeconomic future depends largely upon the emergence of amorphous entities that the authors dub ``virtual corporations.'' By the breathless account of Davidow (Marketing High Technology, 1986) and Malone (Going Public, 1991, etc.), a virtual corporation is a radically restructured, free-form enterprise equipped to deliver immediate consumer gratification in cost- effective fashion. Among other examples of virtual goods and services that are already available, the authors cite camcorders that make instant movies, desktop publishing, and eyeglasses in an hour. Davidow and Malone go on to assess the advanced systems and/or procedures that permit industry to offer such products. Covered as well are organizational issues—most notably, the changing roles played by labor, management, customers, suppliers, and others in an era marked by intense transnational competition. That the most commercial concerns must be adaptive, flexible, and responsive—as well better able to gather, process, and act upon relevant data if they are to survive, much less thrive—seems inarguable. Whether all or even very many of them may be obliged to do so according to the convulsive, scattershot prescriptions of Davidow and Malone, however, will strike even casual observers as a very open question. Moreover, the authors offer few insights that could be accurately described as new. In fact, to create what passes for a coherent synthesis, they simply combine anecdotal commentary on computer-aided design, flexible manufacturing, kaizen (incremental improvement), kanban (just-in-time inventory practices), visionary leadership, and other trendy topics with short, baleful takes on the bad old days when mass production (and merchandising) set the pace. Speculative nonsense, albeit of the slick, state-of-the-art sort for which there is an indisputably durable demand.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-88730-593-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
A random walk through the entrepreneurial outskirts of postindustrial commerce and show biz with a tour guide whose spiel has a nasty edge to it. Drawing on stories he has reported as a CBS TV correspondent, Geist (Little League Confidential, 1992, etc.) offers a discontinuous series of short takes on offbeat enterprises that have yielded the venturesome Americans who launched or embraced them modest amounts of fame and fortune. Cases in point range from the leading breeder of racing pigs through the inventor of the car- crushing leviathans known as monster trucks and Florida's top vendor of recycled golf balls to the two struggling illustrators who created Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Covered as well are the proprietors of nail-care salons, traffic-safety schools, and the seemingly endless parade of lurid talk shows on daytime television, plus the resourceful aerospace engineer who first thought of blasting bullet holes in wearing apparel as a lucrative fashion statement. In most instances, unfortunately, the author goes beyond poking gentle fun at his subjects and their antics; indeed, he invariably holds them up to gratuitously savage ridicule. Nor can Geist resist any opportunity to show what a clever fellow he is, even when a straightforward account of junk entertainment like ``American Gladiators'' could speak for itself. All too often the effect is akin to the tedious pall cast by a stand-up comic who, bedazzled by his own wit, can't bear to leave the stage. While the author closes with backhanded homage to Judge Roy Hofheinz (builder of Houston's pace-setting Astrodome), a start-to-finish audit of his other vignettes reveals that they reach no particularly startling conclusions about the latter-day US or any other substantive matter. Sporadically amusing but wholly dispensable.
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-13883-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
A timely, comprehensive, and often interesting argument that the most pressing issue the Middle East faces is not land and borders but rather the supply and distribution of the region's water. A soil scientist with extensive consulting experience throughout the world, Hillel (Plant and Soil Science/Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst; Out of the Earth, 1990) reveals how, in one of the world's most strategic and parched areas, ecological considerations, particularly concerning water supplies, may influence geopolitics as much as summit meetings, police forces, and arms build-ups. Hillel focuses on the region's four great rivers: the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Jordan. He shows how a 1967 dispute between Israel and Syria over water rights was a contributing cause to the Six-Day War; how Iraq and Syria nearly came to blows with Turkey in 1990 over distribution of water from the Euphrates; and how there has been considerable tension between Jordan and Saudi Arabia over an aquifer (a water-bearing layer of permeable rock and a rare geological feature in the arid Middle East) from which both desert kingdoms draw. Hillel also suggests ways that nations can avoid disputes through intercountry and regional agreements, and he proposes various means of increasing water supplies and assuring effective use—e.g., desalination, cloud seeding, drip irrigation, and improved transmission (pipeline leakage wastes fully half the water intended for some Middle Eastern cities). This is an impressively interdisciplinary study that combines insights from geology, archaeology, etymology, biblical and other ancient Near East studies, modern history, soil science, agronomy, ecology, and contemporary political analysis. At times, Hillel floods the reader with highly technical data that will interest only hydrologists or other specialists. Generally, however, this is a clearly written, often colorful, accessible, and useful work of regional studies.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-508068-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
© Copyright 2025 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.
