In this comprehensive survey of historical scholarship, a business executive explores the ancient roots of business and finds lessons for public policy today.
A Harvard-trained history major and lawyer, Roberts has worked as a litigator and mediator, as well as general counsel or chief executive for varied business ventures. This ambitious debut establishes his bona fides as a first-rate historian. In 270 pages of granular but surprisingly brisk narrative sprinkled with maps and tables, he distills 5,000 years of history into a coherent story of business as a distinct profit-seeking activity. (Endnotes fill 50 pages; his bibliography adds 20 more.) From Fertile Crescent agricultural surpluses that supported cities, Roberts traces the evolution of governance that gave rise to wealth, trade, occupations, currencies and markets. Throughout, he conveys complicated material concisely, displays a nimble command of vocabulary and uses interesting stories to make points. There are a few shortcomings. Roberts’ presentation is sometimes too fluid—like going for drinks with a professor whose banter dips in and out of historical periods without realizing his pupil cannot keep up. The text also contains unnecessary repetition. In one case, he deploys two identically footnoted, virtually word-for-word sentences in the span of three pages. The focus is entirely on Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and European antiquity—the antecedents of Western-style business, which he accepts as universal today. Given the rise of China’s command economy and popularity of Sun Tzu’s writings in business circles, the scope of Roberts’ text seems narrow. Otherwise, the author does a stellar job of identifying modern business origins while rendering a multifaceted refresher course in ancient civilizations. Further, he delivers excellent commentary on what history should teach us, warning that businesses often pursue short-term profits even against their own long-term interests; “The interests of business are so different from those of any legitimate sovereign that it governs very badly indeed. That is why catastrophic results followed when business exerted political power for the first and only time in ancient history,” he writes about the late Roman Republic. A badly needed tonic for free-market zealotry and a major accomplishment in the field of business history.
Pub Date: June 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0231153263
Page Count: 357
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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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
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