A must-read resource for professional practitioners across the domains of public policy, economic development, corporate...
A best practices methodology for combining public, private, and philanthropic resources to confront complex social challenges.
Buffett (40 Chances, 2013) and Eimicke (The Effective Public Manager, 2007, etc.), faculty colleagues at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, combine their extensive experiences in multisector partnerships with rigorous scholarship in this book. They construct a five-point framework for establishing, managing, and evaluating collaborations among governmental, for-profit, and nonprofit organizations. Their combined experience is extensive: Buffett, the grandson of Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, has directed the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, overseen U.S. Defense Department stabilization projects in Afghanistan and Iraq, and advised cross-sector policy in the Obama White House. Eimicke serves on the advisory board of the Central Park Conservancy’s Institute for Urban Parks and was formerly New York state’s housing “czar” and New York City’s deputy fire commissioner for strategic planning. They explain social value investing as being derived from the value-investing approach popularized by the elder Buffett, which seeks to identify overlooked opportunities in which the market has undervalued worth. Investing for social value yields long-term rewards by improving lives, they assert, creating healthier, better educated, and higher contributing members of society. The first two chapters trace the evolution of cross-sector partnerships and author Buffett’s journey from philanthropist to policy advocate. The framework’s five areas of concern are process, people, place, portfolio and performance. The authors devote a chapter to each followed by an illustrative case study. Examples address how biometric identification is enabling telemedicine across India and how data mining reduced fire deaths in New York City. To illustrate what can go wrong, they provide a cautionary chapter on the multipartner preparations for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. They effectively bring theory into practice as they discuss creating accountable processes, meshing organizational cultures, gaining stakeholder buy-ins, managing capital across different sectors as a portfolio, and developing performance metrics. Throughout, they emphasize doing well by doing good, and they conclude: “Even more important than how we measure success is how we define success to begin with, because that dramatically affects our intentions, our actions and our results.” The authors model the collaborative principles they espouse. Although individual bylines appear on alternating chapters, the style and tone are seamless. Good organization, clear prose, the inclusion of supporting details, and authoritative analyses make their arguments easy to read and accept. The case studies are deep dives; casual readers may skim the minutiae, but the primary audience for this work will appreciate their thoroughness. Despite covering highly complex subjects, the authors keep jargon to a minimum. Lay readers should encounter little difficulty until the performance section, which introduces mathematical formulas to explain the Impact Rate of Return, a method of calculating social investment impact in tangible terms. However, it’s precisely these equations that prove social value investing a workable discipline—not merely a fuzzy dream of do-gooders.
A must-read resource for professional practitioners across the domains of public policy, economic development, corporate governance, and philanthropy.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-231-18290-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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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