An entertaining and even charming excursion in business history, largely unburdened by formulas and numbers but full of...
Is the corporation a soulless and soul-killing construct, an instrument of unmitigated evil, as Genoese streetfighters and latter-day Naderites are wont to argue? Not necessarily—and not even usually—write two Economist reporters.
Whoever came up with it—and several nations and times can lay claim to it—the company is a brilliant idea. From the outset, the creation of a business entity that had some of the rights, and some of the traits, of an individual person allowed cash-strapped governments to secure the wherewithal for projects ranging from securing shipping lanes to conquering half the world, and it allowed single investors to form blocs and gain wealth unattainable to anyone without a cannon. Some of the earliest companies, write Micklethwait and Coolidge, were quasi-governments in themselves. The British East India Company, for instance, commanded a private army a quarter of a million soldiers strong, far larger than the British army. The Virginia Company transported goods to and from the American colonies while encouraging democratic ideas that helped get the king’s hand out of the till—for which reason James I called the firm “a seminary for a seditious parliament.” Fueled by a logic that the economist Ronald Coase identified as the desire to minimize the transaction costs involved in coordinating a particular economic activity—get everyone under one roof, and coordination is a breeze—such companies grew and diversified, yet did not become giants until the late-19th and early-20th centuries, when master planners such as James Buchanan Duke, the tobacco giant; Thomas Watson, the paternalistic founder of IBM; and the good folks at Procter & Gamble pulled together to corporatize all aspects of society—in the case of the last, the authors wryly remark, also “ruining modern culture by creating the soap opera.” Yet, they argue, despite widespread fears to the contrary, big corporations are steadily losing their power, while small ones—and there are more than 5.5 million in the US alone—are becoming the norm, allowing for healthy diversity and even doing some good.
An entertaining and even charming excursion in business history, largely unburdened by formulas and numbers but full of debate-stirring data all the same.Pub Date: March 11, 2003
ISBN: 0-679-64249-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Modern Library
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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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