Definitive and compulsively readable.
Resources and advice for people considering becoming whistleblowers within their organizations.
Kohn, a lawyer and longtime champion of workers’ rights, cites a suite of new U.S. laws designed to help protect whistleblowers, including the Dodd-Frank Act, resulting in “stunning and almost unbelievable” success. Since 1986, corporations running afoul of the law have paid more than $100 billion in fines, which has had an enormous deterrent effect, saving an estimated $1 trillion, according to the 2022 Whistleblower’s Annual Report issued by the Security and Exchange Commission. Kohn notes that thanks to qui tam legislation, which entitles whistleblowers to a portion of the fines their employers incur (legislation that goes all the way back to 1779; a grateful Samuel Adams was compensated by Congress for his role in outing lawbreakers), the government has paid over $10 billion to employees. Qui tam, he writes, “puts teeth into the right of the people to expose fraud and misconduct,” and in these pages, he clarifies an array of detailed advice, “rules” for modern-day whistleblowers to follow in order to protect themselves. Kohn keeps these guidelines appealingly simple—“Be Confidential,” “Document, Document, Document,” “Don’t Tip Off the Crooks,” and so on. While the rules are unfailingly interesting, Kohn is even more fascinating when he addresses the doubts or insecurities potential whistleblowers might experience. He advises such candidates to consider whether they should risk covertly taping misconduct at work or if they might feel like they’ve betrayed their colleagues; he also recommends carefully drawing the distinction between whistleblowing and an employment dispute. Kohn is a vivid, authoritative guide, and it’s a testament to his narrative skill that he can make this niche subject so consistently gripping.
Definitive and compulsively readable.Pub Date: June 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781493072804
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
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