Economic-Life Books

"This book may take our breath away." So states the cover blurb from Walter Brueggemann on "Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice: Navigating the Path to Peace," released on April 17, 2007 by Daniel G. Groody. The basic premise is, metaphorically, that the global family has booked passage and is now aboard the ship of globalization and there is no turning back to the shore. The question we must ask ourselves, as passengers on this ship, is, "who is at the helm and where are we going?" As Gustavo Gutierrez quips, "Being against globalization is like being against electricity." We can't stop the ship, and one would question the wisdom of wanting to, but the issues of who's driving and where will we end up are legitimate.

The book begins by offering an overview of the dual nature of globalization--its inherent propensity for good, such as the triumphs of technology, and for ill, such as the tragedy of poverty. Perhaps more importantly, chapter one details where we have sailed on this ship so far. This chapter seeks to give a realistic picture of the world today and paints that picture by using the most current statistics available. These statistics were gathered from sources such as the World Bank, the United Nations annual Human Development and World Development reports, and the World Institute for Development Economic Research. It is staggering to learn that 19 percent of the global population lives on less than $1 per day, 48 percent live on less than $2 per day, 75 percent live on less than $10 per day, and, according to the World Bank, two-thirds of the population of the planet lives in poverty. The weight of these income disparities is compounded when one looks at the unequal distribution of wealth and our disordered spending patterns. According to an article in the December 2006 issue of "The Economist," half of all wealth is held by only 2 percent of the world's adults. The world spends almost as much money on toys and games as the poorest 20 percent of the population earns in a year, and four times as much on alcohol as on international development aid. The troubling area of military spending is also addressed.

The world picture, from the perspective of poverty and need is indeed bleak, but Professor Groody does not leave us in the grip of its reality with no hope. He is convinced that, while fully aware of the abuses committed in the name of religion throughout history, the gift theology can bring to the process of globalization is a navigation system that has the potential to guide us to a place of solidarity and peace, where if globalization is left to itself or to those leaders who are only motivated by profit we may run aground on the icebergs of greed. As Groody notes, we are doing theological reflection all the time, but he argues that to find a place of human solidarity we must undergo a conversion from "money-theism" to monotheism. The remaining eight chapters of the book deal with how the various sub-disciplines of theology inform the process of globalization.

* Chapter two details the core narratives of the Bible--the Narrative of the Empire, the Narrative of the Poor, the Narrative of Yahweh, the Narrative of Idolatry, and the Narrative of the Gospel, integrating them all with the Narrative of the Passover.
* Chapter three challenges idolatry and excessive wealth through the words of the early church writers.
* Chapter four lays out an overview of Catholic social teaching with an acronym ("A God of Life") that provides a framework on which to hang the basic tenets. There are also several very useful charts that detail the documents of the universal and regional churches by categories of year, author, context, and key concept.
* Chapter five consists of a short section (five or six pages) on the basic social teachings of each of the major, non-Judeo-Christian, world religions--Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Bahai Faith, and African Indigenous religions. Here we see that social justice is not unique to Christianity.
* In chapter six the lives of five contemporary models of justice are briefly chronicled: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and Oscar Romero. Attention is paid especially to their foundational experiences, the major metaphor of their life, their operative theology, and their core contribution to justice.
* Chapter seven reflects on God through the perspective of the poor by looking at liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor. This chapter is an especially helpful read for anyone who wishes to understand what is meant by these two terms and the position of the Vatican on liberation theology. The global perspective is readily apparent again in this chapter as attention is paid to Black, Hispanic, Feminist, and Asian liberation theology.
* Chapter eight concerns the rite of the liturgy, and justice as living in right relationships with God, self, others, and the environment. This chapter also has several nice charts that are helpful in linking the sacraments to social teaching by way core issue.
* The final chapter on spirituality and transformation beautifully sums up the book by looking to the spiritual disciplines which can strengthen us for doing the work of justice in the world: fasting, prayer, community, solidarity, nature, simplicity, recollection, and Sabbath.

Each chapter begins with a relevant story, and ends with a set of questions that would be helpful for personal reflection, group discussion, or classroom use, and a detailed bibliography for further reading and study.

I recommend Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice for upper level undergrads and graduate students in theology, peace studies, political science, ethics and justice, and economics and business, as well as justice groups, and the general reader interested in this vital and timely topic. Groody has managed to research and write a compelling treatise on global injustice without conveying a bleak and hopeless message. At its core, this book seeks to respond to the deeper issues of the human heart that globalization has largely left unexplored--questions related to belonging and loneliness, good and evil, peace and division, healing and suffering, meaning and meaninglessness, hope and despair, love and apathy, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery, and ultimately life and death. He is not interested in overwhelming readers with guilt, but rather with guiding readers to examine our personal and corporate lives and motivations, all the while encouraging us to think beyond ourselves to the needs of our brothers and sisters in the global family. The book is clear and well documented, exquisitely written, and sings a wonderful melody of the gratuitousness of God that is both a gift to and a demand on our lives.

Truly excellent work. This book addresses how to be christian in todays world. Thought provoking and very well researched. Great for a book group with discussion questions at the end of each chapter. I have already recommended this book to many.

This book has helped me in living out my faith in the workplace. Ross West has the hard won experience and spiritual depth needed to really be a guide to many of us in this challenging area. He addresses many areas such as responding to unethical situations and seeing spiritual value in our work/in others. He establishes a useful theology of why we work and what our work means and then proceeds to show many practical examples of how that theology can be applied in everyday work-a-day life. One of my favorite parts of the book is the simple but profound observation that we can and should view our work, no matter what it is, as ultimately helping another person somewhere. It's hard to think of a job where this is not the case and even though my technology job is somewhat removed from people directly, it does help them elsewhere. The book caused me to reflect on my work in constructive ways after years of confusion on this topic. I have already recommended the book to some close Christian friends who have the same challenges. It is not easy to find books that are as theologically sound and practical as this one. I am starting to read William E. Diehl who has also written in this area.

This book has helped me in living out my faith in the workplace. Ross West has the hard won experience and spiritual depth needed to really be a guide to many of us in this challenging area. He addresses many areas such as responding to unethical situations and seeing spiritual value in our work/in others. He establishes a useful theology of why we work and what our work means and then proceeds to show many practical examples of how that theology can be applied in everyday work-a-day life. One of my favorite parts of the book is the simple but profound observation that we can and should view our work, no matter what it is, as ultimately helping another person somewhere. It's hard to think of a job where this is not the case and even though my technology job is somewhat removed from people directly, it does help them elsewhere. The book caused me to reflect on my work in constructive ways after years of confusion on this topic. I have already recommended the book to some close Christian friends who have the same challenges. It is not easy to find books that are as theologically sound and practical as this one. I am starting to read William E. Diehl who has also written in this area.

This book will give you a unique perspective of how His Love positively impacts on the ongoing development of man's successful economic, political and social systems in our world. Businessmen will especially find this to be a very uplifting book.

Lee Markquart,
Eau Claire, Wisconsin
automobile dealer

It is MUST reading for your pastor!

I am going to be honest. I only wanted to purchase the "Monster" book but because it was so good, I picked this book up as well. This book was quite thought provoking because I have never heard anyone make a valid relationship between God and Entrepreneurship! I am not deeply religious but from what I have known of church, I have never heard a lot of these things but Rickey Singleton was quite detailed in proving his point. With all of the unemployment today, this book will always be timely. Bravo!

This book brings to light how entrepreneurship and God are related and is the key to prosperity and even to what we are supposed to be doing for God. I thought the chapter on channels changed my life. I always had entrepreneurial intentions but after reading this book, I have really been successful in my endeavors. I would really like to meet Rickey Singleton. I have NEVER heard many of the valid points he brings out in his books. Wow!

The "menu" and "full-course meal" of the form of this helpful book make a serious topic palatable. The excellent index is an asset, enabling the user to waste no time.

The title is somewhat misleading, since it has little to do with technics, as the author akcnowledges, and a lot with human relationships. It is basically a psychology book. In this sense it explains a philosophy the reader has to absorb and apply to everyday life. Although sometimes it is repetitive, and goes down to a lot of real situations, it is not a recipe cookbook. For this reason its principles can not only be applied to highly educated people, like those in an R+D pharmaceutical department, but to all levels of education, doing the appropriate adjustements. They can also be applied to non business relationships, like friends, spouse and children. And if its claims may sound to the unexperienced reader like fantastic, they are not. They really work. The book is expensive, but worth its price. Do not miss it if you believe that human relationships can be improved to everybody's advantage, and better working environment leads to enhanced productivity. Forget it if you believe that the essence of managing is a long whip.

Transforming your company into a network organization is an arduous, confusing, and chaotic process. The network organization will be the key to sustaining your competitive edge in the race to dominate the new growth segments in all industries. These times demand revolutionary change, not simple evolution.

The goal of the organization when creating the front line is to bring together the smallest number of people to solve most customer problems with little or no back-line intervention. These people must be relational, service-oriented, and like dealing with people; they have natural interest and experience in the arena of the customer interests; enjoy creative problem solving; they are action oriented and experiential by nature; they are looking for long term employment and want to be rewarded for the increasing relationship they build with ongoing customers over time; they must have excellent communication skills; and they must like the responsibility of making decisions and learning from their mistakes.

The back-line employees must focus on specialized areas of expertise or products rather than on one segment of customers. People, who work best as generalist have in-depth expertise in one functional area; they will be more logical; they will be more loyal to their profession and more technical then people oriented; they will move in and out of project teams with other specialist to solve problems and then move onto new projects and clients; they will compete with outside specialist as a benchmark of efficiency and effectiveness or risk being outsource; and they will focus on continuing education to keep their very specialized skills from becoming obsolete.

Employees want more say, in what is really going on, in the company. Employees see things too be improved, changed, or streamlined in their department expecting increased customer satisfaction. Employees want improvement but not the responsibility of becoming accountable. The truth is that in many traditional companies, neither the executive nor the employees want real change. The majority prefer the status quo because it is more familiar and less risky. As a result growth companies can't find enough good people to work in their fast-paced, demanding environment and most employees are unwilling to learn new skills and new ways of working.

Real structural change can be accomplished broadly and urgently in an organization only during a period of real crisis, bordering on business failure. Urgency works to eliminate the natural human resistance to change. If your company is not in a crisis state the pilot approach is recommended. The pilot approach introduces change into a small group in the company, a project team or division. Involve your best and most progressive customers, the ones that demand a high level of service and response from your company. Work out the difficult bugs and chaotic experimentation with this prototype group. Nurture the groups process give them visibility and tangible rewards and recognition for taking the risk.

Network organizations can benefit from the economies of scale of large commodity production systems and specialization in expertise, while paying attention to the individual and changing needs of their customers. Such a model begins with a clear understanding of the customer needs and the areas where the company can sustain a competitive advantage over other companies in meeting their needs. The secret of change is to start with the customer and redesign your company from the bottom up, the way your customers and frontline employees would.

What does you company do better than anyone else for a certain segment of customers? How can you create small teams comprised of individuals who have the cross-functional skills to meet the needs of each group of customers? How can you transfer as much decision-making responsibility as possible to the front-lines, where the customers are, and not to the backlines or to central management? How do you make every individual or team as accountable as a small business?

This book is a fantastic way to get that extra "edge" and prepare yourself for a changing job market.

Two sections are particularly outstanding reading:

"Four Principles Driving the Work Revolution" should be in the hands of every job-seeker, hirer, and manager in business.

"Leveraging the New Entrepreneurial Climate" is worth the price of the book alone as an investment in anyone's future! It includes these terrific chapters:

...."For the Heroic: Strategies for Creating a Breakthrough Start-Up"

...."For the Creative: Become an 'Intrapreneur' Within Your Company"

...."For the Homebody: Turn Your Job or Function into a Subcontract Business"

This book was published 20 years ago which makes it very special. The perspective is from the point view of the workers on their leaders; that is from the workplace.
From the workplace point of view the author describes three types of management: scientific management, manipulative management and management in the 100 companies that are "Great Places to Work".
According to the author Scientific Management is represented by Frederick Winslow Taylor, Lillian Gilbreth and Harold.B. Maynard. They believed that work should be studied by engineers such that workers could be told exactly how they should work in great detail and how long every task should take. In that way output could be defined precisely. Henry Ford was an early enthusiast andalso GE. The only motivation necessary was paying more for more output-"piecework". Apart from the incentive workers were considered like robots, like material resources.. The demarcation between management and workers was very strict. Management decides everything and workers obey. Having worked for Harald.B. Maynard this description is partially correct. It is true on the motivation side. One of the key points in the book is that a worker knows more about his job than anybody else. That is true. But that is also true of engineers looking at the job from another perspective. They know much more about new tooling, new systems, feasible changes in product design, and innovation. The different types of knowledge have to be combined in a collaborative effort as is done in modern industrial engineering.
Manipulative styles are represented by Elton Mayo, Peter Drucker and Tom Peters. The author thinks that all these management methods aimed to maximise profit for the owners, but giving to the workers the impression management was genuinely interested in their well being. The author makes some valid observations definitely worth reading, but is not complete. A lot was manipulative but not everything.
The author suggests as an alternative that management should be genuinely interested in creating happy workplaces. It is impossible to establish a relationship of trust between the workers and management when workers suspect that management is only interested in increasing profit. The author also presents several credible studies that prove that companies with employees that are enthusiastically working for realising the goals of the company produce substantially higher profit and growth performance. Studies made by Tower Perrin in 2007 show similar results.
Still to day Fortune and other magazines present every year the 100 best workplaces in different countries and industries, still based on the ideas in this book.This is a remarkable success.
The book is very much concentrating on "work places" inside the company. This is an integral part of the "stakeholder" concept, referred to as "Corporate Citizen ship", or "Corporate Social Responsibility" In these concepts trust is essential not only between employees and management but also between the company and customers and other groups is society at large.
The history of professional managers in "The rise and corruption of the managerial class" presents an intriguing analysis. Before shareholder activism, private equity and optimising shareholder values, top management was paid reasonably. The singular emphasis on shareholder value, according to the author, has led to compensation of professional managers as if they were entrepreneurs (and bad workplaces).

Although some of the examples used are a bit dated, the insights and conclusions about what makes a good or bad employers are still valid. This is a well-written book that shows how some employers actively strive to generate trust between the company and employees. If you don't like the company for which you work, this book will illustrate some of the practices of companies that truly value employees as their most important resource instead of just paying lip service.

GORGEOUS book. Worth it for just the photos alone. A lot of information about the things that were common knowledge only 1-2 generations ago. The information assumes that you already know some things (and isn't it a shame that we don't) but if you enjoy the arts of home and hearth, you will love this book. It is written so that you can hear Clarissa Dickson Wright reading aloud! I garden, spin, knit socks and wear 'stocks. This book is made for us!

Fascinating overview on how to take more control of what you use and eat. Specially fun for armchair farmers...who knew that Shetland sheep don't need to be sheared by hard to find craftmen shearers, you yourself can pull the wool off your wee woolies! Need a recipe for natural paint? What's the simple old way of testing how fresh your eggs are?

The Greener Life has such gems of information on nearly every page. This rapidly fading common knowledge is what this book is all about. My parents generation would find it redundant, I'm captivated and motivated, but fear my children would find it completely foreign. Farmer wannabes of the world unite!

Clarrisa Dickson Wright and Johnny Scott are boldly independent thinkers. For instance, they disagree with the medical edict that skim milk is best. Why the dramatic increase in osteoporosis and depression? They link those medical conditions to the widespread dietary change of removing milk's richness and serotonin levels, which lower cholesterol levels but also counteract weakening bones and depression. No long list of scientific articles justifying their position, simply a pre-expert era's way of logical induction that prompts one to go out and buy a half gallon of grass fed whole milk. It has a real taste, is astonishingly creamy and makes more silky yogurt.

This book is an excellent choice for those on the brink of a life change, those actually working to make changes and looking for ways to expand the good work, and for those completely new to such ideas. The photos are enticing, the text lively and the message very challenging. Great book!

This book is my personal bible. Particularly the chapter by Jack Ahern. Fine work, congrats Jack.

An absolutely first-class collection from outstanding authors. Very well edited and presented. In 2003 it remains an invaluable benchmark on the subject.

I have used what I learned from this book over and over again in 20+ years of consulting with systems implementations. I have recommended it to every friend I have had who was consternated by what they were facing in corporate structure. I really enjoyed that it was a non-judgemental exploration of culture which gave me real world insights into where I really didn't have a grasp on what was happening around me. It made sense!

This book spells out the rules to the games men play at work, and provides straight forward guidelines women can follow to be successful in a male dominated cultures. The book goes on to show how women can leverage our unique set of strengths to be successful. After reading this title I felt really confident about being able to be successful in corporate life without immitating a man. If every working women read this book, the world would change for the better in a very short period of time. I hope it gets back in to print soon. I've been recommending it to all my friends!