economics-schools

Traditional corporate executives may shudder when they hear the term "corporate responsibility". In their view, the corporation's responsibility is to maximize shareholder value within the bounds of the law. That's a tall order as it is, so resistance to the thought of additional sources of responsibility and additional relevant "stakeholders" isn't surprising. The writers gathered in this collection of papers from HBR see corporate responsibility less as a burden and more as an opportunity. The opportunity lies in creating new markets, resolving age-old business problems, improving public perception, strengthening brands, and melding the best ideas for governments and nonprofit institutions for doing well while doing good.

This collection of eight essays provides a firm foundation in both critical and creative thinking on issues of corporate responsibility and active philanthropy. If the terrain is unfamiliar, the collection's fifth essay - "The Path of Kyosei should be a comfortable entry point. Canon's honorary chairman, Ryuzaburo Kaku, sets out five steps along a path toward a "spirit of cooperation". Practical but still intellectually not so challenging is Rosabeth Moss Kanter's "From Spare Change to Real Change: The Social Sector as Beta Site for Business Innovation". Craig Smith in "The New Corporate Philanthropy" sees philanthropic strategies as giving a competitive edge. A similar perspective, worked out in some detail, comes from Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in their contribution, "The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy".

Charles Handy takes his turn at defining the extent of corporate responsibility in "What's A Business For?". A more impressive piece with far more potential payback for the executive reader comes from C.K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond in their recent essay, "Serving the World's Poor, Profitably". Also of high quality is Roger Martin's "The Virtue Matrix: Calculating the Return on Corporate Responsibility". For the more philosophical, a challenging and well-presented argument for strong corporate responsibility appears in "Can a Corporation Have a Conscience?" by the fittingly-named Kenneth Goodpaster and John Matthews. With a couple of weaker spots, this collection succeeds in bringing together some of the best recent thinking on the issue in recent years. To fill in the gaps, be sure to look at the best pieces from other publications.

The Harvard Business Review has done it again. A very useful tool for negotiation.

Here we have a collection of several articles about balancing wor an life. I liked the book because of that. You don't have to begin reading on page 1. Just see the index for an article of choige an begin reading there. The ideas tha authors propose are written in an easy reading manner an are always backed on serious researches. I licked it a lot.

A book that can change your mind for the better and make you more aware that going to school is not everything in life and certainly not the only thing for our kids as well as ourself.Written in such a way that is very easy to be understood. Also after finishing the book you will definately want to know more.A good investment for yourself!

Lawrence and Lorsch's groundbreaking work "Organization and Environment" was a key step in the study of organizational integration. They used a precise definition, studied integration's impact on organization performance, and explored a subset of the factors that lead to integration. They defined integration as the "state of collaboration that exists among departments that are required to achieve unity of effort." and measured it by asking people to rate the state of interdepartmental relations on a seven-point scale going from "serious problems exist" to "full unity of effort is obtained". They used the term differentiation to refer to different departments having different structures and orientations (e.g. short versus long-term time orientation, relationship versus task focus, and high versus low formality of structure). A key finding of their research was that although organizational integration and differentiation were usually inversely proportional to each other, the most successful organizations simultaneously achieved high levels of both. Prior to Lawrence and Lorsch, organizational experts generally believed that issuing orders from above was adequate to achieve organizational integration. In contrast, Lawrence and Lorsch believed that integration required resolution of conflicts between departments through the efforts of teams and individual managers working both inside and outside of formal channels. These "integrators" need to be in the middle of the organization, and not simply at the top. Factors leading to effective integration included having an orientation that was intermediate between those of the departments being integrated, high influence based on competence and knowledge, and integrators being rewarded for achieving effective unified solutions. Moreover, high performing organizations resolved conflicts at the level in the organization where the knowledge (competence) needed to find a good solution existed. For organizations in stable environments this tends to be high in the organization, while for organizations in rapidly changing environments it tends to be lower down. High performing organizations confronted differences in perspectives in an open problem solving manner, rather than immediately finding a compromise, or trying to smooth over conflict, or referring the issue to a higher level for decision. Lawrence and Lorsch's recognition of the importance of organizational integration and its dependence on the work of "integrators" was a major step in our understanding of organizational effectiveness. The primary weakness in their work is that it focuses overwhelmingly on only one organizational integrating mechanism, namely the use "integrators" to resolve interdepartmental conflict.

Throughout the 80's and the early '90s, a deeply ingrained myth existed in the American collective psyche that believed that; Japanese corporations, in collusion with Japanese government were bent over to control the US and world economy. A series of economic events further encouraged and fortified this belief. Among these events were financial success of Japanese corporations during a contractionary period in the US, followed by a series of acquisition of US companies by Japanese including some national cultural icons, the ever burgeoning US trade deficit and National debt, and the consistent complaint of US business leaders about the un-receptiveness of the Japanese economy to outside competition and acquisition. W.C Kester, attempts to answer few fundamental questions relevant to the Japanese M&A activity. The questions he attempts to answer include; Should nations be threatened by Japanese M&A activity? Should the Japanese be more proactive in opening up their system so that others gain access to M&A activity in Japan? What should policy makers and policy makers of other countries do about the issues? The search for these answers leads him into a complete analysis of the Japanese corporate governance system, which he defines as "the overall mechanism that coordinates the activities of Japanese corporation's various stakeholders such as lenders, shareholders, managers, employee, suppliers and customers". Through a historical case study of a company, he demonstrates how this system has evolved separate from the western culture and in the process enmeshed and optimized itself to and with the Japanese culture. He then discusses primary factors of this corporate governance mechanism which are; implicit contracting based on trust; reciprocal shareholding and implicit trading agreements between stakeholders; Management incentives based on overall growth rather than transfer of value between stakeholders and; Financial institutions as stakeholders and their early, selective power of active intervention. It becomes obvious to the reader, how an interwoven structure such as this makes redundant the need to acquire each other while; layers of cultural barriers make the system impermeable to foreign acquirers. The time series/case approach of the first part of the book puts the reader in touch with the origin and the reason behind the Japanese corporate culture. The subsequent few chapters use cases to demonstrate the amicable nature of mergers between Japanese companies; a characteristic that crosses borders when Japanese companies merge with foreign companies. The book then shifts to what the future of Japanese corporate governance will evolve to. Driving factors such as scarcity of growth opportunities, widening objectives among stakeholders, primarily between lenders and managers and, the increase in the inflow of global capital with differing objectives than the existing culture as three primary reasons for future trend changing forces. Greenmailing is a result of the conflict between efficiency concerned financial institutions and cash rich corporations who have been less needy of banks. Buttressed by financial deregulation, international trading and indeed Japan's very success; ensuing Global flow of capital has forced Japanese financial institutions to compete by international standards of capital. Thus, capital is setting Japan's future trend and is demanding shorter term and higher returns. As this happens other stakeholder relationships will have to be redefined; especially the company employee lifetime employment relationship will be challenged. The book was written in 1991 and was forecasting future trends. Off course reviewing this book in 2000, gives us the advantage of assessing the forecasted trends. So much has changed to the Japanese economy since then. Some of the large financial institutions were liquidated and or were acquired by foreign companies. Lifetime employment has become a thing of the past. The system so heralded as the most in the '80s and early '90's has been forced to go into major restructuring. The after effects of the shock still subside. A nation so used to permanent job security, faced with the unfolding events has grown so pessimistic as to drastically curtail consumption thus propelling the economy to an extended period of recession.

Public Relations for School Leaders is a useful combination of theory and practice. The authors dicuss public relations in the broader sense of building a sense of community both within and without the school itself. They use the case study technique to present practical applications, and the case studies are quite well done. The authors do not always distinquish clearly between a case study and a secton called administrative practice, but that presents no real problem to the student or the teacher.

The final two chapters on building a community relations plan are overly technical and too complicated. However, overall, this is a well written text which will be of use in a graduate program for school administrators.

I bought this book in December, two weeks before graduation, without a job lined up and no idea how to get one. I followed the techniques described in Life After College and had 6 good job offers by January 16. It helped me figure out what kind of companies I would like the most and how to get their attention.

As someone attempting to model agri-environmental issues, i found this book extremely useful. The collection of articles cover a spectrum of inter-related topical matters. A must read for anyone seriously pursuing eco/agri - environmental policy decision making, modelling and evaluation.

I teach simple economics principles for a class of third graders. This book is a wonderful tool for explaining human, capital, and natural resources. It is a very high interest book for the students-who hasn't ever played baseball? The language is simple for younger learners and explains the process for making baseballs, wood and aluminum bats. I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested.