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Author: David Wootton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674989902
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
A provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents. We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning—cost-benefit analysis—to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives. Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought—from Machiavelli to Madison—to show how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore in the work of writers both obscure and as famous as Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith. The new instrumental reasoning cut through old codes of status and rank, enabling the emergence of movements for liberty and equality. But it also helped to create a world in which virtue, honor, shame, and guilt count for almost nothing, and what matters is success. Is our world better for the rise of instrumental reasoning? To answer that question, Wootton writes, we must first recognize that we live in its grip.
Author: David Wootton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674989902
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Get Book Here
Book Description
A provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents. We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning—cost-benefit analysis—to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives. Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought—from Machiavelli to Madison—to show how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore in the work of writers both obscure and as famous as Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith. The new instrumental reasoning cut through old codes of status and rank, enabling the emergence of movements for liberty and equality. But it also helped to create a world in which virtue, honor, shame, and guilt count for almost nothing, and what matters is success. Is our world better for the rise of instrumental reasoning? To answer that question, Wootton writes, we must first recognize that we live in its grip.
Author: Jan Eeckhout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691224293
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
A pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power—and how it stifles workers around the world In an era of technological progress and easy communication, it might seem reasonable to assume that the world’s working people have never had it so good. But wages are stagnant and prices are rising, so that everything from a bottle of beer to a prosthetic hip costs more. Economist Jan Eeckhout shows how this is due to a small number of companies exploiting an unbridled rise in market power—the ability to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Drawing on his own groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, he demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil. The Profit Paradox describes how, over the past forty years, a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. Instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices, these “superstar” companies leverage new technologies to charge even higher prices. The consequences are already immense, from unnecessarily high prices for virtually everything, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility. A provocative investigation into how market power hurts average working people, The Profit Paradox also offers concrete solutions for fixing the problem and restoring a healthy economy.
Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324004223
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 407
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Book Description
“Urgent work, by the foremost champion of ‘progressive capitalism.’ ” —The New Yorker An authoritative account of the dangers of unfettered markets and monied politics, People, Power, and Profits shows us an America in crisis. The American people, however, are far from powerless, and Joseph Stiglitz provides an alternative path forward through his vision of progressive capitalism, with a comprehensive set of political and economic changes.
Author: Philip S. Golub
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745328720
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Power, Profit and Prestige applies incisive historical and sociological analysis to make sense of the United States’ post-Cold War imperial behavior. Philip Golub studies imperial identity formation and shows how an embedded culture of force and expansion has shaped American foreign policy. He argues that the US logic of world power and deeply rooted assumptions about American primacy inhibits democratic transformation at domestic and international levels. This resistance to change may lead the US empire into a crisis of its own making. This enlightening book will be particularly useful to students of history and international relations as they explore a world where America is no longer able to set the global agenda.
Author: Christina Garsten
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1784711217
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Power, Policy and Profit investigates the manifold ways in which corporate actors attempt to broadly influence political activities. With intensified globalization of markets, the restructuring of provisions of welfare services and accumulation of private capital opportunities for corporate influence in politics affairs have multiplied. Bringing together scholars from different fields in the study of global governance, the volume addresses the rising influence and power of corporate actors on the national and transnational political scene.
Author: R. Edward Freeman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547897
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
The idea that business is only about the money doesn’t hold true in the twenty-first century, when companies around the world are giving up traditional distinctions in order to succeed. Yet our expectations for businesses remain under the sway of an outdated worldview that emphasizes profits for shareholders above all else. The Power of And offers a new narrative about the nature of business, revealing the focus on responsibility and ethics that unites today’s most influential ideas and companies. R. Edward Freeman, Kirsten E. Martin, and Bidhan L. Parmar detail an emerging business model built on five key concepts: prioritizing purpose as well as profits; creating value for stakeholders as well as shareholders; seeing business as embedded in society as well as markets; recognizing people’s full humanity as well as their economic interests; and integrating business and ethics into a more holistic model. Drawing on examples across companies, industries, and countries, they show that these values support persevering in hard times and prospering over the long term. Real-world success stories disprove the conventional wisdom that there are unavoidable trade-offs between acting ethically and succeeding financially. The Power of And presents a conceptual revolution about what it means for business to be responsible, providing a new story for us to tell in order to help all kinds of companies thrive.
Author: Eric K. Clemons
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030004430
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
How did Capital One and Uber implement nearly identical business models, focusing on customers that are most profitable to serve? Why are Google and Amazon so valuable to us? Why are Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon so difficult for competitors to displace? And why can Google charge almost anything it wants for keywords, since no form of competition will force prices down? The information-based business models of these companies, and many more, are exploiting the patterns described in this book. This book instills pattern-based thinking that will prepare all readers for greater success in our rapidly changing world. It will help executives, regulators, investors, and concerned citizens better navigate their way through the digital transformation of everything. Professor Clemons presents six patterns for staying competitive and achieving profitable business models. The author'sreframe-recognize-respond framework teaches readers how to transform unfamiliar problems into familiar patterns, how to determine which patterns to apply in different situations, and how to respond most effectively. Information changes everything. This book is a guide to power and profit from understanding changes in the age of digital transformation.
Author: Marshall Sylver
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 068482521X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
By using Sylver's techniques for attaining their highest goals, readers can discover for themselves how to have better sex and relationships, create more wealth, and attain more personal power. Focused on three categories--passion, profit and power, each section contains 50 short lessons and exercises to give readers the tools to use every day to achieve their goals.
Author: Jim Stengel
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307720373
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
Ten years of research uncover the secret source of growth and profit … Those who center their business on improving people’s lives have a growth rate triple that of competitors and outperform the market by a huge margin. They dominate their categories, create new categories and maximize profit in the long term. Pulling from a unique ten year growth study involving 50,000 brands, Jim Stengel shows how the world's 50 best businesses—as diverse as Method, Red Bull, Lindt, Petrobras, Samsung, Discovery Communications, Visa, Zappos, and Innocent—have a cause and effect relationship between financial performance and their ability to connect with fundamental human emotions, hopes, values and greater purposes. In fact, over the 2000s an investment in these companies—“The Stengel 50”—would have been 400 percent more profitable than an investment in the S&P 500. Grow is based on unprecedented empirical research, inspired (when Stengel was Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble) by a study of companies growing faster than P&G. After leaving P&G in 2008, Stengel designed a new study, in collaboration with global research firm Millward Brown Optimor. This study tracked the connection over a ten year period between financial performance and customer engagement, loyalty and advocacy. Then, in a further investigation of what goes on in the “black box” of the consumer’s mind, Stengel and his team tapped into neuroscience research to look at customer engagement and measure subconscious attitudes to determine whether the top businesses in the Stengel Study were more associated with higher ideals than were others. Grow thus deftly blends timeless truths about human behavior and values into an action framework – how you discover, build, communicate, deliver and evaluate your ideal. Through colorful stories drawn from his fascinating personal experiences and “deep dives” that bring out the true reasons for such successes as the Pampers, HP, Discovery Channel, Jack Daniels and Zappos, Grow unlocks the code for twenty-first century business success.
Author: Mia De Kuijper
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195171632
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
A new economy is emerging from the global financial crisis. In this groundbreaking book, seasoned executive and Harvard-trained economist Mia de Kuijper guides readers through the fundamentals of this economy and explains how companies and individuals can create sustainable wealth now. The key is wielding one of twelve contemporary sources of profit power. Control just one and you are on the road to high returns. Turning profit power into sustainable wealth requires new strategies, enumerated here, for choosing and valuing investments, structuring and managing global enterprises, confronting competitive threats, and navigating markets which may increasingly display power law dynamics and where distributions may have "fat tails." To derive this book's unique framework for achieving high returns, de Kuijper rethought parts of economic theory itself in light of the most transformative force in the new economy (dubbed the Transparent Economy by de Kuijper), namely the vanishing cost of information and connectivity. Based on original research and illustrated with lively lessons from the experiences of the author and other successful investors and leaders, Profit Power Economics draws a detailed picture of the new competitive arena and gives readers a step-by-step approach to build (or find) exceptionally high-return enterprises and to utilize today's shifting market dynamics to influence choice and build wealth.
