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Author: Kyle Edward Williams
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393867242
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 190
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Book Description
The untold story of how efforts to hold big business accountable changed American capitalism. Recent controversies around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and “woke capital” evoke an old idea: the Progressive Era vision of a socially responsible corporation. By midcentury, the notion that big business should benefit society was a consensus view. But as Kyle Edward Williams’s brilliant history, Taming the Octopus, shows, the tools forged by New Deal liberals to hold business leaders accountable, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, narrowly focused on the financial interests of shareholders. This inadvertently laid the groundwork for a set of fringe views to become dominant: that market forces should rule every facet of society. Along the way, American capitalism itself was reshaped, stripping businesses to their profit-making core. In this vivid and surprising history, we meet activists, investors, executives, and workers who fought over a simple question: Is the role of the corporation to deliver profits to shareholders, or something more? On one side were “business statesmen” who believed corporate largess could solve social problems. On the other were libertarian intellectuals such as Milton Friedman and his oft-forgotten contemporary, Henry Manne, whose theories justified the ruthless tactics of a growing class of corporate raiders. But Williams reveals that before the “activist investor” emerged as a capitalist archetype, Civil Rights groups used a similar playbook for different ends, buying shares to change a company from within. As a rising tide of activists pushed corporations to account for societal harms from napalm to environmental pollution to inequitable hiring, a new idea emerged: that managers could maximize value for society while still turning a maximal profit. This elusive ideal, “stakeholder capitalism,” still dominates our headlines today. Williams’s necessary history equips us to reconsider democracy’s tangled relationship with capitalism.
Author: Hamid Bouchikhi
Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall
ISBN: 0131857266
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
"Drawing on real-life stories from the world's most prominent companies, the authors show how identity can be an extraordinarily valuable asset - and how, if not properly managed, it can become a huge liability. Discover how your firm's identity is related to - and different from - its organizational culture, brand positioning, and reputation. Learn how to diagnose and manage the often unconscious shared beliefs that constitute your company's soul, how to face the enormous identity challenges that arise in mergers, alliances, spin-offs, and the creation of new brands, and above all, how to lead and inspire in this new Age of Identity."--Jacket.
Author: C. William Pollard
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310234875
Category : Business
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
'Bill Pollard speaks with a voice of experience. His book deals with the practice of leadership- over time, under pressure, living with reality, getting the desired results. The Soul of the Firm tells how ServiceMaster has successfully grapple with the key issues of leadership. That is why it is so worthwhile.' -Max De Pree 'Bill Pollard demonstrates in great detail ServiceMaster's value system, a system that emphasizes the importance of the dignity of the individual. Readers will benefit greatly from Bill's wisdom. This is an important book that should be widely read.' -W. Earl Sasser, James L. Heskett, and Leonard A. Schlesinger 'Rarely are we given an open and generous look inside the corporate leader who is the embodiment of the mission and values of the enterprise. . . A powerful book.' -Frances Hesselbein 'A fascinating story about servant leadership and an extraordinary culture at ServiceMaster.' -Richard L. Thomas 'A remarkable book. . . . ServiceMaster invented 'lea production' for the service sector by listening to and empowering its employees on the front line. This book is the moving story of the wellspring of that culture and philosophy, told by a reflective, modest corporate leader.' -Elmer Johnson
Author: David Batstone
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 9780787964801
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Every day the media reports on the latest corporation guilty of financial misconduct and public deception. Insider trading, fraudulent accounting, outlandish executive pay and perks-- a steady stream of scandals scars the business landscape. But the corporate crisis is as much spiritual as it is financial. More than ever, the time is ripe for Saving the Corporate Soul. In this hard-hitting, thought-provoking book, David Batstone shows that a corporation has the potential to act with soul when it aligns its missions with the values of its workers and puts its resources at the service of the people it employs and the public it serves. He offers companies and their employees eight sound principles for "doing the right thing" and-- citing examples from firms like Timberland, General Motors, Clif Bar, and BP-- offers evidence that principled companies will excel financially over the long haul.
Author: Roland Marchand
Publisher: Taylor & Francis US
ISBN: 9780520226883
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
Over the course of the 20th century, America's giant corporations underwent an astonishing change, from being reviled as dangerous leviathons, to being respected, and somethimes revered. This text examines the reasons for this tranformation.
Author: Richard Barrett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136014098
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
The two most critical issues for business today, according to CEO's Barrett has worked with, are: "How to tap the deepest levels of creativity and the highest levels of productivity of our employees." In a world where competition has become global, successful companies are learning to build competitive advantage through their human capital. In the 21st Century, even that will not be enough. Success will also hinge on whether, in the eyes of the employees and society-at-large, the organization is a trusted member of the community and a good global citizen. Developing a values-driven approach to business is quickly becoming essential for financial success. Who you are and what you stand for are becoming just as important as what you sell.
Author: David B. Zenoff
Publisher: Apress
ISBN: 1430249668
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 139
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Book Description
Given the opportunity to describe Apple as a company in just a word or two, most would respond with adjectives like: Innovative. Design-conscious. Iconic. Some would probably even say: Secretive. But here's another: Soulful. Yes, Apple has a soul, and it is not alone in that respect. A select few organizations can similarly be said to exhibit similar qualities of soul that inspire passion in their employees and set them on the path to high levels of sustained organizational performance. But, given that most organizations are plagued by low levels of employee engagement and lackluster organizational performance, how do high-performing organizations do it? How do they ignite and sustain employee engagement and boost individual and overall organizational productivity? That is exactly the question that organizational expert David B. Zenoff sets out to answer in The Soul of the Organization. Based on the author's extensive experience consulting to and observing some of the best-known organizations in the world, The Soul of the Organization (www.souloftheorganization.com) journeys into eleven high-performing organizations operating in both the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds to determine the underlying elements of soul that foster strong employee engagement at all levels. What Zenoff finds in his inquiry is that organizations as different as home goods retailer Williams-Sonoma and not-for-profit group Larkin Street Youth Services all share in common five key elements of soul that, taken together, are powerful forces for fostering employee engagement, satisfaction, and meaning. And he doesn't stop once he has identified the five core elements of an organization's soul. Instead, he goes on to offer both a conceptual framework and a practical primer on how to leverage these key ingredients to create, sustain, and nourish a soul in your organization. Organizations of all stripes and in all industries and domains have great difficulty motivating their workforces to demonstrate a strong commitment to giving their all in the workplace. As a result, these organizations' overall productivity and growth are compromised, and their employees cannot find meaning or satisfaction in their work. If your organization struggles with sub-par employee loyalty, commitment, and drive, you will find the guidance you need in The Soul of the Organization, a guide to infusing into your workplace that "special something" that engages employees, drives their productivity, and taps into their collective well of potential so that your organization can make its mark on the world.
Author: Ralf Specht
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 1639080031
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
To succeed, the business of the future must have soul. Building Corporate Soul answers the most pressing questions for leaders today: How do I build and sustain a human-centric performance culture? At a time when 10,000 baby boomers retire every day, 79% of employees quit their jobs because they don't feel appreciated at their workplace, and 69% of millennials see a lack of potential for leadership development in their companies, Building Corporate Soul sets out to transform the performance and value of organizations—and to make soulless companies a thing of the past. Ralf Specht’s unique framework, The Soul System™, aligns value-creating employee behaviors with corporate strategy through shared understanding and shared purpose. Based on the latest research and real-life cases, this actionable framework shows how to build a culture at the workplace that is both human centric and success driven. Specht proves that leadership behaviors that build soul are synonymous with the behaviors that build success. His performance ranking, The Soul Index, confirms that companies that operate within this framework outperform their peers by a factor of 2.6 compared with Dow Jones over 5 years. Building Corporate Soul helps leaders at every level move beyond their current thinking and create an environment in which business goals are well understood and corporations walk their talk. Both this shared understanding and the subsequent shared behavior are critical to turn a company´s purpose into a real means to an end: superior success and a truly motivated workforce that is proud of its role inside the organization and of its impact on the local community and society overall. You'll see how companies of all sizes (startups and legacy corporations) have made this happen. You'll also learn how every leader, no matter the industry, can ignite (or re-ignite) the corporate soul in their firm. Ralf Specht is a visionary business leader and creator of the Soul System™, a framework that aligns value-creating employee action with broader corporate strategy through shared understanding and shared purpose. As a founding partner of Spark44, he was the architect of an innovative, industry-first joint venture with Jaguar Land Rover, which grew under his leadership to a global revenue of $100+m and 1,200 employees before it joined forces with Accenture Interactive in 2021. Previously, he consulted with global companies and brands for more than two decades with McCann Erickson. Besides Building Corporate Soul: Powering Culture & Success with the Soul System™, he is the author of the forthcoming book Beyond the Startup: Sparking Operational Innovations for Global Growth.
Author: Kyle Edward Williams
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393867242
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Get Book
Book Description
The untold story of how efforts to hold big business accountable changed American capitalism. Recent controversies around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and “woke capital” evoke an old idea: the Progressive Era vision of a socially responsible corporation. By midcentury, the notion that big business should benefit society was a consensus view. But as Kyle Edward Williams’s brilliant history, Taming the Octopus, shows, the tools forged by New Deal liberals to hold business leaders accountable, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, narrowly focused on the financial interests of shareholders. This inadvertently laid the groundwork for a set of fringe views to become dominant: that market forces should rule every facet of society. Along the way, American capitalism itself was reshaped, stripping businesses to their profit-making core. In this vivid and surprising history, we meet activists, investors, executives, and workers who fought over a simple question: Is the role of the corporation to deliver profits to shareholders, or something more? On one side were “business statesmen” who believed corporate largess could solve social problems. On the other were libertarian intellectuals such as Milton Friedman and his oft-forgotten contemporary, Henry Manne, whose theories justified the ruthless tactics of a growing class of corporate raiders. But Williams reveals that before the “activist investor” emerged as a capitalist archetype, Civil Rights groups used a similar playbook for different ends, buying shares to change a company from within. As a rising tide of activists pushed corporations to account for societal harms from napalm to environmental pollution to inequitable hiring, a new idea emerged: that managers could maximize value for society while still turning a maximal profit. This elusive ideal, “stakeholder capitalism,” still dominates our headlines today. Williams’s necessary history equips us to reconsider democracy’s tangled relationship with capitalism.
Author: Lynne Twist
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393354245
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
"A life-changing read. With warmth, honesty, and storytelling, Lynne turns everything we think we know about money upside down…It's the book we all need right now." —Brené Brown, Ph.D., author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Rising Strong This liberating book shows us that examining our attitudes toward money—earning it, spending it, and giving it away—offers surprising insight into our lives. Through personal stories and practical advice, Lynne Twist asks us to discover our relationship with money, understand how we use it, and by assessing our core human values, align our relationship with it to our desired goals. In doing so, we can transform our lives. The Soul of Money now includes a foreword from Jack Canfield and a new introduction by Lynne Twist, in which she explores the effects of the Great Recession and environmental concerns about our monetary needs and aims.
Author: Bouchikhi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788131738429
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
