Book Description
"Ritzer's text is in a class by itself. I can't think of another as insightful and enjoyable."
-- James D. Cover, Furman University
One of the most noteworthy and popular Sociology books of all time, The McDonaldization of Society demonstrates the power of the sociological imagination to today’s readers in a way that few books have been able to do. It is ideal for use in a wide range of undergraduate courses and will be of equal interest to anyone interested in social criticism. This book links a large number of social phenomena to McDonaldization, some which are directly affected by the principles of the fast-food restaurant and others where the effect is more indirect.
Customer Reviews:
Enlightening.......2007-03-10
I am reading this book for my Sociology class and it has completely changed the way I look at society. A must read
The grobalization of nothing.......2006-11-02
McDonalds's is G. Ritzer's perfect paradigm for explaining the actual structure of our planet. He has built his portrait on Max Weber's rationalization concept. This concept expresses man's search for the optimum means to a given end by rules, regulations and larger social structures. Its driving force is economics (capitalism).
This concept affects virtually all aspects of our society all over the world: work, education, health care, leisure, transport, sports, politics, justice, religion and the family. It shows a planet centered on rational consumerism.
The ingredients of the system are efficiency, calculability, predictability and nonhuman technologies for controlling people. It was greatly helped by technological breakthroughs like automobiles, TV, the computer, internet and lasers (DVD) and by fundamental changes in Western societies (single parent families, working women, higher mobility, increasing disposable income, time savings, mediatization and advertising).
But Max Weber foresaw also the lurking irrationalities, the dehumanization and homogenization, which expressed themselves in environmental and health problems (air pollution), McJobs (disenchantment, false friendliness), traffic jams, bureaucratization.
McDonaldization produces the perfect way of life for people who, as Nietzsche said, use the wrong conjugation: they don't live, they are lived.
For G. Ritzer, McDonaldization is the `grobalization of nothing': a world dominated by the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations and organizations, whose main intent is growth of their power, influence and profits. `Nothing' is a social form that is generally centrally conceived, controlled and comparatively devoid of distinctive substantive content.'
The author would like to see a more deMcDonaldizated world (see the many recommendations at the end of the book), but McDonaldization is still on the march, certainly in developing countries.
This book is a crucial, superbly documented, text for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
A must read.
Eye Opening Experience.......2006-04-29
This book was required reading for an undergraduate sociology course for Human Relations majors (sociology course for sociology/education/psychology). It was an eye opening experience because the readers/continuous learner is encouraged to step inside the corporate framework that directly affects our ideas and acceptance of an ideology of busines, etc based on the McDonald's corporate culture.
Our class found it powerful reading and most were challenged to think about and ask, "what are we really doing to improve our lives, culture and global community?"
McDonald's: Just another Bureaucracy .......2006-01-13
In his book, "The McDonaldization of Society", George Ritzer writes of McDonald's as a catalyst that provoked rapid and significant changes throughout the fast-food industry and in multinational businesses, changes that directly and circuitously affected people and society in positive and negative ways. However, Ritzer contends that McDonaldization has contributed more negatively to society than positively. It is rare that such an erudite study can also be so readable by the public.
Many people can easily recall the long lasting societal effects of such creations as the fax, the World Wide Web and email, the effects of global warming, the passing of NAFTA and so on, but few have considered the influence of a fast-food franchise such as McDonald's. When people think of McDonald's, they envision the fast-food giant of the industry - serving up their famous "Big Mac", fries, and milkshake. Few people can imagine of the impact of McDonald's upon society, but in "The McDonaldization of Society", George Ritzer illustrates these changes in a clear concise examination of this phenomenon.
Ritzer writes of the many industries that have strived to emulate McDonald's success by utilizing their system of operation, companies like Pizza Hut, Dominos, Wendy's, Toys R Us, Eye Masters, USA Today and other newspapers (McPapers) and so on. There are a host of other industries that have fashioned themselves after the McDonald's mold, like McDoctors, Books-on-Tapes, McBanks, ATMs, and so forth. These and many other industries are viewed as direct by-products of McDonaldization. However, Ritzer makes it clear that Ray Kroc (McDonald's CEO) neither created the "McDonald's principles nor the idea of a franchise. Ray Kroc's genius was in the way he combined many of the ideas of bureaucracy, the McDonald brothers, and other franchises into the McDonald's franchise of today.
The central theme in Ritzer's book is the "enabling" and "constraining" affects of McDonaldization and how this phenomenon has changed parts of society both in the United States and abroad - from private and public industries to its citizenry. Ritzer contends that McDonald's success is a direct outcome of their implementation of a kind of bureaucratic system that involves the concepts of "efficiency, quantification, predictability, and control" (rules and regulations). This system, according to Ritzer, results in striking changes throughout society, dehumanization of employees and to a great extent even control over consumers. Ritzer considers these four components to be at the heart of McDonaldization and therefore covers the concepts in separate detailed chapters.
Ritzer views McDonald's as a metaphor for bureaucracy with all the benefits and drawbacks of bureaucracies. Bureaucracies function under the same principles of efficiency, quantification, predictability, and control and in Ritzer's view "[w]e must therefore look at McDonaldization as both "enabling" and "constraining." McDonaldized systems enable people to do things they were unable to do in the past (work faster, efficiently, have more free time, etc.). However, these same systems also keep individuals from doing things that they would otherwise do (be creative, have quality time....). George Ritzer writes that "[t]he success of the McDonald's model suggests that many people have come to prefer a world in which there are few surprises". McDonaldization is a "double-edged" sword working for and against people.
Ritzer is more concerned with the social impact of McDonaldization than he is in documenting the history of McDonald's as the goliath of the fast-food industry. Nevertheless, in presenting his case, against McDonaldization, Ritzer succeeds in debunking many of the misconceptions concerning Ray Kroc and McDonald's. He reminds his reader that Mac and Dick McDonald were the originators of McDonald's. It was the McDonald's brothers - not Ray Kroc ? that created the concept of assembly line procedures, cheap prices, short menus, and the idea of fast food.
The reader will learn that bureaucracies function under the concept of "rationality" and how this concept can be found in virtually all forms of bureaucracies. Ritzer also posits that systems based on rationality invariably result in irrationality (all bureaucracies suffer from the "irrationality of rationality") and he links this concept to McDonaldization. Ritzer conveys his concerns with the role played by bureaucratic systems that affect and/or limit interaction among, individual, how they create a robotic state in workers, how bureaucracies stump creativity, freedom of choice and expression and so on.
As support for his contentions on bureaucracies, Ritzer discusses Max Weber's writings on bureaucracies. McDonald's is amplification and an extension of Max Weber's theory of rationalization. Ritzer makes the connection between efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control to Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy in which bureaucracies function by Weber's concept of formal rationality. According to George Ritzer and Max Weber, economics may be at the forefront of all bureaucracies (rational systems) in one form or another; this is Ritzer's opinion concerning McDonaldization.
"The McDonaldization of Society" envelopes concepts in sociology, psychology, politics, and economics, such as, role playing, rituals, behavior modification, reward and punishment, dehumanization, hierarchies, deviancy, rational irrational systems, formal structures, cost v. profits, quantity v. quality and so forth. At the end of the book, George Ritzer outlines some strategies that people can use to fight, resists and/or limit McDonaldization in their lives ? some ideas are logical and others radical. Ritzer's writing on McDonaldization, its concepts and affects on society makes for surprising and enlightening reading.
Full of inaccuracies . . . little creative thought........2005-12-03
I read this book hoping for a fair and balanced critical review of modern business. I found it to be little more than an attempt to justify a position that "all big business is bad". While that may be true, Ritzer spends a decent portion of the book using invalid arguments to support it.
For example, Ritzer claims that McDonalds hires young people "because their minds are more easily controlled than adults" (no mention that they worked cheaper), and was critical that McDonalds did not foster "creativity" on the job. Personally, I don't want teenagers to be creative with my food . . . and it seems it's not a bad idea that they learn a little discipline at work and as they mature and learn to make better decisions they can find jobs to be creative in.
Another criticism Ritzer uses is that universities "control" professors by setting a time schedule for classes - this is obviously not an attempt to control professors; it is instead the only way students can attend more than one class per semester.
Maybe I got turned off in the first chapters with his comparison of McDonalds to Hitler's gas chambers, could he have found something a little less sinister to compare it to?
That said, the argument that society is irreversibly changed because of industrialization . . . for better or for worse is certainly is a valid point . . . I just want to hear it argued with a little more critical review and common sense.
Book Description
Changing demographics are forcing organizations in the United States to address cultural issues. Addressing Cultural Issues in Organizations analyzes how unexamined cultural patterns influence an organization’s culture. Organized into three sections, this volume was written by a panel of experts with extensive research and publication histories in psychology, education, and organizational consulting. How organizational leaders shape and influence the agenda surrounding culture and how culture matters in the country’s organizational life is explored, as well as institutional and organizational issues in corporate, educational, mental health, and service organizations. Various organizational intervention strategies and approaches are also discussed. This book provides groundbreaking conceptual models as well as ideas about how to build practical approaches to organizational interventions.
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Divided Loyalties: Whistle-Blowing at BART (Science and Society; V. 4)
Robert Anderson , and
Robert Perrucci
Manufacturer: Purdue University Press
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ASIN: 0931682096 |
Book Description
This study provides a detailed, in-depth analysis of a single incident rooted in the effort of a group of professional employees to serve the public welfare It reveals in microcosm the interplay of political forces, economic interests, personal ambition, organizational structure, and professional ethics that culminated in an act of whistle-blowing. The incident took place during the final construction phase of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), designed to be America's first attempt at space-age mass transportation. Three BART engineers, convinced of the lack of responsiveness of management to their concerns about the system's safety, were fired for insubordination and other organizational sins. Based upon repeated interviews with the engineers, with BART managers and directors, and with the professional societies involved, as well as upon an extensive body of documents and court depositions, legislative reports, media reports, and institutional memoranda. Divided Loyalties sets a theoretical context for the issues, traces the incident from its beginning, examines the aftermath of the engineers' dismissal, and concludes with a set of recommendations that should be considered by public and private organizations, professional associations, agencies of government, and individual professional employees.
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Organizing for Community Controlled Development: Renewing Civil Society
Patricia Murphy , and
James Cunningham
Manufacturer: Sage Publications, Inc
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Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty First Century (Rural Studies)
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Rules for Radicals
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Asset Building and Community Development
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Rural Communities: Legacy and Change
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Unfaithful Angels: How Social Work Has Abandoned Its Mission
ASIN: 0761904158 |
Book Description
“It is a worthy book, with probably the best collection of resources anywhere for those trying to combine organizing and development.”
--SHELTERFORCE MAGAZINE
Organizing for Community Controlled Development is about renewing and revitalizing local living places through shared grassroots work focused on stimulating racial unity, civic vigor, and economic fairness. It proposes a detailed model for understanding the communities we call home and for guiding residents and their allies to strengthen local assets, reduce distress, and make and control needed social, political, and economic plans for change. This book's coast-to-coast and beyond set of down-to-earth case studies aims at helping readers understand what are effective and what are ineffective methods for tackling renewal.
Key Features
- Cases and their assessments: These offer ways that small communities across the globe today can honor diversity and civic responsibility and build programs that promote and facilitate year-around participation, while maintaining fruitful links to the governments, businesses, foundations and other institutions that can provide essential resources for change
- "How to" chapters: These chapters contain detailed, tested techniques for recruiting, planning, fundraising, communicating, leadership growth, and other skills and processes that are part of the book's model which combines community organizing and community economic development.
- Suggestions on how and why authentic renewal groups can lay claim to resources adequate to carry out quality programs and projects with lasting impact: Throughout, the authors propose how organizing, planning, and implementation activities can be carried out with widespread inclusion of residents and other parties of interest, thereby insuring authenticity, ownership and support.
- Technical chapters on making a long-range plan for a renewal organization: Making a plan for a small community and all its interests is covered from building social strength, securing adequate resources, building a community's financial assets, and creating affordable housing, to transforming a local shopping area, and boosting workforce development.
Intended Audience: The book was written for students who aspire to work as community organizers, and all those who practice organizing and community development whether as volunteers or professionals.
Book Description
Written rules in formal organizations are distinctive elements of organizational history; they shape organizational change and are in turn shaped by it. These rules are created, revised, and eliminated in ways that leave historical traces, and they have a visibility and durability that elude non-written rules. They thus provide rich data for an empirical probe into the dynamics of organizational history.
This study uses qualitative and quantitative data from the history of a specific organization, Stanford University, to develop speculations about the ways in which written rules change. It contributes both to a theory of rules and to theories of organizational decision-making, change, and learning. Organizations respond to problems and react to internal or external pressures by focusing attention on existing and potential rules. The creation, modification, or elimination of a rule, then, is a response to events in the outside environment (such as new government regulations) or to events within the organization (such as alterations in internal government structures).
The authors elaborate a simple set of ideas about written rules and their dynamics, emphasizing the interplay among periodic major shocks to the system from outside, experiences with individual rules as they age and are revised, and the spread of effects through an interconnected set of rules. It is a story in which changes introduced in one part of a rule system create adjustments in other parts, including the same rule later in time, as the consequences of the changes are experienced and as rule-making attention is mobilized, satiated, and redirected. These processes involve the full panoply of political negotiation, symbolic competition, discussion, and problem solving that are typical of organizational decision making.
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- The Challenger Launch Decision
- Good information, but too long
- Normalization Of Deviance
- Institutions Create and Condone Risk
- great analysis-must read for managers in high risk industry
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The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA
Diane Vaughan
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies
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Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity
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City in the Sky : The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center
ASIN: 0226851753 |
Book Description
When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, millions of Americans became bound together in a single, historic moment. Many still vividly remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the tragedy. In The Challenger Launch Decision, Diane Vaughan recreates the steps leading up to that fateful decision, contradicting conventional interpretations to prove that what occurred at NASA was not skulduggery or misconduct but a disastrous mistake.
Journalists and investigators have historically cited production problems and managerial wrong-doing as the reasons behind the disaster. The Presidential Commission uncovered a flawed decision-making process at the space agency as well, citing a well-documented history of problems with the O-ring and a dramatic last-minute protest by engineers over the Solid Rocket Boosters as evidence of managerial neglect.
Why did NASA managers, who not only had all the information prior to the launch but also were warned against it, decide to proceed? In retelling how the decision unfolded through the eyes of the managers and the engineers, Vaughan uncovers an incremental descent into poor judgment, supported by a culture of high-risk technology. She reveals how and why NASA insiders, when repeatedly faced with evidence that something was wrong, normalized the deviance so that it became acceptable to them.
No safety rules were broken. No single individual was at fault. Instead, the cause of the disaster is a story not of evil but of the banality of organizational life. This powerful work explains why the Challenger tragedy must be reexamined and offers an unexpected warning about the hidden hazards of living in this technological age.
Customer Reviews:
The Challenger Launch Decision.......2005-09-16
This is a theoretically profound book and it is highly readable. Wonderful book! I enjoy it very much!
Good information, but too long.......2005-09-03
I found this book very informative on the Challenger accident and the "culture of risk" at NASA. However, I feel the author drags on too long with her NASA-bashing. The book could stand to be about 100-150 pages shorter. I think the phrase "beating a dead horse" is appropriate.
Normalization Of Deviance.......2004-12-24
As a sociological explanation of disastrous decision making in high risk applications, this book is without peer, exceeding even Charles Perrow's work by a fair measure. Vaughan, a sociologist, obviously worked very hard at understanding the field joint technology that caused the "Challenger" accident, and even harder at understanding the extremely complex management and decision making processes at NASA and Morton Thiokol.
The book ultimately discards the "amoral calculation" school of thought (which she was preconditioned to believe at the outset of her research by media coverage of the event) and explains how an ever expanding definition of acceptable performance (despite prior joint issues) led to the "normalization of deviance" which allowed the faulty decision to launch to be made. The sociological and cultural analyses are especially enlightening and far surpass the technical material about the actual physical cause of the accident presented.
This is a masterful book, and is impeccably documented. The reference portion of the book in the back is especially useful, in that she reproduces several key original documents pertinent to the investigation which are difficult to obtain elsewhere. My only objection to the book is the extreme use of repetition, which I think needlessly lengthened the book in several areas, and obfuscating sociological terminology like "paradigm obduracy" which not only fails to illuminate the non-sociologists among us, but makes for somewhat tortured prose.
In praise of the book, however, it is a brilliant analysis of how decisions are made in safety-critical programs in large institutions. Chapter ten, "Lessons Learned," is particularly noteworthy in its analysis and recommendations. It's a shame that managerial turnover has ensured that few of the "Challenger" era managers were still at the agency during the "Columbia" accident era. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
This book makes for very weighty and difficult reading. Having said that, I highly recommend it to technical professionals, particularly engineers and managers involved with high-risk technologies. Likewise, it is absolutely imperative reading for safety professionals, consultants, and analysts.
Institutions Create and Condone Risk.......2004-06-23
The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. To millions of viewers, it is a moment they will never forget.
Official inquiries into the accident placed the blame with a "frozen, brittle O ring." In this book, Diane Vaughan, a Boston College Professor of Sociology, does not stop there. In what I think is a brilliant piece of research, she traces the threads of the disaster's roots to fabric of NASA's institutional life and culture.
NASA saw itself competing for scarce resources. This fostered a culture that accepted risk-taking and corner-cutting as norms that shaped decision-making. Small, seemingly harmless modifications to technical and procedural standards propelled the space agency toward the disaster. No specific rules were broken, yet well-intentioned people produced great harm.
Vaughan often resorts to an academic writing style, yet there is no confusion about its conclusion.
"The explanation of the Challenger launch is a story of how people who worked together developed patterns that blinded them to the consequences of their actions," wrote Dr. Vaughan.
"It is not only about the development of norms but about the incremental expansion of normative boundaries: how small changes--new behaviors that were slight deviations from the normal course of events- gradually became the norm, providing a basis for accepting additional deviance. Nor rules were violated; there was no intent to do harm. Yet harm was done. Astronauts died."
For project and risk managers, this book offers a rare warning of the hazards of working in structured and institutionalized environments.
great analysis-must read for managers in high risk industry.......2004-06-17
This is the most comprehensive, thorough and believable analysis of the Challenger shuttle disaster that is available. Diane Vaughn goes far beyond the newspaper accounts or even the capitol hill hearings and really gets to the root causes of this incident found in the management culture of NASA and contractors. I would definitely recommend this to anyone involved in managing risk whether in the aircraft / aerospace industry or any other fundamentally risky industry (refining, chemical manufacturing, construction, etc...)
Book Description
Many analysts have heralded the U.S. military’s Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), a qualitative improvement in operational concepts and weapons that transforms the nature and character of warfare. Focusing on military technology, most argue that the new sensor, surveillance, communications, and computational technologies will usher in a period in which U.S. military capabilities will far exceed those of potential competitors. Developments in such fields as nanotechnology, robotics, and genetic engineering will greatly influence new weapons designs of the twenty-first century.
These discussions about military revolutions, however, too often ignore or only pay lip service to the role of military organization in improving combat capability. They downplay the relationship between organizational structure and outcomes, the difficulties of coordinating large organizations composed of many people and offices having specialized roles, and the challenges of calculation, attention, and memory that face individuals making decisions with inadequate or ambiguous information under short deadlines or stressful situations.
Mark D. Mandeles argues that the key to future combat effectiveness is not in acquiring new technologies but rather in the Defense Department’s institutional and organizational structure and its effect upon incentives to invent, to innovate, and to conduct operations effectively. Doing so requires the military establishment to resist incentives to substitute short-term technological gains for long-term operational advantages and to maintain incentives for effective long-term innovation.
Customer Reviews:
Technology, Organizations, and War.......2007-06-12
The author makes three assumptions--that military revolutions do occur; that it is possible to identify them while they are occurring; and that their ultimate effects can be predicted and shaped by current actions. Drawing upon economics, political science, sociology, and history and influenced by his own experiences as an analyst on the U.S. Air Force's Gulf War Air Power Survey, Mark D. Mandeles argues that those seeking to transform the modern American military have focused too heavily on changes in technology and techniques and not enough on the organizational implications of the digital revolution. In his view the goal should be to organize all American forces into three unified commands by mid-21st Century: a precision-strike command; a constabulary command; and a conventional command.
The Future of War is a brilliant analysis of trends in the post-Cold War military. It deserves reading as much for the author's way of reaching his conclusions as the conclusions themselves. Historians will find his reflections on the role of chance and contingency in the preparations for the Gulf War well worth the price of the book. Students of the contemporary military scene and force planners will find the volume very thought provoking. Because of the range of disciplines the author draws upon, this is not an easy read--but it is an important one and well worth the time invested. Highly recommended.
Edgar F. Raines, Jr.
Restructing defense for new capabilities.......2006-03-13
Mark D. Mandeles' THE FUTURE OF WAR: ORGANIZATIONS AS WEAPONS (1574886312, $24.00) provides an analytical, college-level defense study adding to the 'Issues in 21st Century Warfare' series with a study on the radical technological changes which have reshaped the face of US military strategy in this century. It'll require a consequent restructuring of defense to fully take advantage of these newfound capabilities, Mandeles argues in an original study of factors which change military strengths.
The Organization is a part of the Force Structure.......2006-03-09
Military organizations change slowly. The last big change in the United States military from an organizational sense was the closer integration of the various services under the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. World War II was fought with almos as much fighting between the Army and the Navy that it is somewhat surprising that we had time for the Germans and the Japanese.
It took considerable effort on the part of the military to meet Goldwater-Nichols. But by the first Iraq war considerable progress had been made. By the second there even more.
This book looks at even further organizational changes to reflect the changes in information warfare, the role of the media, and the changing battlefield as superpower confrontation recedes further into the past and the nature of battles to be expected in the future changes.
Network Centric Warfare.......2005-12-21
The sub title of this book, "Organizations as Weapons" is derived from a comment made by a U.S. Congressman in 1986.This is certainly an interesting concept, but it really does not describe the contents of this book. In point of fact, the book is a very good and careful dissection of the concept of network centric warfare. The author clearly supports the concept and sees it as the convergence of the Information Revolution and the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). He provides the reader with a careful and well thought out discussion of the implications of this concept not only on military organization, but on personnel, and operations. He notes the problems raised by the concept and cites specific examples of how it works. In the course of doing this, he also provides a very nice tribute to Jean de Bloch a brilliant and prescient late 19th Century military thinker and strategist who inexplicably has been largely forgotten. Bloch developed the method of multi-level analysis of warfare which has three layers: 1) analysis of technology; 2) analysis of tactics and operations; and 3) analysis of the actions and behaviors of people and organizations making up nation states. The author applies Bloch's analytic method in his analysis of network centric warfare. At least to this reviewer this book offers the clearest and most well developed explanation of network centric warfare available.
My only quarrel with this excellent and thought provoking book is that it introduces yet another appalling military acronym, C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) which is apparently is how the U.S. military describes network centric warfare. Well, as long as they understand what C4ISR stands for I guess it is al right.
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Organizational Behavior: The State of the Science (Volume in the Applied Psychology Series)
Manufacturer: Lawrence Erlbaum
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Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives
ASIN: 0805845410 |
Book Description
This second edition is a revision of a successful reader in organizational behavior, edited by Jerald Greenberg. This volume describes the latest advances in the field of organizational behavior. Each chapter is a description of "what was," "what is," and "what will be" as envisioned by leading researchers and experts. Topics covered include: affect, stress, self-fulfilling prophecies, diversity, justice, reputations, deviant behavior, conflict, construct validity, and cross-cultural behavior. The book concludes with a commentary chapter by Ed Locke--a distinguished senior scholar--who offers directions and guidance on the field's future.
This book will appeal to professors and scholars in industrial-organizational psychology, organizational behavior, human resource management, and social psychology. It is an invaluable compendium reporting on the state of the science in a rapidly developing field.
Book Description
Driven by declining profits and government regulation, a new form of class-wide business leadership has emerged: a transcorporate network that is giving a new coherence and power to business in both America and Britain. This book delineates the "inner circle" of top executives who play a leading role in this network, advising the highest levels of government and working to promote a political environment favorable to all business.
Customer Reviews:
Businessmen Unite!.......2005-07-08
In the US and Great-Britain top officers of large corporations formed in the 1970s a semi-autonomous network which Michael Useem calls the 'Inner Circle'. It is a sort of institutionalized capitalism with a classwide alongside a corporate logic and permits a centralized mobilization of corporate resources.
This select group of business leaders assume a leading role in the support of political candidates, in consultations with the highest levels of the national administrations, in public defense of the free enterprise system and in the governance of foundations and universities.
One of its main goals is the promotion of a better political climate for big business through philanthropy (image building via generous support of cultural programs), issue (not product) advertising and political financing.
The reasons behind the constitution of this 'Inner Circle' were the declining power of the individual companies and declining profitability together with, more specifically in GB, the threat of labor socialism (nationalizations and worker participation in corporate governance) and in the US, government intervention.
A main issue was also the desire to control the power of the media, which in the US were considered far too liberal.
The interventions of this 'Inner Circle' were (and are) extremely successful. President R. Reagan and Prime Minister M. Thatcher were partly products of business mobilizations. They lowered taxation, reduced government (except military) spending, lifted controls on business and installed cutbacks on unemployment benefits and welfare.
On the media front, the influence of corporate America is highly enhanced, directly through media mergers, and indirectly through the high corporate advertising budgets.
This is an eminent study based on excellent research.
Highly recommended.
Books:
- The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't
- The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't
- The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church
- The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- The Triple Bottom Line: How Today's Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success -- and How You Can Too
- The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next
- The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next
- True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership (J-B Warren Bennis Series)
- True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership (J-B Warren Bennis Series)
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