Book Description
“Gathered together in this unique book on evaluation and effective foundation practice are the experienced-based perspectives and measured insights of both seasoned practitioners and key philanthropic thought leaders. Foundations and Evaluation is a substantial think piece for grantmakers of any size.”--Dorothy S. Ridings, president and CEO, Council on Foundations
“Foundations and Evaluation explores the intersection between organizational effectiveness and evaluation and demonstrates the need for commitment to evaluation throughout the foundation. . . . A good read for both newcomers to evaluation and those with more experience, written by some of the most highly respected leaders in the field.”--Kathleen P. Enright, executive director, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
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Gathered together in this unique book on evaluation and effective foundation practice are the experienced-based perspectives and measured insights of both seasoned practitioners and key philanthropic thought leaders. Foundations and Evaluation is a substantial think piece for grantmakers of any size;--Dorothy S. Ridings, president and CEO, Council on Foundations
Foundations and Evaluation explores the intersection between organizational effectiveness and evaluation and demonstrates the need for commitment to evaluation throughout the foundation. . . . A good read for both newcomers to evaluation and those with more experience, written by some of the most highly respected leaders in the field.;--Kathleen P. Enright, executive director, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
Customer Reviews:
An excellent resource!.......2004-09-15
As a nonprofit fundraiser/trainer, I often advise clients and students to include an evaluation component in their grant proposals. Sometimes it is hard to see the value of this expenditure, and nonprofit clients especially tend to see as a diversion of funds from their "real" work. This book goes a long way to answering these questions, for funders and grantees alike. The four short essays by prominent foundation presidents who have embraced evaluation in various ways provide a fascinating peek into foundation executive thinking and action. In particular, the perspective by Hodding Carter III provides a dose of reality and fortitude, in a vibrant writing style that's sure to entertain as well as inform. The first of two sections of chapters addresses foundations as a unique context for evaluation, with several forays into critical issues, including a history of foundations' use of evaluation, challenges in foundations' use of evaluation, foundation-grantee relationships, etc. The second set of chapters is more applied, including practical and non-technical coverage of making judgments about what to evaluate, adapting evaluation to foundations, evaluation for small foundations, evaluative thinking for grantees, appraising program effectiveness evidence, and communicating results to different audiences. All of these chapters should appeal to evaluators and evaluation users alike. Overall, the book is well edited, the writing is non-technical and quite accessible, and the range of topics is exciting. A book like this has been long overdue.
Book Description
Haiti has recently come to the attention to global strategic planners. This report puts these executives on the fast track. Ten chapters provide: an overview of how to strategically access this important market, a discussion on economic fundamentals, marketing & distribution options, export and direct investment options, and full risk assessments (political, cultural, legal, human resources). Ample statistical benchmarks and comparative graphs are given.
Book Description
Most Africans live in rural areas and derive their incomes from farming; but because African governments follow policies that are adverse to most farmers' interests, these countries fail to produce enough food to feed their populations. Markets and States in Tropical Africa analyzes these and other paradoxical features of development in modern Africa and explores how governments have intervened and diverted resources from farmers to other sectors of society. A classic of the field since its publication in 1981, this edition includes a new preface by the author.
Customer Reviews:
Straightforward, seminal - - if perhaps too simple.......2007-08-07
This book examines a simple and important puzzle: why do African governments choose such terrible economic policies? These policies are especially bad for agriculture, even though most Africans are farmers.
The answer is simple: African governments systematically favor urban interests. That means that they provide cheap food for urban workers, which means cheap labor for urban businesses (capital). These groups are outnumbered, but they live in the cities. This means that labor and capital can mobilize politically against the government in the capital city, while farmers - - who are scattered all over a large countryside with poor transportation links - - find it very difficult to pressure the government.
Bates' basic claim has much to recommend it. It is simple, yet it served as a productive research agenda for other studies - - such as Michael Lofchie's comparison of Kenya and Tanzania, among others. It is no wonder that this book made Bates' reputation, and was a seminal contribution to political economy in its day.
Its simplicity also makes the argument incomplete. Though he does discuss colonial legacies, Bates doesn't consider the wider international context. African countries would find it difficult to pursue pro-farmer policies because the rich world, especially in Europe and Japan, closes its markets to many African food products. Certainly this fact deserves to play an important role when we consider the poor choices that African governments make.
A Testimony to Dependent Development.......2007-04-26
The decolonization of Africa was espoused by two ideals of the African people: political independence and economic development. The African nationalists attributed their economic backwardness to their colonial heritage and believed that `independence' would pave the way to prosperity. Yet facing the dilemmas of economic development and the limitations of the international system, they eventually ended up with inefficient industrial firms, impoverished peasantry, and increased economic inequality.
Robert Bates' Markets and States in Tropical Africa analyzes the reasons for and the mechanism of state intervention in market in African states. Like every other country who has attempted to develop so far, independent African countries too faced the dilemmas of economic development, namely capital accumulation and market creation. The economies of Africa have been overwhelmingly rural in nature and the governing elites in Africa aimed to change this situation by through industrialization. The scarcity of capital led national elites to extract resources from agriculture and channel them into manufacture and industry. What is important here, as Bates emphasize, is that all nations seeking to industrialize have done this: "The African policies are thus notable not as exceptions but as examples of a larger class," (p. 119). The forms of economic manipulation were compatible with the prevailing economic doctrines: industry is the engine of growth, savings come from the profits of industry, rural sector should be squeezed for development, etc. (p. 97).
The African governments had both economic and political incentives to channel resources from the rural agricultural sector to the urban industrial enterprises. On the one side they regarded this as necessary for the industrialization and economic development of their countries; on the other side, "the politicization of the electorate" in the nationalist era pushed the governing elite to follow clientalist policies to maintain their political status. As Bates put is, the resources allocated through governmental programs have been channeled to those "whose support is politically useful or economically rewarding to the state - that is, to members of the elite," (p. 56).
As for the instruments of state intervention in the market, African governments mostly exploited taxes, tariffs, and subsidies to transfer resources from rural areas to urban ones. Government in Africa subsidized fertilizers, seeds, mechanical equipments, land, and credit for commercial farming (p. 50). The taxes collected from the rural areas constituted the bulk of these subsidies given to the urban and rural elites. Also, to promote industrial development, African governments constructed protective barriers between the world and domestic markets which sheltered local industries from foreign competition (p. 66). Apparently, the peasantry has been the victim of both policies.
The history of African economic development in the post-independence era in general and Robert Bates' book in particular demonstrate the inevitability of the sacrifices and burden that at least one class should undertake. Historically speaking, these classes have usually been peasantry and workers. A capitalist economic development necessitates the accumulation of capital in the hands of a capitalist entrepreneur class, which forces the state to intervene in the market and to channel resources from the lower strata to the upper ones. Neither the developed Western countries nor the East Asian NICs escaped this necessity of economic development. Yet what made these countries `overcome' the aforementioned dilemma and eventually become a `success story' were the availability of `external resources and market' at their disposal. While in the Western case the cheap labor, food, and market of what is now called the Third World made possible the redemption of the agonies of the peasantry and the eventual establishment of `welfare states', in the `Asian miracle' case, their privileged access to the Western markets provided the `fuel' to keep their economic growth and to gradually relieve the burden of the peasantry and working class in these countries. It was not the intervention of the state in the market that differed the African case from the `success' stories, rather it was the unavailability of external means that determined the eventual fates of African countries.
Rational Choice Approcah to African Agricultural Crisis.......2006-07-28
In this work, Bates moves away from dependency theory in explaining the financial discrepancies between the Center and Periphery. Rather than concentrating on external catalysts to stalled development, Bates rational-actor model concentrates on the internal problems facing African development, particularly the pursuit of interests on the part of political and urban elites.
Much of Africa is facing an agricultural crisis. Although generally populated by small farmers, many nations in Africa face food shortages. Bates argues that these crises are the result of inefficient policies (which intervene in, and distort markets) implemented by political and economic elites. The question becomes, why are these policies being pursued? Bates explains the implementation of these inefficient agricultural policies through a rational choice model. Bates suggests that these policies are developed and implemented by rational political and economic elites seeking to maximize their own utility - particularly in regards to garnering political support - rather than pursing the collective good. This often occurs at the expense of many small farmers. He writes, "Policies are designed to secure the advantages of particular interests, to appease powerful political forces, and to enhance the capacity of political regimes to remain in power" (5-6).
The political and urban elites work in tandem to harvest economic resources garnered from the agricultural sector to promote industrialization. This is often done through the manipulation of market forces, particularly in keeping food prices low for urban interests. Doing so keeps the urban masses content, and allows industrialists to maintain low wages. In turn, the policy making elites garner political support. Bates spells out the beneficiaries of such policies clearly. "Owners and workers in industrial firms, economic and political elites, privileged farmers and the mangers of public bureaucracies - these constitute the development coalition in contemporary Africa" and hence benefit from the inefficient policies.
In regards to production, such policies skew the incentive structure of smaller agricultural producers. When receiving below world market prices, farmers will lower production, in turn limiting food supply. Or farmers may pursue a policy of "out-migration" and moved to the urban areas in pursuit of jobs. In this regard, the peasants are too acting rationally according to Bates model. Bates also discusses the problems of mass organization in order to oppose these policies. The small farmers are so dispersed and politically weak that the collective action problems ensue. The government expands on these collective action problems by offering preferential disbursements of subsidies, etc. to those who tow the party line. This divide and conquer technique has limited the power of the rural masses to organize a coherent oppostion.
Extracting Rents Away from the Agricultural Sector.......2005-12-05
In this landmark study, Robert Bates offered an interpretation of African economic policies toward the agriculture sector that set the terms of the debate for the years to come. Why do African governments pursue policies that create market distortions, skewed incentives and misallocation of resources, despite their obvious costs for social welfare and long-term development? The core of Robert Bates' argument is that bad economics often makes good politics: governments choose to pursue policies that are clearly irrational from an economic viewpoint because their economic and social costs are more than offset by the political benefits that accrue to them and to the social forces that maintain them in power.
Things did not have to turn that way. Political elites who took power at the time of the independences sincerely believed that they could put their countries on a path to economic modernization and social well-being. What trapped Africa into a low equilibrium of narrow clientelism and entrenched self-interests was a mix of bad institutions, bad advice and bad luck.
African governments inherited from their colonizers institutions that were set to extract rents from the agriculture sector rather than to maximize the welfare of farmers. They chose a mix of development policies that emphasized the role of the state and the importance of a nascent manufacturing sector. And they benefited from a period of high commodity prices that led them to consider cash crops and natural resources as an inexhaustible source of foreign exchange revenue.
The institution that came to symbolize the rent-extracting nature of African agriculture policies is the marketing board, which purchased cash crops from farmers at administratively determined prices and then sold them for a higher price on the world market, thereby accumulating funds that could be used for state-sponsored industrial projects or for social subsidies, if not for outright plundering. Another instrument of redistribution away from the agriculture sector was the local industrial firm that processed raw agricultural products acquired at artificially low prices, or the importation of foreign crops at prices below domestic ones in order to feed urban workers and lower the cost of living.
This complex web of policies and institutions should not be seen solely as a way to transfer resources away from agriculture into the modern urban economy, thereby achieving the "primitive accumulation" that Marxist economists saw as a condition to industrial development. Some policies, such as large irrigation projects, the subsidization of inputs, the channeling of credit or the extension of public services to rural areas, benefit large landowners at the expense of small-scale farmers. Likewise, industrial development projects under protective trade policies give rise to large, capital intensive public enterprises which often operate below capacity and at high costs.
Robert Bates makes heavy use of interest group theory to explain how policies are designed to secure advantage for particular interests, to appease powerful political forces, and to enhance the capacity of political regimes to remain in power. More ground-breaking is his analysis of the market as the setting for the struggle between the peasant and the state, the political arena in which social forces collide or avoid each other. Through intervention in the market, the state seeks to levy resources from the countryside, to appease social unrest in urban areas and to serve the private interests of those in power. For their part, rural producers use the market as a means of defense against the state, thereby evading some of the adverse consequences of government policies. They do so in part by reducing output, shifting crops, migrating out of the countryside, returning to subsistence lifestyles or joining the informal sector. Consequently, policy aberrations on the part of the government are more likely to result in exit patterns than in attempts at reforms.
This book has been vilified in some quarters because it was said to have provided the intellectual blueprint to the policies of structural adjustment that swept African countries soon after its publication. The denunciation of the urban bias and the abolition of the marketing boards certainly provided a rallying cry that was easily picked up by market reformers working from development agencies, with little consideration to the social forces that would be put in motion by such prescriptions. And it is true that Bates is almost entirely silent on the organizational characteristics of his interest group coalitions that underpin policy choices and institutional settings. But this classic work still provides many insights on Africa's internal and external structural problems.
Explains how states affect market operations in Africa.......2000-10-31
This book nicely presents the way that African governments influence markets, why they do so, and the effect of their involvement on citizens, especially the poor. I found it helpful in explaining why some states make the decisions they do, despite the fact that they might not always be the most economically efficient.
Book Description
The perfect reference for the entrepreneur and small business owner, or anyone contemplating starting a business The entire process of launching a business is brought into perspective with ready to use information on a host of important business topics such as: selecting the right business, partners, marketing, planning, protection, insurance, computers, and the Internet. Real life vignettes drive home essential lessons.
The new and larger (by 20%) second edition improves on an already successful and useful guide for the entrepreneur and new business owner.
* Expanded Internet chapter now includes marketing information * New chapter on Financing your Business * Updates throughout - especially in the technology chapters * Specific small business contact information for every state * Doing business with the United States Government * New small business glossary
Customer Reviews:
A great book! It conveys the spirit of small business!.......2000-02-08
Operating a small-business has challenges, and our company has been committed to educating users and helping them start. They should focus a little more on how cash-flow and bootstrap capital is critical -- yet overall helpful!
A guide to get your business "up and running.".......1999-08-19
Dr. Sulllivan's book is a must-have reference for all those contemplating entrepreneurship. As the owner of more than one profitable business, his practical tips and resources can steer you in the right direction to your own small business success!
Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Public Relations Review, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
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Organizational Discourse: A Language-Ideology-Power Perspective
Renata Fox , and
John Fox
Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
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ASIN: 1567206050 |
Book Description
This work supplies a concrete definition of Corporate Public Discourse, an idea that has always lacked true character. It explores how leading corporations use their own "special language" to define their cultures. The authors take this language, once considered a mere embellishment of speech, and use it to explore the inner workings of world-renowned organizations. This book bridges the gap between organizational studies and linguistics by analyzing the communications of today's top companies. The book describes a weekly Saturday morning meeting at Wal-Mart, evaluates IBM's commitment to success, and looks into the social role of high-caliber CEOs. Broken into seven parts, including management, media, and analysis, the study efficiently frames the importance of corporate communication.
Book Description
"The ethnography of Japan is currently being reshaped by a new generation of Japanologists, and the present work certainly deserves a place in this body of literature. . . . The combination of utility with beauty makes Kondo's book required reading, for those with an interest not only in Japan but also in reflexive anthropology, women's studies, field methods, the anthropology of work, social psychology, Asian Americans, and even modern literature."—Paul H. Noguchi, American Anthropologist
"Kondo's work is significant because she goes beyond disharmony, insisting on complexity. Kondo shows that inequalities are not simply oppressive-they are meaningful ways to establish identities."—Nancy Rosenberger, Journal of Asian Studies
Customer Reviews:
A poorly written piece, lax in style and weak in intellectual rigor.......2006-05-01
Dorinne Kondo applies loose academic standards to her writing. She is unabashed about it: hers is "a strategy that expands notions of what can count as theory", and her "emphasis on complexity, power, contradiction, discursive production, and ambiguity is invoked in part to demonstrate complexity and irony in the lives of the people I knew, in order to complicate and dismantle the ready stereotypes that erase complexity in favor of simple, unitary images."
I will not tire the reader with more quotations; suffice to mention the apprentice anthropologist's record of people's "bewilderment at having to deal with this odd person who looked Japanese and therefore human, but who must be retarded, deranged, or--equally undesirable in Japanese eyes--Chinese or Korean." This may be her conception of irony and subtlety; to me, this sentence only reinforces stereotypes about the Japanese, who certainly do not all hold these views, as well as it is offensive to persons living with mental disabilities or to Korean and Chinese residents in Japan.
As she herself confesses, D. Kondo was one of those graduate students who constantly change their dissertation topic according to the last passing fad or research opportunity that happen to cross their way. She first attempted to study the relationship between kinship and economics in family-owned enterprises, in order to counter the view of the diligent and anonymous Organization Man associated with Japan, Inc. The focus of her research then shifted to the broader social and cultural context, and she attempted to write an ethnographic monograph of Arakawa, the popular ward of downtown Tokyo where she had settled to live and work. Working part time in various settings also tempted her to study labor relationships on the shop floor.
She then had her epiphany during a corporate ethics retreat organized by the confectionery factory in which she was working part time: plunging into icy baths, walking barefoot on jagged rocks and screaming expressions of filial piety in front of Mt. Fuji somehow made her realize that selves are artifacts "crafted within shifting fields of power and meaning." Exit her old research project, enter her new topic: "the Japanese concept of self." As her research advisor may have suggested to focus and problematize a bit more, she came out with a first-person narrative that adds layer upon layer of description with some theoretical developments.
While her references to Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida give a postmodernist cachet to her ethnographic account, a firm theoretical backing didn't inform the design of her fieldwork or generate research hypotheses that she would have put to the test in a rigorous way. Her poststructuralist/feminist agenda seems to be placated as an afterthought, the result of a vernis de culture that she acquired while rubbing shoulders with Judith Butler, Joan Scott and other luminaries during the postdoc fellowship she spent at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, almost ten years after her fieldwork.
Her use of colloquial Japanese expressions, words uttered by "real people" as she says, will only add obscurity to the text for those who do not know the language, while it will prove only redundant and somewhat conceited to the readers who are conversant in Japanese. On the other hand, the paucity of Japanese sources in her bibliography shows that she wasn't able to progress much beyond that colloquial level. This bars her from confronting her hypotheses to results attained by Japanese social scientists, with the exception of well-known sources available in English, such as Chie Nakane and Takeo Doi, that the author reproduces uncritically. Although I cannot pinpoint any act of plagiarism, her indiscriminate use of these and other well-known sources left me with a sense of deja lu all over again.
Crafting Selves is advertised on its back cover as a "textually experimental book." To me, it is only a poorly written piece, lax in style and weak in intellectual rigor.
Kondo is fascinating.......2002-10-26
If you see the world in black & white, then this book probably is not for you. If, however, you are interested in challenging any preconceived notions you may have about Japan, for example, this book is an important contribution. Not a waste of paper!
A big yawn.......2002-02-25
If you are into ethnographies where lots of words have ominous quotation marks around them, then this book is for you. If you find post-modernism a whole lot of nonsense perpetuated by people who see Al Gore as a deep thinker, then you may just pick up a used copy of Let's Go Japan or Lonely Planet-- more readable and useful that this "ethnography". All those poor dead trees which died for this book...Shame!
A Successful Postmodern Ethnography.......2001-04-30
Kondo's work is a much needed example of "how" to do postmodern ethnography. There have been many theorizations about alternative ethnographies, but few good deliveries. Kondo's narrative ethnography about power and its cultural effectivity at the level of everyday life delivers. In fact, her informative and creative work was never far from my on writing table during my ethnographic research which resulted in the recent release of my ethnographic monograph, Native Americans in the Carolina Borderlands: A Critical Ethnography. Kondo's work is essential reading for anyone attempting to do ethnography about the complexities of cultural and personal identity formation and their hegemonic articulation in everyday practices. In short, Kondo takes the complicated and, oft-times, abstract theoretical renderings of poststructuralism/postmodernism and points to a way in which they can be enlivened through thick descriptions of everyday lives and situations. One of the finer and insightful aspects of her work is found in her tact of avoiding simplistic theoretical categorizing through the ethnographic utilization of irony and the notion of unintended consequences. A must have for those interested in feminist studies, Japanese culture and society, Cultural Studies, Postmodernism/Poststructuralism, and critical and alternative forms of ethnography.
Excellent ethnography of work.......2000-07-06
This is a complex and intelligent cultural ethnography of the many-layered, multi-tensioned ideas of self and identity among female Japanese factory workers. It is a "thick description," heavy on pondering the minutiae, and with little in the way of broad cross-cultural comparisons; this is neither good nor bad, just Kondo's style. The detailed nuances she brings out are wonderful; it is rare to see such careful attention to detail in a study of the workplace. However, readers rooted in traditional "rational management" traditions may want to look elsewhere, as this volume takes its inspiration from anthropology and lit-crit, not business and economics.
Amazon.com
Should you save money in your child's name? Is paying off your home mortgage a good idea? Should you invest in index funds? Ric Edelman, syndicated columnist and PBS personality, answers these and 85 other commonly asked questions in The New Rules of Money.
The book covers questions about income and debt, college planning, home ownership, investment strategies, and family matters. Accessible and easy to read, The New Rules for Money is for those who have little time for financial planning but want good, straightforward advice about what to do with their money.
Book Description
Are You Playing By the New Rules?
Forget what you know about personal finance. The old rules no longer apply. Ric Edelman's 88 strategies, tailor-made for today's economy, will show you how to achieve financial success. Ric is famous for making personal finance fun, and you'll discover how easy it is to put his advice into action!
Is it smart to buy company stock with your 402 (k) plan? Discover the right way to handle your company retirement plan.
See Rule #85
Learn why you must carry a big, long mortgage -- and never pay it off!
See Rule #21
Learn why not to invest in the new Roth IRA-and discover the most powerful anti-tax investment available today.
See Rules #69 and #76
Planning to retire? Learn why you won't -- and what you must do instead.
See Rule #88
Find out why those who invest in S&P 500 Index Funds will wish they hadn't.
See Rule #36
Learn why that higher - paying job could actually cost you money.
See Rule #32
Customer Reviews:
Prepare For Your Elder Years, To Feel Secure........2005-07-01
This is an interactive how-to book fulled with relevant comic strips and cartoons -- a very graphic publication. In it, he promotes reverse psychology to get what you want; my sister mastered in this type of child rearing which I could never learn.
This book is about setting goals, not just realistic, but real. Make this goal as though you were living it today. Visualize. By doing this, your enthusiasm will rise, your focus will intensify, and you'll be able to stick to your goal.
Nothing is impossible. Sure enough, one day, you will make it happen, because you'll have made it important to you, vitally important. After you set your goal, you have to plan how to achieve it. Too many retired people are so focused on maintaining a living that they sometimes forget to have a life, and become 'bored to tears!'
Lincoln said: "And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." He gives several "what-if" and "if-only" scenarios. Whatever you choose, however you go about achieving your goals, the main end result is to be happy along the way and when you reach your destination. We may not get what we want when we want it. I was told by a stranger some years ago that God does not work on our time, but He has a plan for each of us in His own time.
John Greenleaf Whittier said, "For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are those "It might have been." He tells us that "Bill Gates is rich because he own a whole lot of Microsoft, the software company he started. He's the richest person in America, perhaps the world." Part II shows you how to have your cake and eat it, too: take your choice, pound cake is fixed income investments and stocks; marble cake is filled with both. Cupcakes are fads. Avoid them.
complete waste of YOUR money.......2005-03-10
this book is contrarian to a fault. i think the author purposely incites controversy. the bottom line is this: every individual's financial circumstances vary and no one answer is correct for everybody. if you have student loans at 8% and a mortgage at 9%, it makes more sense obviously to pay down the higher debt, deductions be damned. many people make stupid mistakes such as making buying decisions based on tax deductions without thinking about the consequences to their budgets. they leave out property taxes, maintanence, etc. that adds up. for most people, paying down other debts first may make sense, but to keep your mortgage unpaid in the hopes of making double-digit returns in the market is foolish...it is much more complicated than that. there is your tax bracket, fees and expenses, time frame, investment risk, etc. such blanket statements are foolish for edelman to make. also, roth IRA's can make alot of sense to those people who qualify for them; his argument to not invest in it is weak at best and is based on loose assumptions. also, in many parts of the country, buying a starter home/townhome can make alot of sense. you can sell it for a decent profit in many cases, at least if you stay more than a couple of years. this beats renting anyday, and in his arguments he never addresses the real losses of renting, including the increase in the annual rent which in some markets can be exorbitant. anyway, read it and draw your own conclusions. there is never a substitute for common sense.
Interesting, but self-promoting.......2004-11-14
As a young, beginning investor, I have been educating myself about investments, savings, etc. With that in mind, I have been avariciously reading almost all the investment books I can find. Edelman's book first brought to my mind a concern about index funds, because every other academic book I've read supports them. I think Edelman has an axe to grind, being an personal finance manager and simply put, to Edelman, Index funds are the anti-christ and must be eliminated. However, his logic does not make sense, nor do his facts and figures hold up. The index funds simply mirror the market, and this they have done very well. He neglects to go into their low fees, and also he does not address the issue of survivorship of mutual funds, that is, that the current data that is published includes only those funds that survive so they are naturally better. Poor funds are simply eliminated or absorbed into other funds.
His comments on mortgages I found interesting, but consider that if you are getting a 10% return on an investment versus an 8% mortgage, that might make sense, but to get %10 you are going to have to invest in something risky (stocks). Can we reasonably assume that 10% is a good reasonable return? I don't think so.
So in sum, the work is biased toward moving money to professional managers while at the same time providing us with statements that are not well thought out. Better books I'd recommend are Malkiel's 'A Random Walk Down Wall Street' and Bernstein's 'The Four Pillars of Investing.'
Huh what?.......2004-05-24
I found a review supposedly by a school teacher from Florida complaining about middle income brackets of $54,000. He goes on to to say that he won't see that in 35 years.
I work for a school system in Pennsylvania and I don't know how I'd live on only $54,000/per year. I also know people in Florida who are making 6 figure incomes. One guy I know made over $50,000 last month.
Don't blame your profession, your location or Ric Eedelman. Blame the guy you see when you look in the mirror!
Edelman is a controversial guy.......2004-01-15
No doubt that Edelman is a very controversial guy--just check out these reviews. However, Edelman is also very knowledgeable and very accurate. He accurately called the Index Fund fallout as early as 1998. HE WAS WIDELY CRITICIZED FOR THAT. But as someone who listened to him, I am glad he was so perceptive!Likewise, Edelman suggests to carry a mortgage vs having a paid off mortgage and invest the difference. As another astute reviewer commented, this is a lot like the old term vs cash value life insurance debate. Which is better?Cash value is generally the better value for the insurance salesman. Likewise, a paid off mortgage is not doing you any good because it is a liability and provides no income. Better to put that extra mortgage moneyin good investments that can grow 20%-25% per year.Edelman may be controversial but his advice is right on.
Book Description
At the height of the global bull market a few years ago, business giant Kmart stumbled, going from one of the most admired companies to one of the largest bankruptcies in history. The same fate befell several seemingly impenetrable corporation, such as Enron, WorldCom, Polaroid, and others. Were these fantastic failures caused by a fickle stock market and a turbulent economy? Did they fall victim to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s?
Not according to business journalist Mark Ingebretsen in
Why Companies Fail. As you'll discover in this groundbreaking book, all of these companies exhibited one or more of the ten characteristics of a doomed company—characteristics that have been shared by failed companies for decades. Kmart, Enron, WorldCom, and other corporations might have been saved if their executives had recognized sooner that their companies were exhibiting one or more of these characteristics. Ingebretsen, with the help of some of the world's most noted business management experts from the Turnaround Management Association, describes in startling detail each of the ten big reasons companies fail, including:
• Letting stock price dictate strategy
• Ignoring customers
• Fighting wars of attrition
• Innovating too much or too little
• And more
Inside these pages, you'll discover practical methods for identifying these fatal characteristics in your own organization and preventing them from leading to failure. No matter what the size of your company, the lessons in
Why Companies Fail could be the difference between long-lasting success and sudden flameout. And before any company can go from good to great, it's got to be on the right track in the first place. This valuable guide will show you how.
Customer Reviews:
A Walk Through The Obvious.......2006-04-05
This book will waste the time of any serious student of business strategy. The author is a journalist, who has put together a long string of news items, in ten categories, to form this empty book. The result is a pastiche that offers few fresh insights or interesting conclusions. The writing style is glib and unsatisfying.
The Causes of Self-Inflicted Doom.......2004-02-15
Consider these statistics: In 2001, 257 public companies (with a total of $258 billion in assets) declared bankruptcy. In 2002, another 67 did so. Go back even further to the 43 companies which Peters and Waterman quite properly praised in In Search of Excellence (1982). Most no longer qualify according to the criteria by which they were selected...and several do not exist at all. Scary? You bet. Most of us in business can probably draw up a list of at least 15-20 reasons why companies fail. In this book, Ingebretsen focuses on what he calls "The Ten Deadly Sins." Committing any one of these "sins" could easily put a company at serious risk, if not completely out of business. Ignoring Customers (e.g. IBM), for example, or Failed Synergies (e.g. AOL and Time Warner). In fact, most organizations -- non-profit as well as for-profit, regardless of size or nature -- commit one or more of these "deadly sins" each day. Some violations are the equivalent of a felony, others of a misdemeanor. Presumably Ingebretsen agrees with me that individual mistakes can be damaging but not necessarily fatal; what all organizations must avoid are certain patterns of behavior which ensure failure. I recall a conversation I had years ago with the owner/CEO of a small company which had just filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The situation was hopeless. "All of the problems developed slowly and then suddenly."
Ingebretsen carefully organizes his material within 14 chapters which are arranged in a specific sequence, beginning with The Deadly Spiral and concluding with Future Challenges. The value of each chapter will be determined, of course, by the nature and extent of each reader's immediate needs and interest. However, Ingebretsen offers an eloquent and compelling explanation of why each of "The Ten Deadly Sins" is so dangerous after identifying (in Chapters 2 and 3) Early Warning Signs" and "More Early Warning Signs." Unlike vehicles, companies do not have gauges arranged conveniently in a cluster which immediately indicate when they are going too fast, overheating, running out of fuel, etc. In The Inferno, Dante saved the last ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality. I thought about that as I read Chapter 13 in which Ingebretsen "saves the worst corporate sin for last": arrogance. (For example, Enron, Polaroid, and Webvan.) In the final chapter, he shifts his attention to "probable causes for business failures in the years ahead, when all companies must run on Internet time."
For me, some of Ingebretsen's best thinking is provided in the Appendix: In Search of a Failure-Proof Strategy. However, the value of the Appendix to a great extent depends on how carefully the previous 14 chapters have been read. It is also important to keep in mind that competing on Internet time involves change which now occurs with unprecedented velocity as well as frequency. According to Ingebretsen, "the one constant, sadly, is that companies that either can't adapt or refuse to adapt will fail. And in an even more closely entwined global economy, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of companies standing in line to take their place." According to one Hebrew aphorism, man plans and then God howls with laughter. No plan can accommodate all possibilities. No plan can guarantee success or failure. Ingebretsen does not offer a failure-proof strategy. Rather, he suggests how the search for one could (perhaps should) be conducted.
My own opinion about all this is that the planning process is not only important but imperative. Of even greater importance, the plan (once devised) must preclude violation of "The Ten Deadly Sins" while ensuring that the given organization has the resilience needed to respond rapidly and effectively to change. Ingebretsen agrees with Charles Darwin that natural selection results in the survival of the fittest...and the fittest are those who are most adaptable. It remains for those who read this brilliant book to make their own determination as to which portions of it can be of most immediate benefit. They are well-advised to keep in mind that decision-makers in their competitor companies will probably read Ingebretsen's book. Also, that Internet time waits for no one. In the final anaylsis, moreover, most fatal wounds are self-inflicted.
Insightful Presentation.......2003-09-08
Reads like a "whodunit" of business failures. Ingebretsen offers his readers a polished presentation. His writing style is highly accessible. This is refreshing given the number of writers in management theory who choose to hide behind jargon laden academic descriptions, as opposed to clearly stating the evidence behind a company's success or demise. As someone interested in organizational analysis and who has the intention of starting up a business some day, I highly recommend this book. It is a quick and enjoyable read offering the means to avoid the pit falls of management failure.
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