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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > History of specific institutions
"Remember the Cola Wars, with Coke and Pepsi battling it out year
after year for supremacy in the soft drink market? Or what about
the Burger Wars, the legendary slugfests between McDonald's and
Burger King? Then of course, there were the Sports Drink Wars. If
you blinked, you might have missed them, because Gatorade has
swiftly and decisively fended off every would-be rival. Although a
few other brands hold slim market shares, the fact is that Gatorade
single-handedly created the sports drink industry 40 years ago and
has absolutely ruled it ever since. But Gatorade is more than just
a triumph of branding. First, it's a trusted product that has been
scientifically proven to do what it claims to do. Second, Gatorade
is an enthralling story, brought to life in bright color and sharp
detail in First in Thirst. Author Darren Rovell, a skilled,
objective, and passionate journalist, chronicles every astonishing
milestone of the company's history. With unprecedented access to
the inventors, the marketers, the analysts and observers, and key
company figures past and present, Rovell recounts the
sweat-drenched University of Florida football practices, the first
(unpalatable) prototypes, and the commercial and financial interest
that quickly took hold following the drink's first on-field
successes. Then came the advertising, sponsorships, product
placements (many of them fortuitous), and finally the two
milestones that cemented Gatorade's iconic status once and for all
-- the ubiquitous Gatorade bath and the Michael Jordan ""Be Like
Mike"" endorsement deal. With refreshing candor, First in Thirst
also offers an inside look at the negotiations, battles, lawsuits,
mergers and acquisitions, product strategies, lucky breaks, and
even the missteps (there have not been many) that have attended
Gatorade's reign as the 800-pound gorilla of the sports-drink
scene. Rovell places the reader inside labs and brainstorming
sessions, at board meetings and ad shoots, on the sidelines and in
the dugouts, even in the winner's circle at NASCAR events -- where
Gatorade manages maximum exposure even at tracks whose official
sponsors include chief rival POWERade. The book identifies the nine
Gatorade Rules, business principles that have helped Gatorade
become one of the most dominant brands ever. By adhering to these
principles, businesses in other industries may achieve greater
brand recognition and market share. Long before America knew what
""deep-down body thirst"" was, a team of university scientists had
already invented something to quench it. First in Thirst is the
story of the product and the company, and of America's fascination
with the one and only Gatorade."
The Haute Banque, an elite form of private or merchant banking,
emerged in France in the early 19th century, reached its peak
around 1850-1860 before declining in the early 20th century and
almost disappearing in the 1960s-1980s. Often characterized by
their religious origins and family networks, these banking houses
escape a clear definition. Their expansion is not limited to
France, as banks with similar features can be found in Europe and
throughout the world. This book, which brings together some of the
best specialists in the field, examines the legacy of the Haute
Banque. How and until when did it influence other banking
establishments, through its managers, its practices, and its
values? What business lines have these bankers helped to shape,
right up to wealth management and asset management of today? What
was the resilience of these finance companies? Is there a
resurgence in the 21st century of the houses or the spirit of Haute
Banque?
This book provides a collective view of the five major English
chartered trading companies which were active during the period
1688-1763: The East India Company, the Royal African Company, the
Hudson's Bay Company, The Levant Company, and the Russia Company.
Using both archival and secondary sources, this monograph fills in
some of the knowledge gaps concerning the less well-studied
companies, and examines the interconnections between international
rivalry, the financial operations of the companies, and politics
which have not featured prominently in the historiography.
The London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) was a unique hybrid
public body accountable only to a small number of stakeholders, yet
it delivered substantial improvements in public services and
provided good working conditions for its employees at the cost of
its investors. London Transport: A Hybrid in History 1905-48
innovatively combines a revisionist historical narrative with a
systematic analysis of quantitative and qualitative research to
explore how and why the LPTB achieved rare popularity amongst its
customers. Divided into three sections, the book explores the
financial operations of the Board, the Board as a system of
governance and the leadership and management within the LPTB. Using
the extensive Transport for London archives, James Fowler conducts
a timely assessment of the public network utility that once made
London transport domestically popular and internationally admired.
With debates about British transport policy ongoing, this book is
an illuminating read for scholars and students researching within
the areas of business management history, transport and public
sector governance and administration.
This volume explores current research in public relations and
communication management, and in particular examines how public
relations can have a positive impact on the well being of its
publics. One of the biggest competitive advantages in today's
business world are positive and engaged publics, because satisfied
participants are at the core of any successful relationship. The
success of relationships with publics is mostly based on how people
are valued and treated, which in turn affects their
self-perceptions and level of performance. Both of these elements
are correlated with life happiness. Thus, strategic communication
should be used for cultivating a positive environment and for
fostering happiness and joy among their publics. This can help
improve both organizational success and the well-being of people.
This book will be essential reading for researchers in marketing
and communications, as well as practitioners who wish to understand
how PR and Communication Management can positively impact the
well-being of organizations and the wider community.
A long-overdue expose of the astonishing yet shadowy power wielded
by the world's largest law firms. Though not a household name,
Jones Day is well known in the halls of power, and serves as a
powerful encapsulation of the changes that have swept the legal
profession in recent decades. Founded in the US in 1893, it has
become one of the world's largest law firms, a global juggernaut
with deep ties to corporate interests and conservative politics. A
key player in the legal battles surrounding the Trump
administration, Jones Day has also for decades represented Big
Tobacco, defended opioid manufacturers, and worked tirelessly to
minimise the sexual-abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. Like
many of its peers, it has fought time and again for those who want
nothing more than to act without constraint or scrutiny - including
the Russian oligarchs as they have sought to expand
internationally. In this gripping and revealing new work of
narrative nonfiction, New York Times Business Investigations Editor
and bestselling author David Enrich at last tells the story of 'Big
Law' and the nearly unchecked influence these firms wield to shield
the wealthy and powerful - and bury their secrets.
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Disney
(Hardcover)
Stacy Mintzer Herlihy
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R1,832
Discovery Miles 18 320
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Ships in 12 - 19 working days
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Since its founding in 1923, the Walt Disney Company has become an
American institution and one of the most successful businesses in
history. This book takes an in-depth look at the evolution of this
iconic and sometimes controversial corporation. It's hard to
imagine a childhood without the ubiquitous presence of Disney. From
classics like Cinderella and Bambi to such modern blockbusters as
Mulan and Frozen, Disney's animated features have captivated
audiences for decades. Visiting CaliforniA's Disneyland or
FloridA's Disney World has become the quintessential family
vacation. Children dress as their favorite Disney characters for
Halloween, while young-at-heart adults collect all manner of Disney
memorabilia. But how much do you really know about this integral
piece of Americana? Part of Greenwood's Corporations That Changed
the World series, this book provides readers with a richly detailed
history of a company that has become synonymous with what it means
to grow up as an American. It chronicles Walt Disney's early years
and the evolution of the Walt Disney Company from animation studio
to entertainment powerhouse. It also explores how Disney changed
the landscape of animation and movie making forever. An unbiased
look at the controversies that have surrounded Disney over the
years will help readers better understand these contentious issues
and how the company has responded. Provides readers with a better
understanding of the impact of Disney on American life, from movie
making techniques to how modern-day Florida is governed Explores
Walt Disney's early life and career, helping readers understand how
they influenced his later success Traces Disney's enduring
influence on animation and how the art form has evolved over the
decades Examines the many controversies that have emerged over the
years, from accusations that Walt Disney was anti-Semitic to
concerns about sexist portrayals of women and girls
This book charts the history of Australian retail developments as
well as examining the social and cultural dimensions of shopping in
Australia. In the second half of the twentieth century, the
shopping centre spread from America around the world. Australia was
a very early adopter, and produced a unique shopping centre model.
Situating Australian retail developments within a broader
international and historical context, Managing the Marketplace
demonstrates the ways that local conditions shape global retail
forms. Knowledge transfer from Europe and America to Australia was
a consistent feature of the Australian retail industry across the
twentieth century. By critically examining the strengths and
weaknesses of Australian retail firms' strategies across time, and
drawing on the voices of both business elites and ordinary people,
the book not only unearths the forgotten stories of Australian
retail, it offers new insights into the opportunities and
challenges that confront the sector today, both nationally and
internationally. This book will be of interest to all scholars and
practitioners of retail, marketing, business history and economic
geography, as well as social and cultural history.
"The most interesting book ever written about Google" (The
Washington Post) delivers the inside story behind the most
successful and admired technology company of our time, now updated
with a new Afterword. Google is arguably the most important company
in the world today, with such pervasive influence that its name is
a verb. The company founded by two Stanford graduate students-Larry
Page and Sergey Brin-has become a tech giant known the world over.
Since starting with its search engine, Google has moved into mobile
phones, computer operating systems, power utilities, self-driving
cars, all while remaining the most powerful company in the
advertising business. Granted unprecedented access to the company,
Levy disclosed that the key to Google's success in all these
businesses lay in its engineering mindset and adoption of certain
internet values such as speed, openness, experimentation, and
risk-taking. Levy discloses details behind Google's relationship
with China, including how Brin disagreed with his colleagues on the
China strategy-and why its social networking initiative failed; the
first time Google tried chasing a successful competitor. He
examines Google's rocky relationship with government regulators,
particularly in the EU, and how it has responded when employees
left the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. In the Plex is the
"most authoritative...and in many ways the most entertaining"
(James Gleick, The New York Book Review) account of Google to date
and offers "an instructive primer on how the minds behind the
world's most influential internet company function" (Richard
Waters, The Wall Street Journal).
Copper King in Central Africa offers a detailed account of the
corporate history of the Rhokana/Rokana Corporation and its Nkana
mine. Thematically and chronologically organised, it explores the
discovery of viable ores on the Northern Rhodesian/Zambian
Copperbelt in the late 1920s, which attracted foreign capital from
South Africa, Britain and the USA, prompting the development of the
Nkana mine and the formation of the Rhokana Corporation in the
early 1930s. It follows through the evolution of the copper mining
industry up to the re-privatisation of the Zambian mining sector in
1991. The book ties into a single narrative the disparate themes of
corporate organisation, labour relations, and profitability of
Rhokana, demonstrating how the firm was, for a time, the most
important mining entity in the Northern Rhodesian/Zambian mining
industry. Rhokana was both an investment firm on the Copperbelt and
a mining company through Nkana mine. Thus, the Corporation was
central to the development and profitability of the copper industry
in Zambia. Its corporate and labour policies influenced the
Copperbelt as a whole. Employing the largest labour force in the
mining sector, Rhokana spearheaded the labour movement on the
Copperbelt. Its Nkana mine was also the largest producer of copper
in the Northern Rhodesian mining industry between 1940 and 1953,
and contributed hugely to the war economies of Britain and the USA.
Throughout its history, Nkana was also a major source of cobalt.
After nationalisation of the mining sector in 1970, Rhokana
surrendered its investments in the wider copper industry, but
remained central to the Copperbelt's smelting and refining
operations, owning the biggest metallurgical facilities in the
industry.
This book offers a thoroughly researched and accessibly written
account of the John Lewis Partnership. It describes what the JLP
is, how it works, and what other businesses can learn from it. The
US/UK model of the firm, with its emphasis on shareholder value and
its openness to the market in the buying and selling of businesses,
is prone to a number of problematic consequences for employees,
suppliers, and sometimes share-holders. The JLP represents a
contrast to this model - one that has implications beyond the small
niche of mutually-owned firms. The JLP has lessons for
organizations that are unlikely to move towards the Partnership's
distinctive shared ownership. This book identifies these lessons.
The key questions addressed include: how does the JLP work in
practice? What is the link between co-ownership, the JLP employment
model, and the performance of the businesses? What is the role of
management in the success of John Lewis and Waitrose? Are
mutuality, co-ownership and business performance at odds? What is
the significance of democracy within the JLP? And probably most
significantly: what are the implications, for policy-makers and for
economic agents of the JLP? This book is based on detailed
knowledge of the JLP and its constituent business gathered by the
authors over a fifteen year period. Their conclusion: that the JLP
is more complex, even more impressive, and more interesting than
its admirers realise.
Since 1818, Brooks Brothers, America s oldest clothing brand, has
grown into a global sartorial institution that has influenced
American style through its iconic fashions, which conjure intimate
memories of pivotal life events from your first navy blazer as a
child to stepping into a bespoke suit on your wedding day. On the
eve of its two-hundredth anniversary, Brooks Brothers remains
synonymous with timeless style, the finest quality, and innovative
designs that resonate with both old and new generations. This
richly illustrated book is replete with photographs of the
signature heritage pieces, from the Original Polo button-down
oxford, grey flannel suit, and Rep ties to the camel overcoat, and
features an unparalleled roster of high-profile political and
cultural icons who have worn and made these pieces their own: from
Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy to Madonna, Lady Gaga, Grace
Kelly, Katharine Hepburn, Miles Davis, and Andy Warhol, as well as
TV and film stars in Glee, Gossip Girl, Mad Men, and Baz Luhrmann s
The Great Gatsby. The text comprises interviews and personal
anecdotes from the retailer s loyal clientele fashion designers,
writers, and celebrities each sharing treasured memories and
connections to Brooks Brothers. This dazzling volume invites
readers to delve into the world of Brooks Brothers, providing
insight into the people, places, and historical moments that have
shaped and provoked the innovative yet timeless American
institution, and is a must for those interested in fashion and
American style.
"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two
extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant,
well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it
also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's
modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational
story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong
Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from
the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the
Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than
one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars;
surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly
losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan
Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited
an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind
to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on
their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to
Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these
ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family
rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.
For the first time the complete financial history of Berkshire
Hathaway is available under one cover in chronological format.
Beginning at the origins of the predecessor companies in the
textile industry, the reader can examine the development of the
modern-day conglomerate year-by-year and decade-by-decade, watching
as the struggling textile company morphs into what it has become
today. This comprehensive analysis distils over 10,000 pages of
research material, including Buffett's Chairman's letters,
Berkshire Hathaway annual reports and SEC filings, annual meeting
transcripts, subsidiary financials, and more. The analysis of each
year is supplemented with Buffett's own commentary where relevant,
and examines all important acquisitions, investments, and other
capital allocation decisions. The appendices contain balance
sheets, income statements, statements of cash flows, and key ratios
dating back to the 1930s, materials brought together for the first
time. The structure of the book allows the new student to follow
the logic, reasoning, and capital allocation decisions made by
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger from the very beginning. Existing
Berkshire shareholders and long-time observers will find new
information and refreshing analysis, and a convenient reference
guide to the decades of financial moves that built the modern-day
respected enterprise that is Berkshire Hathaway.
For Heineken, 'rising Africa' is already a reality: the profits it
extracts there are almost 50 per cent above the global average, and
beer costs more in some African countries than it does in Europe.
Heineken claims its presence boosts economic development on the
continent. But is this true? Investigative journalist Olivier van
Beemen has spent years seeking the answer, and his conclusion is
damning: Heineken has hardly benefited Africa at all. On the
contrary, there are some shocking skeletons in its African closet:
tax avoidance, sexual abuse, links to genocide and other human
rights violations, high-level corruption, crushing competition from
indigenous brewers, and collaboration with dictators and pitiless
anti-government rebels. Heineken in Africa caused a political and
media furore on publication in The Netherlands, and was debated in
their Parliament. It is an unmissable expose of the havoc wreaked
by a global giant seeking profit in the developing world.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard invented the model of the Silicon
Valley start-up and set in motion a process of corporate becoming
that made it possible for HP to transform itself six times over the
77 years since its founding in the face of sweeping technological
changes that felled most of its competitors over the years. Today,
HP is in the throes of a seventh transformation to secure its
continued survival by splitting in two independent companies: HP
Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Based on extensive primary
research conducted over more than 15 years, this book documents the
differential contribution of HP's successive CEOs in sustaining the
company's integral process of becoming. It uses a comprehensive
strategic leadership framework to examine and explain the role of
the CEO: (1) defining and executing the key tasks of strategic
leadership, and (2) developing four key elements of the company's
strategic leadership capability. The study of the strategic
leadership of HP's successive CEOs revealed the paradox of
corporate becoming, the existential situation facing successive
CEOs (that justifies the book's empathic approach), and the
importance of the CEO's ability to harness the company's past while
also driving its future. Building on these novel insights, the book
shows how the frameworks used to conceptualize the tasks of
strategic leadership and the development of strategic leadership
capability can serve as steps toward a dynamic theory of strategic
leadership that animates an evolutionary framework of corporate
becoming. This framework will be helpful for further theory
development about strategic leadership and also offers practical
tools for founders of new companies and CEOs and boards of
directors of existing companies who intend to create, run or
oversee companies built for continued relevance, longevity and
greatness.
A remarkable fifteen Nordic family businesses are among the 500
biggest companies in the world and the Nordic countries have more
dynasties than most others per capita and in GDP terms. The
willingness, often reluctant, of both the political system and
labour movement to accept asset accumulation has helped these
Nordic businesses survive. The top 1% of Swedes own close to 25% of
the country's wealth, as opposed to 16.5% of Spaniards, where
dynasties are also abundant. The pattern has held a firm grip on
the Nordic countries since the Industrial Revolution and emergence
of free enterprise. The trend is particularly pronounced in
comparison with the Anglo-Saxon countries - somewhat less so
relative to places like Italy, Japan, Germany and South-Asian
countries. This book describes the factors and dynamics behind the
ability of Nordic businesses to grow and thrive from one generation
to the next in the process of becoming dynasties. Far from being
commercial enterprises, they are a venue for power, philanthropy,
passion, conflict, freedom and captivity. Like many other
dynasties, the Nordic ones are a witch's brew of Machiavelli's
Prince, Marx's belief in the potential of the meritocracy and
Smith's baker who works to sustain his family. Topped by a spoonful
of Weber's Protestant Ethic. This book will be key readings for
students and scholars of entrepreneurship, corporate governance,
business history, Scandinavian history, family business and
enterprises and the related disciplines.
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