Born in the wake of World War II, RAND quickly became the creator of America's anti-Soviet nuclear strategy. A magnet for the best and the brightest, its ranks included Cold War luminaries such as Albert Wohlstetter, Bernard Brodie, and Herman Kahn, who arguably saved us from nuclear annihilation and unquestionably created Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex." In the Kennedy era, RAND analysts and their theories of rational warfare steered our conduct in Vietnam. Those same theories drove our invasion of Iraq forty-five years later, championed by RAND affiliated actors such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Zalmay Khalilzad. But RAND's greatest contribution might be its least known: rational choice theory, a model explaining all human behavior through self-interest. Through it RAND sparked the Reagan-led transformation of our social and economic system but also unleashed a resurgence of precisely the forces whose existence it denied -- religion, patriotism, tribalism.
With Soldiers of Reason, Alex Abella has rewritten the history of America's last half century and cast a new light on our problematic present.

This book explores a century of business development of The South African Life Assurance Company, from a specific local focus to a national conglomerate expanding into global insurance markets. Established as a strategic vehicle to address Afrikaner economic marginalization and abject poverty at the beginning of the twentieth century, Sanlam has displayed both path dependence and a dynamic adaptability to complex changing contexts to become a global player. The strategic convergence of economic empowerment through the mobilization of savings into insurance products, as well as Afrikaner nationalism, assisted this growth. Sanlam has played an a-typical role in the economic empowerment of an ethnic entity through extensive investments into the industrializing South African economy. This strategic diversion created operational limitations that were only resolved early in the twenty-first century. As globalization, financial deregulation, and weakened Afrikaner political and social hegemony manifested, strategic change management relied on the path dependence of empowerment strategies to address new markets with similar needs to those of the early stakeholder market of 1918. The former mutual life office demutualized operations to become a diversified financial services group of companies operating across almost the entire African continent, as well as in India, Malaysia, and the UK. This volume presents a business history of strategic management of an insurance enterprise, and its transformation from a defined cultural context into an international empowerment strategy through innovation on all levels of business operation and organization. This book is an Open Access publication, available online under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

This highly readable book from Lou Richard, a 50 year veteran of International Corporate buisness and founder of Newport Capital, provides a practical explanation of key technical and tactical aspects of mergers and acquisitions, and also provides insightful real-life descriptions - "digressions" - of transactions as they happened, proving that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

A narrative history of one of IBM's most illustrious and secretive organizations -- IBM's Federal Systems Division -- that protected America, helped NASA put men on the moon, and spawned such technology as today's Internet, ATM transactions, ebay operations and online banking. Included in the book are space-age computer and weapons systems details never before shown to the public. Federal Systems developed such things as a dispatch system for New York City's police force, international banking systems in the UK, Japan and other countries, and a special operations system for the New York Stock Exchange. This is the first book ever written about this semi-clandestine organization operating under the IBM umbrella that supported NASA's projects from Project Mercury to Space Shuttles and Skylab. Federal Systems was also a major part of the development of modern weapons technology. Each chapter of the book focuses on one aspect of Federal Systems' 50-year history of service to the government. The organization changed hands during an IBM selloff in the early 1990s to Loral Corporation, which in turn sold it to Lockheed Martin in 1996.

"A comprehensive history of a major American mining company"

For nearly a century, the Bunker Hill Company of Idaho was a leading U.S. mining and smelting corporation that played a key role in the nation's industrial development. At the same time, it was the catalyst for unprecedented labor strife and environmental desecration. In this richly detailed history, Katherine G. Aiken traces Bunker Hill's evolution from the mine's discovery in 1885 to the company's closure in 1981.

Throughout the company's long history, management's relentless pursuit of profit and the labor-management conflicts that often resulted were nothing short of legendary. Often a tale of strife, Bunker Hill's history is at the same time a story of cooperation, dedication, and ingenuity. People literally gave their lives for the production of lead, zinc, and silver. In the end, however, environmental destruction, aging facilities, and mineral shortages, as well as foreign competition, crippled the company's economic viability. Aiken offers an in-depth profile that illustrates major trends in American corporate culture.

Hidden Under the Corporate Ladder gives a brutally honest look inside a scandalous Fortune 100 company. The story takes place in Dallas, Texas, in the mid 1990s, as told firsthand by an employee hired to work for a corporation's branch location to figure out why its operation isn't productive. Jackie expects misconduct; however, she finds more than she bargained for. When one of the perpetrators uncovers her mission and confides in her that he is in a Witness Protection Program with past Mob ties, he threatens to "do away" with her if she reports any wrongdoing-just as he did with the last person who ratted on him. The story is compelling as the reader is riveted to each chapter's no-holds-barred description of scandal, deception, sexual misconduct, misappropriation of funds, discrimination, and even death. Although the book is driven by scandal that is dark, twisted, or just plain vulgar, it is also filled with life's sometimes sad and disappointing situations as well as love and devotion. Most of all, it is filled with life itself. Destined to have a profound effect, the story is always powerful and keeps the reader turning the page as it details and describes misuse of management in unimaginable and incomprehensible ways.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, a fascinating look at the crossroads of kin and coin David S. Landes has earned a reputation as a brilliant writer and iconoclast among economic historians. In his latest acclaimed work, he takes a revealing look at the quality that distinguishes a third of today's Fortune 500 companies: family ownership. From the banking fortunes of Rothschild and Morgan to the automobile empires of Ford and Toyota, Landes explores thirteen different dynasties, revealing what lay behind their successes-and how extravagance, bad behavior, and poor enterprise brought some of them to their knees. A colorful history that is full of surprising conclusions, Dynasties is an engrossing mix of ambition, eccentricity, and wealth.

During Wall Street's crime wave in the 1980s, no single brokerage firm, banker or trader destroyed the financial security of more people than Prudential Bache Securities. The losses from all the celebrated insider scandals add up to a fraction of the damage caused by The Rock-- the costliest securities fraud ever. Why did the nation's third largest brokerage firm, whose very name conveyed rock-solid respectability, launch such a vicious fraud? "Serpent on the Rock" has the answer. Using hundreds of exclusive sources and thousands of internal, confidential records, it reveals the shocking true story behind the wrongdoing, the cover-up, and the investigations of the real-life thriller that shook the nation and the world.

"Corporate Survival: The Critical Importance of Sustainability Risk Management" thoroughly examines the rising sustainability risks that affect thriving businesses, the environment, various societies, people in foreign lands, and our children.

Author Dan Anderson, a professor of risk management and insurance, has been observing sustainability risk management issues for his entire career. In "Corporate Survival" he presents guidelines for various professionals in the risk management and insurance industries. In his view, corporations need to establish sound sustainability risk management systems in order to survive potentially major financial and professional damages. These damages can arise from liability suits, customer boycotts, shareholder actions, new regulations, and international pressures.

Anderson provides well-timed direction for establishing risk management systems, as well as numerous examples of how companies successfully employ sustainability risk management strategies. He also demonstrates the advantages of following his advice for corporate survival, including reducing sustainability risk costs, improving competitive advantage, attracting both reliable customers and productive employees, augmenting the firm's reputation and community image, and increasing profits.

"Corporate Survival" will help all corporations and those in the fields of risk management and insurance improve business systems while enhancing environmental quality and social justice conditions.

Violet Crown Award, Writers League of Texas, 2007 Citation, San Antonio Conservation Society, 2009 Scarred by the deaths of his mother and sisters and the failure of his father's business, a young man dreamed of making enough money to retire early and retreat into the secure world that his childhood tragedies had torn from him. But Harry Luby refused to be a robber baron. Turning totally against the tide of avaricious capitalism, he determined to make a fortune by doing good. Starting with that unlikely, even naive, ambition in 1911, Harry Luby founded a cafeteria empire that by the 1980s had revenues second only to McDonald's. So successfully did Luby and his heirs satisfy the tastes of America that Luby's became the country's largest cafeteria chain, creating more millionaires per capita among its employees than any other corporation of its size. Even more surprising, the company stayed true to Harry Luby's vision for eight decades, making money by treating its customers and employees exceptionally well. Written with the sweep and drama of a novel, House of Plenty tells the engrossing story of Luby's founding and phenomenal growth, its long run as America's favorite family restaurant during the post-World War II decades, its financial failure during the greed-driven 1990s when non-family leadership jettisoned the company's proven business model, and its recent struggle back to solvency. Carol Dawson and Carol Johnston draw on insider stories and company records to recapture the forces that propelled the company to its greatest heights, including its unprecedented practices of allowing store managers to keep 40 percent of net profits and issuing stock to all employees, which allowed thousands of Luby's workers to achieve the American dream of honestly earned prosperity. The authors also plumb the depths of the Luby's drama, including a hushed-up theft that split the family for decades; the 1991 mass shooting at the Killeen Luby's, which splattered the company's good name across headlines nationwide; and the rapacious over-expansion that more than doubled the company's size in nine years (1987-1996), pushed it into bankruptcy, and drove president and CEO John Edward Curtis Jr. to violent suicide. Disproving F. Scott Fitzgerald's adage that "there are no second acts in American lives," House of Plenty tells the epic story of an iconic American institution that has risen, fallen, and found redemption-with no curtain call in sight.

In this collection of thirty-eight essays, Paul Bodine chronicles the often tumultuous history of key American companies from their inception to their dynamic present. From prominent industry giants like Qualcomm and Bloomberg to lesser-known leaders like Alex Lee Inc. and Standex International, these essays capture major trends, technologies, and personalities that have helped make the American business model the envy of the world. From the rise of DVDs, mobile telephony, and digital data to the evolution of steel minimills, enterprise resource planning software, and the convenience store, this collection provides vivid slices of the spirit, ingenuity, and drama of America's business history. A bonus section includes profiles of six leading European firms.

Reinventing the Wheel is the riveting, behind-the-scenes story of the enigmatic and cocksure inventor Dean Kamen and the Segway Human Transporter.

When Kamen invented the two-wheeled vehicle known to many by its code name, Ginger, he promised it would transform the face of personal transportation forever. But when this brilliant and driven inventor attempted to become an entrepreneur, a colossal power struggle ensued. Here, Steve Kemper takes you along for the wild ride. In Reinventing the Wheel, Kemper goes inside Kamen's world of technology development, where nerve and ingenuity collide with high finance and the bottom line.

CONTENTS: Charters and Chartered Corporations -- The Hanseatic League -- Regulated and Joint Stock Companies The Merchants of the Staple The Fraternity (Brotherhood) of St. Thomas B Becket, Later Called the Company of the Merchant Adventurers of England The Russia Company The Eastland Company The Turkey (Levant) Company The East India Company (1600-1858) The Hudson Bay Company The Virginia and New England Companies and Provincial Charters Summary Account of the Guinea (Royal African) and Minor Chartered Companies

For an extraordinary fifty-seven-year period, the chief executives of the International Business Machines Corporation were Thomas J. Watson and Thomas J. Watson, father and son. IBM bears the imprint of both men -- their ambitions and their strengths -- but it also bears the consequences of a family that was in near-constant conflict.

Eminent historian Richard S. Tedlow explores the interplay between the personalities of these two extraordinary men and the firm they created. Both Watsons had deeply held beliefs about what a corporation is and should be. These ideas helped make "Big Blue" the bluest of blue-chip stocks during their tenure. These very ideals, however, also sowed the seeds for IBM's disasters in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the company had lost sight of the original meaning behind many of the practices each man put into place.

This book on the legal and regulatory framework for UK businesses came to be written as a compilation in a single volume of several legal topics that businesses need to be aware of. "Legal and Regulatory Framework: For Business in the UK" brings together in a single place the legal requirements for business and is intended to serve as an introduction to the subject. It is hoped that business people will find it flavourful and readable.

""They're still trying to hide the weenie," thought Sherron Watkins as she read a newspaper clipping about Enron two weeks before Christmas, 2001. . . It quoted CFO] Jeff McMahon addressing the company's creditors and cautioning them against a rash judgment. "Don't assume that there is a smoking gun."
Sherron knew Enron well enough to know that the company was in extreme spin mode...
Power Failure" is the electrifying behind-the-scenes story of the collapse of Enron, the high-flying gas and energy company touted as the poster child of the New Economy that, in its hubris, had aspired to be "The World's Leading Company," and had briefly been the seventh largest corporation in America.
Written by prizewinning journalist Mimi Swartz, and substantially based on the never-before-published revelations of former Enron vice-president Sherron Watkins, as well as hundreds of other interviews, "Power Failure" shows the human face beyond the greed, arrogance, and raw ambition that fueled the company's meteoric rise in the late 1990s. At the dawn of the new century, Ken Lay's and Jeff Skilling's faces graced the covers of business magazines, and Enron's money oiled the political machinery behind George W. Bush's election campaign. But as Wall Street analysts sang Enron's praises, and its stock spiraled dizzyingly into the stratosphere, the company's leaders were madly scrambling to manufacture illusory profits, hide its ballooning debt, and bully Wall Street into buying its fictional accounting and off-balance-sheet investment vehicles. The story of Enron's fall is a morality tale writ large, performed on a stage with an unforgettable array of props and side plots, from parking lots overflowing with Boxsters and BMWs to hot-house office affairs and executive tantrums.
Among the cast of characters Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins observe with shrewd Texas eyes and an insider's perspective are: CEO Ken Lay, Enron's "outside face," who was more interested in playing diplomat and paving the road to a political career than in managing Enron's high-testosterone, anything-goes culture; Jeff Skilling, the mastermind behind Enron's mercenary trading culture, who transformed himself from a nerdy executive into the personification of millennial cool; Rebecca Mark, the savvy and seductive head of Enron's international division, who was Skilling's sole rival to take over the company; and Andy Fastow, whose childish pranks early in his career gave way to something far more destructive. Desperate to be a player in Enron's deal-making, trader-oriented culture, Fastow transformed Enron's finance department into a "profit center," creating a honeycomb of financial entities to bolster Enron's "profits," while diverting tens of millions of dollars into his own pockets
An unprecedented chronicle of Enron's shocking collapse, "Power Failure" should take its place alongside the classics of previous decades - "Barbarians at the Gate" and "Liar's Poker" - as one of the cautionary tales of our times.

"From the Hardcover edition."

This reprint of a classic work, originally published in 1878, documents the experience of a number of attempts to set up utopian "communistic" communities in America. It includes Shakers, the Amana community, Oneida, Ephrat, Harmonists, Robert Owen, the Perfectionists, and many others.

In Thomas A. Stewart’s bestselling first book, Intellectual Capital, he redefined the priorities of businesses around the world, demonstrating that the most important assets companies own today are often not tangible goods, equipment, financial capital, or market share, but the intangibles: patents, the knowledge of workers, and the information about customers and channels and past experience that a company has in its institutional memory. Now in his new book, The Wealth of Knowledge, Stewart--widely acknowledged as the world’s leading expert on working with intellectual capital in today’s knowledge economy--reveals how today’s companies are applying the concept of intellectual capital into day-to-day operations to dramatically increase their success in the marketplace.

Arguing that companies can make untold millions of dollars by managing knowledge more effectively--and save millions more--Stewart offers executives and managers compelling accounts of how leading companies around the world are successfully tackling the practical issues involved in today’s knowledge economy. The heart of the book is a revolutionary 4-step preocess that shows how to put intellectual capital to work to improve performance and profitablity, as well as manage knowledge processes. He goes on to discuss how companies can better utilize their current assets and enhance their knowledge resources for the future. Questioning many of the assumptions that have ruled business in the twentieth century, he addresses such critical and fundamental issues as why companies exist, how they should be organized and how people should be compensated. With his customary fearlessness and foresight, he plunges into the thick of the controversial arena of measuring and accounting, as well-an increasingly difficult task when a corporation’s assets are intangible.

The Wealth of Knowledge not only sets out the latest thinking in creating and managing knowledge assets, but provides a detailed course of action for corporations trying to navigate their way in the world of knowledge economy.


From the Hardcover edition.

"Over the last few decades, advances by African-Americans in the business world have been both impressive and well-documented. But even a cursory glance at the statistics -- not to mention a look around most corporations -- reveals that, despite much progress, minority executives are still relatively few and far between.

Whether in the form of insensitivity, change-averse corporate cultures, socio-economic factors, or outright racism, African-Americans still face very real obstacles along the path to professional success. To many, these obstacles have seemed insurmountable, and their careers have foundered. But to thousands of others, these challenges have been an invitation to excel, and their accomplishments have been worthy of both praise and emulation.

Cracking the Corporate Code delves deeply into the lives and careers of 32 such notable professionals. These are not the men and women usually cited: the high-profile government officials, the legendary civil rights pioneers, or the megastar athletes who have leveraged their on-field success into positions of leadership. The authors have chosen instead to profile individuals who have risen through the ranks of America's most noteworthy businesses, to the highest echelons of corporate power and influence.

In exclusive, eye-opening interviews, these men and women recount their impressive and widely differing career trajectories, revealing what motivated and discouraged them, their sources of support and conflict, and the strategies they developed to excel in organizations like PepsiCo, GE, Merrill Lynch, Kraft, Prudential, Chrysler, and dozens more.

Rather than offer these inspiring stories as individual biographies, the authors have identified their common threads, analyzing what they reveal to the reader about:

* Reconciling the ambiguities inherent for black professionals in corporate culture

* Trusting your own abilities and potential while managing the ever-present issue of race

* Overcoming isolation to establish not only your place in the organization but also a voice that will be heard and respected

* Reading the unwritten rules and developing the ""sixth sense"" necessary to play the game

*Cultivating and managing the relationships that will be crucial to securing more meaningful and influential positions

* Understanding what true power is, how to compete for and acquire it, and how to translate it into substantial leadership

Opportunities for success abound for African-Americans. For the last 40 years, the best of the best have been stepping up to seize -- and often create -- those opportunities. The next generation of black professionals will travel the paths blazed by the pioneers profiled in this landmark book, and will be poised to achieve even greater results--while continuing the legacy of diversity for the generations yet to come.

Price M. Cobbs, M.D., is co-author of Black Rage and The Jesus Bag, considered classics in the literature of African-American experience. Dr. Cobbs is also an internationally recognized expert on executive leadership, management development, and corporate diversity. He lives in San Francisco.

Judith L. Turnock is an attorney, coach, and talent development expert. A lifelong advocate of racial, gender, and economic equality, she is committed to closing the communication gap between blacks and whites, both in the workplace and in the community at large. She lives in New York City.

HARDCOVER JACKET COPY--BACK COVER

General Business

Cracking the Corporate Code

The Revealing Success Stories of 32 African-American Executives

Price M. Cobbs and Judith L. Turnock

"The subtext of black executives' experiences from 1965 to today is the enormous progress corporate America has already made. At the same time, it is obvious how much work remains to be done. Cracking the Corporate Code will speed up the forward momentum, because the message is so clear and the logic so compelling. We are on a journey to a very good place, and all America will reap the rewards."

--Steve Reinemund, CEO, PepsiCo, from the Foreword

Corporate America holds more opportunities for minority executives than ever before. And yet, many companies whose stated missions include workforce diversity have proven less than ideal for people of color. As these institutions struggle to apply what is preached to what is practiced, it is incumbent upon black professionals to assert their skills and place themselves in a position to succeed.

Cracking the Corporate Code presents the stories of 32 executives whose stories define African-American business success. Thriving in spite of multiple obstacles, they have enjoyed extraordinary careers at (and helped build the fortunes of) organizations including Sears Roebuck, General Mills, Coors Brewing Company, Coca-Cola, Revlon, Citibank, AON, Corning, Paine Webber, and many more.

In remarkably candid interviews, these exemplary professionals reveal not only the secrets of their successes, but the sources of their fears, their most difficult challenges, and their hopes for the future. Their experiences are presented according to what they reveal about the black experience in the white-centric workplace, from uncertainty to confidence, from struggle to strength, and from enjoying success to giving back in the name of those whose fortunes have yet to turn."

The discovery of the Black Giant in 1930 was the largest oil strike in the U.S. at that time, and its gushers changed the face of the oil industry. Oilmen, promoters, oil patch workers, and the nation's unemployed streamed into the tiny hamlets of East Texas for their share, but they faced wars between "big oil" and independent oilmen, bootleg or "hot oil," martial law, and legalized price-fixing. Yet the Black Giant turned out to be the salvation of the drought-stricken farmers, helped in the fight against Germany and Japan, and made lots of folks "Texas rich." The characters, times, and oil industry skulduggery are recalled and explained in dozens of sidebars full of humorous facts and trivia. The author, law professor at Washington College of Law, The American University, practiced oil and gas law for over 35 years and focused on oil and gas matters during the Arab oil embargo for the U.S. Department of the Interior.