When Carter Bryant began work on what would become the billion-dollar line of Bratz dolls, he was taking time off from his job at Mattel where he designed outfits for Barbie. Later, back at Mattel, he sold his concept for Bratz to rival company MGA. Orly Lobel reveals the colourful story behind the ensuing decade-long court battle. This entertaining and provocative work pits MGA against Mattel, shows how an idea turns into a product and explores the two different versions of womanhood represented by Barbie and her rival. Lobel's story is a thought-provoking contribution to the debate over creativity and intellectual property as American workers may now be asked to sign contracts granting their employers the rights to and income from their ideas.

The queen of magpie style, Alice Temperley s clothing is coveted by the likes of Kate Hudson, the Kardashians, Naomie Harris, and the Duchess of Cambridge. Once sought-after for their indie-boho glamour, her looks have matured into a classic British line that pulls eclectic inspirations into polished looks. This book highlights the key moments that have shaped the last fifteen years of her brand and focuses on the personal moments that are connected with the growth and evolution that have earned her a celebrated and glamorous following. While True British had its eye turned toward the effect Temperley s work had on the fashion world, this book gives a more intimate view of the world that she inhabits, revealing both practical and sentimental sides of the artist s generative process, and conveys the essence of how Temperley works as a designer and how her brand has come to gain such renowned success.

The tenth-anniversary edition of the definitive account of the Enron scandal, updated with a new chapter
The Enron scandal brought down one of the most admired companies of the 1990s. Countless books and articles were written about it, but only "The Smartest Guys in the Room "holds up a decade later as the definitive narrative. For this tenth anniversary edition, McLean and Elkind have revisited the fall of Enron and its aftermath, in a new chapter that asks why Enron still matters. They also reveal the fates of the key players in the scandal.

The first complete history of US industry's most influential and controversial lobbyist Founded in 1895, the National Association of Manufacturers-NAM-helped make manufacturing the basis of the US economy and a major source of jobs in the twentieth century. The Industrialists traces the history of the advocacy group from its origins to today, examining its role in shaping modern capitalism, while also highlighting the many tensions and contradictions within the organization that sometimes hampered its mission. In this compelling book, Jennifer Delton argues that NAM-an organization best known for fighting unions, promoting "free enterprise," and defending corporate interests-was also surprisingly progressive. She shows how it encouraged companies to adopt innovations such as safety standards, workers' comp, and affirmative action, and worked with the US government and international organizations to promote the free exchange of goods and services across national borders. While NAM's modernizing and globalizing activities helped to make American industry the most profitable and productive in the world by midcentury, they also eventually led to deindustrialization, plant closings, and the decline of manufacturing jobs. Taking readers from the Progressive Era and the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution and the Trump presidency, The Industrialists is the story of a powerful organization that fought US manufacturing's political battles, created its economic infrastructure, and expanded its global markets-only to contribute to the widespread collapse of US manufacturing by the close of the twentieth century.

Dollar Shave Club and its hilarious marketing. Casper mattresses popping out of a box. Third Love's lingerie designed specifically for each woman's body. Warby Parker mailing you five pairs of glasses to choose from. You've seen their ads. You (or someone you know) use their products. Each may appear, in isolation, as a rare David with the bravado to confront a Goliath, but taken together they represent a seismic shift in a business model that has lasted more than a century. As Lawrence Ingrassia - former business and economics editor and deputy managing editor at the New York Times - shows in this timely and eye-opening book, a growing number of digital entrepreneurs have found new and creative ways to crack the code on the bonanza of physical goods that move through our lives every day. They have discovered that manufacturing, marketing, logistics, and customer service have all been flattened - where there were once walls that protected big brands like Gillette, Sealy, Victoria's Secret, or Lenscrafters, savvy and hungry innovators now can compete on price, value, quality, speed, convenience, and service. Billion Dollar Brand Club reveals the world of the entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and corporate behemoths battling over this terrain. And what fun it is. It's a massive, high-stakes business saga animated by the personalities, flashes of insight, and stories behind the stuff we use every day.

An in-depth history of how finance remade everyday life in Thatcher's Britain. Are We Rich Yet? tells the story of the financialization of British society. During the 1980s and 1990s, financial markets became part of daily life for many Britons as the practice of investing moved away from the offices of the City of London, onto Britain's high streets, and into people's homes. The Conservative Party claimed this shift as evidence that capital ownership was in the process of being democratized. In practice, investing became more institutionalized than ever in late-twentieth-century Britain: inclusion frequently meant tying one's fortunes to the credit, insurance, pension, and mortgage industries to maintain independence from state-run support systems. In tracing the rise of a consumer-oriented mass investment culture, historian Amy Edwards explains how the "financial" became such a central part of British society, not only economically and politically, but socially and culturally, too. She shifts our focus away from the corridors of Whitehall and towards a cast of characters that included brokers, bankers and traders, newspaper editors, goods manufacturers, marketing departments, production companies, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women. Between them, they shaped the terrain upon which political and economic reform occurred. Grappling with the interactions between structural transformation and the rhythms of everyday life, Are We Rich Yet? thus understands the rise of neoliberalism as something other than the inevitable outcome of a carefully orchestrated right-wing political revolution.

Just as The Color of Law provided a vital understanding of redlining and racial segregation, Marcia Chatelain's Franchise investigates the complex interrelationship between black communities and America's largest, most popular fast food chain. Taking us from the first McDonald's drive-in in San Bernardino to the franchise on Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014, Chatelain shows how fast food is a source of both power-economic and political-and despair for African Americans. As she contends, fast food is, more than ever before, a key battlefield in the fight for racial justice.

From a long-time Alibaba executive and friend of Jack Ma, this is first book to articulate how Alibaba's unique culture and "tai chi" management principles are providing a business and economic development model for the rest of the world.If you took the economic might of Amazon, and added the penetration of Facebook, the ubiquity of Google, and the cultural significance of YouTube, you might have something starting to resemble Alibaba. Commonly mischaracterized as a kind of Chinese eBay for businesses, Alibaba and its interlinked network of products and services have exploded into global markets, disrupting conventional businesses and creating previously unimaginable opportunities for millions of small businesses worldwide. This book reveals the Tao of Alibaba-the company's "secret sauce"-a consciously cultivated ethos and spirit that has enabled Alibaba to weather tough times (including its recent setbacks with the Chinese government) and persist toward a common mission. It is a blueprint of the company's management philosophy, crystalized into the most important elements that have driven its success, and it provides a road map for how to incorporate these principles into any organization's operations. Wong distills his 20 years of experience inside the company to show readers how to align their organization's capabilities with performance-maximizing tools in order to achieve success. But most importantly, the Tao of Alibaba teaches the pursuit of greater purpose and meaning, steering entrepreneurs to view their ventures as a vehicle for having profound and lasting impacts on their communities. Ultimately, the lessons shared in The Tao of Alibaba will serve as timeless tools for any entrepreneur seeking to configure their organization toward purpose and impact.

The 1980s was the era when affordable computers came to UK homes. They were known as microcomputers as their 'brain' was a microprocessor chip. Before then, computers were either found in the IT centres of big companies, taking up a whole room, or were large desktop machines with a price tag that put them out of reach for most people. But in February 1980, a company called Sinclair Computers launched their first home computer costing less than GBP100 - the ZX80. It began a very exciting time for all those with an interest in technology, and the UK home computer market was born. The first Sinclair ZX80s were soon joined by a host of competition in the early years of the 1980s as machines were released from companies such as Acorn, Dragon, Tangerine and Commodore. They all wanted a share of a market that would soon be worth millions of pounds. This book explores the history of these companies and the entrepreneurs behind them such as Sir Clive Sinclair of Sinclair Computers and Chris Curry of Acorn Computers. The innovative machines they produced inspired a generation.

Volume 26 of Studies in the Development of Accounting Thought was written by the late Professor Kevin Christopher Carduff, who taught at several institutions including Case Western Reserve University and the College of Charleston. Establishing a historical account explaining financial reporting's current form, Corporate Reporting examines the complete annual reports from 1902 to 2006 of The United States Steel Corporation - the first United States' company to attain the billion-dollar capitalization in U.S. markets. Studies in the Development of Accounting Thought informs readers of the historical foundations on which the profession is based, the historical antecedents of today's accounting institutions, the historical impact of accounting, as well as exploring the lives and works of pre-eminent individuals in the profession's history. The series focuses on bringing the past into today and using it to point towards the future. Topics featured include finding and utilizing archival materials; the growing importance of the Internet in historical research; the issues involved in writing to historical paradigms; and the pivotal influence and immediacy of oral history.

Persuasively arguing for the inclusion of overlooked female figures whilst simultaneously bridging feminist theory and critical historiography, Historical Female Management Theorists features four literary non-fiction, fictitious conversations with historic female proto-management theorists from Canada and the United States: Frances Perkins (1880-1965), Hallie Flanagan (1890-1969), Madeleine Parent (1918-2012), and Viola Desmond (1914-1965). These women have been noted for their contributions in various fields, however their accomplishments and lessons have largely been overlooked by management and organizational history. A variety of archival, biographical and media sources are combined with Williams's own sense-making and learnings to stitch together a believable, but fictional encounter, introducing a method for feminist historical inquiry - ficto-feminism. A blend of auto-ethnography, collective biography and fictocriticism, this new method explores mechanisms to enact personal agency in subject and writer, featuring a novel narrative, storytelling style inspired by fictional writing. Historical Female Management Theorists is essential reading for both feminist scholars and management historians.

Education is considered key for societies to achieve greater social cohesion and equality. Yet, schools, as the main providers of formal education, have increasingly come into question concerning their role in manifesting and perpetuating social categorisations, inequalities and discrimination instead of decreasing existing fragmentations and challenging power relations and hierarchies.

As a diverse society, Kenya is faced with power struggles and rivalries between different groups - for instance, along ethnic lines, often constructed deep in colonial history. This affects teaching and learning in school and the result is that Kenya is faced with vast disparities in terms of educational access and success - rendering some social groups marginalised and others favoured.

Positioning Diversity at Kenyan Schools explores the ways in which teachers in Kenyan primary and secondary schools experience and deal with social categorisations and diversity in terms of ethnicity, gender, wealth, culture, religion, etc. in their professional practice and in the current education system. Using critical pedagogy and diversity theory as a lens for positioning diversity in Kenyan schools, the questions that this book sets out to answer are: In what ways do the teachers' and schools' practices lead to transformation in terms of more social equality and less discrimination? In what ways do the practices manifest existing group categorisations, hierarchies and discrimination? How can schools and teaching practices in postcolonial Kenya become more inclusive and foster social cohesion and equality?

'An explosive new book' Daily Mail '[A] careful, comprehensive interrogation of every major Facebook scandal. An Ugly Truth provides the kind of satisfaction you might get if you hired a private investigator to track a cheating spouse: it confirms your worst suspicions and then gives you all the dates and details you need to cut through the company's spin' New York Times __________________________________________ Award-winning New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang unveil the tech story of our times in this riveting, behind-the-scenes expose that offers the definitive account of Facebook's fall from grace. Once one of Silicon Valley's greatest success stories, for the past five years Facebook has been under constant fire, roiled by controversies and crises. It turns out that while the tech giant was connecting the world, they were also mishandling users' data, allowing the spread of fake news, and the amplification of dangerous, polarising hate speech. In a period of great upheaval, growth has remained the one constant under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Each has stood by as their technology is co-opted by hate-mongers, criminals and corrupt political regimes across the globe, with devastating consequences. In An Ugly Truth, they are at last held accountable. __________________________________________ 'Better sourced than all of its predecessors in the genre . . . makes for gripping as well as depressing reading. One of the book's striking revelations is that there is more anxiety inside the company than we realised. Many Facebook employees have been anguished, frustrated or angry about what their employer has been doing in its relentless quest for growth. Some have tried to alert their superiors to their concerns. But time and again the bad news hasn't persuaded those bosses because they didn't sync with the overriding imperative of endless corporate growth . . . The problem of Facebook is Zuckerberg. And the question posed by this splendid book is: what are we going to do about him?' Observer, Book of the Week 'What marks this book out is how it gets under the corporate bonnet . . . to build a picture of astounding corporate arrogance and irresponsibility' Sunday Times 'A detailed dismantling of what happened at the highest levels of the company as it pursued a policy of deny, deflect and obfuscate' New Statesman

A veteran New York Times reporter dissects the most spectacular failure in real estate history
Real estate giant Tishman Speyer and its partner, BlackRock, lost billions of dollars when their much-vaunted purchase of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village in New York City failed to deliver the expected profits. But how did Tishman Speyer walk away from the deal unscathed, while others took the financial hit--and MetLife scored a $3 billion profit?
Illuminating the world of big real estate the way Too Big to Fail did for banks, "Other People's Money" is a riveting account of politics, high finance, and the hubris that ultimately led to the nationwide real estate meltdown.

The remarkable story of one man's journey to leadership of the world's largest energy company, The Caravan Goes On is the first published inside account of the workings of the corporation by a CEO and represents a significant addition to the literature on the turbulent development of the world's oil industry. Frank Jungers, former President, Chairman and CEO of the petroleum giant Aramco, tells the inside story of his three decades in Saudi Arabia (1947-1978) with the world's largest oil producing company. A North Dakota farm boy Jungers rose to the top of one of the most important hydrocarbon enterprises ever, a company that eventually found itself responsible for nearly one-quarter of the world's oil resources. He writes of his face-to-face encounters with King Faisal and other Saudi leaders, and his role in steering the company through major international crises that included the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the dramatic oil price increases of the 1970s, the Arab oil embargo and the OPEC hostage incident of 1975. Central to Jungers' story is his role in helping to develop Aramco's Saudi workforce in preparation for the eventual transfer of company ownership from four American oil majors to the Government of Saudi Arabia. He explains the unique nature of the ownership transfer, which was remarkably different from the bitter nationalization process seen in Iraq, Libya, Iran and Venezuela. Jungers describes how Aramco and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in an important sense grew up together, and he highlights the crucial role played by Aramco in the development of the young nation's infrastructure and economy. The Caravan Goes On describes the origins of the petroleum industry in Saudi Arabia, with the granting of a concession in 1933 to a subsidiary of Standard Oil of California, the first of Aramco's four oil-company parents. Jungers talks of his own origins as the son of farmer in North Dakota, the family's migration westward due to drought and depression, and his engineering studies at the University of Washington. Jungers began his career in Saudi Arabia working at Ras Tanura, site of Aramco's first oil refinery and oil tanker terminal. He describes how Aramco built its initial workforce, consisting of Americans, Italians, Saudis and other nationalities; he explains how it soon became clear that the future of the Saudi oil industry belonged not with foreign oil interest but to the people of Saudi Arabia; and he relates how he and others worked to give Saudis the training and incentives needed to take over and successfully operate what would become the world's premier oil producing and exporting company. At the same time, Aramco, with its technological expertise and its access to international specialists, began playing a central role in the development of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The company, with support and encouragement of the Saudi Kings, took a lead role in building healthcare, agriculture, the railroads, the electric grid and other sectors of the Saudi economy. The story of the "King Faisal Era" (including the monarch's role in the oil price issue, the Arab oil embargo and his closed-door meetings with the King and his key advisers, including Oil Minister Shaikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani) are vividly described, as well as the shock of King Faisal's tragic death and the tense moments of the OPEC hostage incident that began in Vienna and ended in North Africa. Jungers speaks of his involvement in launching Saudi Arabia's Master Gas System, now a central part of the national economy and his pivotal role in the consolidation of Saudi Arabia's electrical power grid in the Eastern Province. When he returned to Saudi Arabia in 2008 to attend the celebrations of the company's 75th anniversary he fully realized the success of the Aramco venture - how it had indeed prepared large numbers of Saudis for the responsibilities of leading their country's oil industry into a new and exciting economic era. This personal, colorful and up-close view is required reading for oil-industry watchers as well as those interested in big business, geopolitics, America's role in the Middle East and the extraordinary transformation and emergence of modern Saudi Arabia since oil was discovered in its Eastern Province.

'An engrossing story of audacious entrepreneurism' -- Charles Duhigg 'Captures the remarkable journey of Airbnb exceedingly well' -- Reid Hoffman 'fast paced, fun dive into one of the seminal firms of our time' -- Rana Foroohar In 2008, two broke art school graduates and their coder-whiz friend set up a platform that - in less than a decade - became one of the largest provider of accommodations in the world. Now valued at $31 billion, Airbnb is in the very top tier of Silicon Valley's 'unicorn' startups. Yet the company has not been without controversy - disrupting a $500 billion hotel industry makes you a few enemies. This is also a story of regulators who want to shut it down, hotel industry leaders who want it to disappear and neighbourhoods that struggle with private homes open for public rental. But beyond the headlines and the horror stories, Airbnb has changed the terms of travel for a whole generation - where a sense of belonging has built trust between hosts and guests seeking a more original travel experience that hotels have struggled to replicate. This is the first, definitive book to tell the remarkable story behind Airbnb in all its forms - cultural zeitgeist, hotel disruptor, enemy to regulators - and the first in-depth character study of its leader Brian Chesky, the company's curious co-founder and CEO. It reveals what got Airbnb where it is today, why they are nothing like Uber, and where they are going next.

A historical look at the early evolution of global trade and how this led to the creation and dominance of the European business corporation Before the seventeenth century, trade across Eurasia was mostly conducted in short segments along the Silk Route and Indian Ocean. Business was organized in family firms, merchant networks, and state-owned enterprises, and dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arabic traders. However, around 1600 the first two joint-stock corporations, the English and Dutch East India Companies, were established. Going the Distance tells the story of overland and maritime trade without Europeans, of European Cape Route trade without corporations, and of how new, large-scale, and impersonal organizations arose in Europe to control long-distance trade for more than three centuries. Ron Harris shows that by 1700, the scene and methods for global trade had dramatically changed: Dutch and English merchants shepherded goods directly from China and India to northwestern Europe. To understand this transformation, Harris compares the organizational forms used in four major regions: China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. The English and Dutch were the last to leap into Eurasian trade, and they innovated in order to compete. They raised capital from passive investors through impersonal stock markets and their joint-stock corporations deployed more capital, ships, and agents to deliver goods from their origins to consumers. Going the Distance explores the history behind a cornerstone of the modern economy, and how this organizational revolution contributed to the formation of global trade and the creation of the business corporation as a key factor in Europe's economic rise.

Ever since it was founded in 1845, the Fratelli Branca Distillerie company has maintained a solid foothold in both domestic and international markets. Its unmistakable, bitter-tasting liqueur quickly became legendary with its combination of herbs and roots sourced from all over the world. The pioneering secret recipe, which is left to brew in oak barrels for over a year, soon made history under the name Fernet-Branca. Today the company continues to have its base in Milan, but exports its entire range worldwide thanks to a string of winning advertising campaigns, some of which have entered design and poster history in over a century of creative publicity. This book covers 170 years of the company's life through a richly illustrated historical account that documents the continued rise of the brand, and includes many of the more successful advertising campaigns, offering a handsome collector's album of historical coverage and archive material, including reproductions of poster-art and sketches from the 1960s and 1980s.

Vauxhall cars have been central to motoring in Britain for over a century. The company built a formidable reputation in its early years with notable machines like the Prince Henry, the 30/98 and the 1914 Grand Prix cars, and then moved into a more mainstream area of the market, remaining in the forefront of innovation during the 1930s. The post-1945 years saw the company as one of the foremost in Britain, catering for family needs with cars like the Velox, the Cresta, and the Victor, and then building the highly successful Viva range of smaller models. Closely aligned with its German cousin, Opel, Vauxhall relied increasingly on Opel's designs after the mid-1970s. Astra, Cavalier, Nova and Carlton were among the best-loved cars of their era, and no-one can forget the giant-killing 176mph Lotus Carlton. This illustrated introduction explores the history of Vauxhall cars from its beginning in 1903 to the city cars and SUVs that have led the Vauxhall product lines, as the company continues to excel in the twenty-first century.

In 2021, GW Pharmaceuticals plc was sold for $7.2 billion (GBP5.2 billion), but Dr Geoffrey Guy started it with just a licence from the UK Home Office and his personal cheque book. A Worthwhile Medicine tells the story of how and why he persuaded reluctant health regulators, sceptical investors and a conservative medical establishment that cannabis really could form the basis for a modern pharmaceutical - which he defines as 'a worthwhile medicine that can make money'. He had built up one publicly quoted pharmaceutical company only to have to step down from the top job after a failed attempt to float on the UK stock market. Undeterred, he started another venture after hearing heartrending tales of how multiple sclerosis sufferers were being denied symptom-relief because cannabis was a prohibited drug. He believed the answer was not to change the law and decriminalise recreational drugs but to create a licensed medicine from cannabis that doctors could prescribe safely for their patients. Looking to the future, Dr Guy has established a foundation to explore the exciting new area of quantum biology - the science of sub-atomic particles - which is completely changing our understanding of the ways in which all life functions.

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.

Diamond Warriors in Colonial Namibia enters into unchartered scholarly territory of illegal diamond smuggling at the largest diamond mining company in colonial Namibia-De Beers' Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa (CDM). It details the underground activities of the natives (migrant workers) employed by the CDM and how these illicit activities accounted for rapid development in Owamboland.

Beyond this account, the book takes on the deterministic 'natural resource curse' theory that equates natural resource endowments to a curse resulting in underdevelopment and sometimes conflict. It is argued and proven herein, from a decolonial standpoint, that such an approach is an oversimplification of the political economy of natural resources in Africa in general and Namibia in particular.

The text also provides a contextual account of the contract labour system and details the symbiotic relationship between CDM and the colonial state before highlighting the remaining unanswered questions and areas of further research.

Few cities have seen the rise and fall that Detroit has. At its height, it was the fourth largest city in the U.S. with 1.85 million residents. Today there are less than 700,000. In 2013, the city declared bankruptcy, making it the largest municipal bankruptcy in history. There are an estimated 70,000 abandoned buildings, 31,000 empty homes, and 90,000 vacant lots in the Motor City. This is where Abandoned Detroit picks up the story. What became of these forgotten buildings? Have you ever wondered what lies within that old building as you drive past? Join us as we step foot inside these haunting and beautiful locations including: factories, schools, nursing homes, zoos, hospitals, houses, and many more. Featuring over 200 full-color photographs, you will witness the beauty that can be found in decay as we look at these buildings, many for the last time before they are lost forever to time or the wrecking ball. Abandoned Detroit not only takes you inside these lost places but tells the history of them and how they came to be abandoned.