Battling Big Business PDF Download

Author: Eveline Lubbers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Part one analyses a wide range of corporate counter-strategies [against critics], from relatively innocent PR measures to complete intelligence operations. Part two offers tactical tools to recognize manipulative strategies, and how to counter them with creativity and new media tools.

Author: Stephen Halebsky
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739122401
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
During the 1990s, a new type of controversy began occurring across the United States: controversies over the siting of superstores, also known as big box stores. In these disputes, which often involved Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, local citizens mounted organized opposition to the proposed siting of a superstores in their town or neighborhood. Opponents criticized Wal-Mart superstores for putting local independent merchants out of business, siphoning money from the local economy, providing substandard jobs, disrupting residential neighborhoods, contributing to the "McDonaldization" of society, inducing sprawl, destroying downtowns and Main Streets, and undermining local uniqueness and small town charm. More generally, these David-and-Goliath controversies represented particularly stark examples of the conflict of interests between local communities and large corporations that have become common in contemporary society. Small Towns and Big Business uses fieldwork and archival sources to comprehensively examine these controversies and the underlying issues. While Wal-Mart is usually able to site its stores at its preferred locations, in some cases local opponents have been able to thwart its plans. Using detailed case studies of anti-superstore controversies in six small cities in five states, Halebsky employs a comparative-historical approach to construct an explanation of how some of these local social movements managed to prevail against Wal-Mart. This explanation is then extended to provide the basis for a model of the general conditions under which local communities may be able to constrain unwanted corporate action. Thus, this is both a study of social movement outcomes and an investigation of community-corporate conflict. Small Towns and Big Business provides insight into the potential of the local state to control large corporations, the inherently problematic nature of corporate retailing, the possibilities for resisting McDonaldization, and the fate of local anti-corporation activism. Book jacket.

Author: Elizabeth Royte
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608196631
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Second only to soda, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the country. The brands have become so ubiquitous that we're hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian were once real springs, bubbling in remote corners of Maine and France. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of dollars, have we begun to question what it is we're drinking. In this intelligent, accomplished work of narrative journalism, Elizabeth Royte does for water what Michael Pollan did for food: she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from distant aquifers to our supermarkets. Along the way, she investigates the questions we must inevitably answer. Who owns our water? How much should we drink? Should we have to pay for it? Is tap safe water safe to drink? And if so, how many chemicals are dumped in to make it potable? What happens to all those plastic bottles we carry around as predictably as cell phones? And of course, what's better: tap water or bottled?

Author: Bruce Nussbaum
Publisher: Penguin Mass Market
ISBN: 9780140160000
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A blistering portrait of an ongoing international scandal--with a new afterword that provides a front-line report on the latest developments in the AIDS crisis. Nussbaum tells of vaulting ambition and greed, of vast sums of money filtered through government agencies and into the profit statements of the manufacturer of AZT, Burroughs Wellcome. 16 pages of photographs.

Author: David Brown
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1529307023
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
"A ROLLICKING READ ABOUT THE CORPORATE WORLD'S GREATEST RIVALRIES." ADAM GRANT, New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and Originals, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife Based on the chart-topping BUSINESS WARS podcast, here are the stories and lessons from history's greatest business rivalries - retold as you've never heard them before. Some of the companies here have been featured on the podcast, many are entirely new, and ALL of the material presents a fresh perspective, with each chapter thematically inspired by a chapter of Sun Tzu's classic, The Art of War. From the pocket showdown of iPhone vs Blackberry to the epic stand-off of Beats vs Monster, The Art of Business Wars goes deep into the business trenches to explore the stories behind the stories. In this gripping study of triumph and disaster, you'll discover the real-life love spat between the co-founders of Tinder which led to the creation of its competitor Bumble, the battle of the fast fashion giants H&M and Zara where speed is everything, how Wrigley almost bit off more than it could chew, and Nintendo leveled up in America. With these and many more tales from business battlefields all over the world The Art of Business Wars reveals the strategies, positioning, dirty tricks, and eye for exploiting vulnerabilities, that make the difference between success and failure. David Brown, host of the hit podcast Business Wars, masterfully frames some of the biggest business rivalries in history using the wisdom and pragmatic advice of revered Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. Each battle Brown examines tells a story of contending wits, strategies, and resources. He chronicles the rise of companies as they formulate innovative plans, vanquish foes, and adapt to shifting societal needs. The goal: stay ahead of the competition and emerge victorious as an industry titan. Compiling powerful insights uncovered over hundreds of episodes and more than a year of in-depth research, Brown offers an extraordinary formula for victory woven into a series of gripping, real-life tales straight from the business trenches. The stories in The Art of Business Wars are fascinating, but the lessons we draw from them - about determination, ingenuity, patience, grit, subtlety, and other key traits that contribute to a victorious enterprise - are invaluable, whether you're a software-slinging freelancer or the CEO of a multinational corporation.

Author: David Rothkopf
Publisher: Penguin Canada
ISBN: 0143183974
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
The rise of the corporate supercitizen and the consequences for society Only about thirty countries possess the powers usually associated with sovereign nations. The rest can’t actually defend their borders, govern their finances independently, or meet the basic needs of their people. In this provocative and persuasive new book, David Rothkopf calls these others semistates and argues that they’re much less powerful than hundreds of corporate supercitizens. A multitude of facts demonstrates the reach of the modern corporation. Walmart has revenues greater than the GDP of all but twenty-five nations. The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, controls $3.3 trillion, almost as much as the currency reserves held by China and Japan combined. Corporations in Third World countries routinely hire mercenary armies to enforce their will, and in some cases (such as Shell in Nigeria), they control the politicians as well. Striking a balance between public and private power has become the defining challenge for all societies. In Power, Inc., Rothkopf argues that the decline of the state is irreversible. The way forward is to harness corporate resources in the service of individual nations to forge a radically new relationship between the individual and the institutions that govern our lives.

Author: Shoshana Zuboff
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610395700
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 683

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Book Description
The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

Author: Steve Tobak
Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
ISBN: 1613083203
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Leaders Lead. Followers Follow. You Can't Do Both. Acknowledging the great irony that most of today's inspiring entrepreneurs are following the crowd instead of doing what innovative leaders like Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk did to become successful, Silicon Valley management consultant Steve Tobak delivers some truth: Nobody ever made it big by doing what everyone else is doing. Drawing upon decades of personal experience with hundreds of accomplished entrepreneurs, CEOs, and venture capitalists, Tobak provides a unique perspective on today's technology revolution, exposes popular myths that masquerade as common wisdom and shows you what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur and an exceptional business leaders in today's highly competitive world.

Author: Adam Winkler
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 0871403846
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
National Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A PBS “Now Read This” Book Club Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and the Boston Globe A landmark exposé and “deeply engaging legal history” of one of the most successful, yet least known, civil rights movements in American history (Washington Post). In a revelatory work praised as “excellent and timely” (New York Times Book Review, front page), Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight, once again makes sense of our fraught constitutional history in this incisive portrait of how American businesses seized political power, won “equal rights,” and transformed the Constitution to serve big business. Uncovering the deep roots of Citizens United, he repositions that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision as the capstone of a centuries-old battle for corporate personhood. “Tackling a topic that ought to be at the heart of political debate” (Economist), Winkler surveys more than four hundred years of diverse cases—and the contributions of such legendary legal figures as Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—to reveal that “the history of corporate rights is replete with ironies” (Wall Street Journal). We the Corporations is an uncompromising work of history to be read for years to come.

Author: Nelson D. Schwartz
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385543093
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
From New York Times business reporter Nelson D. Schwartz comes a gripping investigation of how a virtual velvet rope divides Americans in every arena of life, creating a friction-free existence for those with money on one side and a Darwinian struggle for the middle class on the other side. In nearly every realm of daily life--from health care to education, highways to home security--there is an invisible velvet rope that divides how Americans live. On one side of the rope, for a price, red tape is cut, lines are jumped, appointments are secured, and doors are opened. On the other side, middle- and working-class Americans fight to find an empty seat on the plane, a place in line with their kids at the amusement park, a college acceptance, or a hospital bed. We are all aware of the gap between the rich and everyone else, but when we weren't looking, business innovators stepped in to exploit it, shifting services away from the masses and finding new ways to profit by serving the privileged. And as decision-makers and corporate leaders increasingly live on the friction-free side of the velvet rope, they are less inclined to change--or even notice--the obstacles everyone else must contend with. Schwartz's "must read" book takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of this new reality and shows the toll the velvet rope divide takes on society.