The American Corporation Today or Managing through Incentives

The American Corporation Today: Examaning the Questions of Power and Efficiency at the Century's end

Author: Carl Kaysen

In The American Corporation Today, Carl Kaysen and other leading students of business and markets from around the country provide a much-needed analysis of American corporate life at the end of the century. Here is the American corporation from every angle - its postwar history, its relation to the law, its financing, its impact on technological innovation, its role as employer and as political force, and much more. The contributors - all of whom are recognized experts in their fields - not only tackle many of the same key areas that the contributors to Mason's classic study looked at, but they also illuminate issues that have only arisen in recent years. For instance, Raymond Vernon describes the increasing globalization of American business, where the net income from operations outside the U.S. is now nearly half of that from domestic operations (as opposed to one-tenth in the 1950s). James Q. Wilson traces how the corporation has become a full-time political actor, showing how it reinvented its political strategy and tactics in the 1960s in the face of a wave of new consumer, environmental, and worker health legislation. Gregory Acs and Eugene Steuerle show how the corporation promotes the commonweal, acting as agent for the employee in purchasing pension, health, and other welfare benefit plans, while Lester Thurow casts a critical eye at the decline of median real wages of American males over the last twenty years (never before have a majority of American workers suffered real wage reductions while the real per capita gross domestic product was increasing). In other pieces, corporate finance experts Charles Calomiris and Carlos Ramirez advocate removing legal constraints on financial institutions that prevent them from providing the full range of business financing from short-term debt to equity, Michael Useem looks at the rise of education and training as a vexing corporate issue, and Barbara Bergmann discusses the increasingly diverse work force, arguing

Booknews

A survey of the American corporation at the end of the 20th century redefining its postwar history, relations to the law, financing , impact on technological innovation, and role as an employer and political force. The 19 contributors make critical assessments of corporate practices, commenting on the decline of median real wages for American males while per capita gross domestic product increased, the diversity challenges that face modern businesses and their need to grapple with unbiased employer practices, as well as a significant difference of opinion in regards to governmental interference in the marketplace. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Contributors
1	Introduction and Overview	3
2	The Rise and Transformation of the American Corporation	28
3	How American Is the American Corporation?	74
4	From Antitrust to Corporation Governance? The Corporation and the Law: 1959-1994	102
5	Financing the American Corporation: The Changing Menu of Financial Relationships	128
6	The U.S. Corporation and Technical Progress	187
7	The American Corporation as an Employer: Past, Present, and Future Possibilities	242
8	The Corporation Faces Issues of Race and Gender	269
9	Corporate Education and Training	292
10	The Modern Corporation as an Efficiency Instrument: The Comparative Contracting Perspective	327
11	The Corporation as a Dispenser of Welfare and Security	360
12	Almost Everywhere: Surging Inequality and Falling Real Wages	383
13	The Corporation as a Political Actor	413
14	Architecture and the Business Corporation	436
	Index	487

Go to: Principles of Advertising or The Law of Corporations and Other Business Organizations

Managing Through Incentives: How to Develop a More Collaborative, Productive, and Profitable Organization

Author: Richard B McKenzi

Richard McKenzie and Dwight Lee show how to select the right incentives and how to use them for the best results. Generously illustrated with examples from business, industry, government, academia, and professional sports, this volume offers a comprehensive overview of incentives, both in theory and in practice, providing a wealth of ideas managers can use to get employees to work harder, smarter, and more cooperatively.

Library Journal

McKenzie is a professor at the Graduate School of Management, University of California at Irvine, and Lee is a professor at the Graduate School of Business, University of Georgia. In well-written and detailed prose, they articulate their main concern--"the crucial role incentives play in the control and development of any successful firm." They present the pros and cons of incentives as well as why and how they work and discuss in detail incentives for executives and workers and those used for marketing to consumers (frequent-flyer plans, discounts on new autos, etc.). They also investigate the importance of incentives in the global marketplace and methods for providing them. Many anecdotes and examples from the worlds of industry, academe, and sports (where incentives and bonuses play an increasingly heavy role) demonstrate how management uses incentives for profit and success. A good choice for large public and academic libraries.--Steven J. Mayover, Free Lib. of Philadelphia