Quarterly Essay 10 Bad Company

Quarterly Essay 10 Bad Company
Author: Gideon Haigh
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd.
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2003-06-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 192182509X

In Bad Company Gideon Haigh scrutinises the way we have turned CEOs into tin gods. Is moral outrage the appropriate response to the collapses of Enron or HIH or are we all implicated in a crazy system? Haigh argues that the attempt to create great entrepreneurs of the new caste of CEOs by giving them shares is doomed to failure and inherently absurd. In a tough-minded, vigorous demolition job on the culture that produced the cult of the CEO, Haigh writes a mini-history of business and shows how the classic traditions of capitalism are mocked by the managerialism of the present. ‘The making of the modern CEO has been a story of more: more power, more discretion, more ownership, more money, more demands, more expectations and, above all, more illusions. More, as so often, has brought less ...’ —Gideon Haigh, Bad Company ‘The world where the CEO is deemed to be a 'genius' at least equal to a great actor or a great sportsman is a world in which ... Gideon Haigh refuses to believe.’ —Peter Craven ‘Of all the extraordinary corporate stories of the 1990s, none has been more powerful than what Gideon Haigh wants to call the cult of the CEO.’ —Sydney Morning Herald ‘Haigh should be showered with blessings for producing a book which not only says boo to these geese, but has the figures and the historical perspective to back itself up. There’s even some good business advise in there.’ —Nicholas Lezard, the Guardian ‘A cogent and elegant argument.’ —Business Review Weekly Gideon Haigh has worked as a journalist for the Bulletin, the Guardian, the Australian, the Times and the Monthly. As an author he has written books on business, including Quarterly Essay 10: Bad Company – The Cult of the CEO, The Battle for BHP and One of a Kind: The Story of Bankers Trust Australia 1969–1999, and on cricket: Silent Revolutions, Game for Anything, The Green and Golden Age.

Bad Company

Bad Company
Author: Gideon Haigh
Publisher: White Lion Publishing
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781854109699

Over the course of 2003 the post of Chief Executive Officer or CEO - effectively, the person at the top of the company - has become a notorious poisoned chalice for many incumbents, from Glaxo's Jean Paul Garnier to Marconi's Lord Morrison and Vodafone's Chris Gent. New government legislation offering shareholders the chance to vote on top people's remuneration packages has exposed some extraordinarily generous, even downright incredible, terms of employment, and triggered storms of protest. badly; bonuses triggered even when the company makes a loss; salaries that shoot up as fast as the share price plummets; vast share options, millions paid into pension plans, free dental care for your wife for life. All this plus a basic income into the high six figures for starters: being a CEO, it would seem, is nice work if you can get it. CEO. Why do we need him (almost always him)? What does he actually do? How did he come to be paid more even when the rest of the workforce is having to swallow a pay-cut and the closure of the final-salary pension scheme? Why, whatever the company's fortunes, does he always just get more? Would a company actually miss the CEO if it didn't have him at all?

CEO Society

CEO Society
Author: Peter Bloom
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2018-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 178699075X

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) have become the cultural icons of the 21st century. Figures like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are held up as role models who epitomise the modern pursuit of innovation, wealth and success. We now live, Bloom and Rhodes argue, in a ‘CEO society’ – a society where corporate leadership has become the model for transforming not just business, but all spheres of life, where everyone from politicians to jobseekers to even those seeking love are expected to imitate the qualities of the lionized corporate executive. But why, in the wake of the failings exposed by the 2008 financial crisis, does the corporate ideal continue to exert such a grip on popular attitudes? In this insightful new book, Bloom and Rhodes examine the rise of the CEO society, and how it has started to transform governments, culture and the economy. This influence, they argue, holds troubling implications for the future of democracy - as evidenced by the disturbing political rise of Donald Trump in the US - and for our society as a whole.

Celebrity Society

Celebrity Society
Author: Robert van Krieken
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2012-06-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 113629855X

On television, in magazines and books, on the internet and in films, celebrities of all sorts seem to monopolize our attention. Celebrity Society brings new dimensions to our understanding of celebrity, capturing the way in which the figure of ‘the celebrity’ is bound up with the emergence of modernity. It outlines how the ‘celebrification of society’ is not just the twentieth-century product of Hollywood and television, but a long-term historical process, beginning with the printing press, theatre and art. By looking beyond the accounts of celebrity ‘culture’, Robert van Krieken develops an analysis of ‘celebrity society’, with its own constantly changing social practices and structures, moral grammar, construction of self and identity, legal order and political economy organized around the distribution of visibility, attention and recognition. Drawing on the work of Norbert Elias, the book explains how contemporary celebrity society is the heir (or heiress) of court society, taking on but also democratizing many of the functions of the aristocracy. The book also develops the idea of celebrity as driven by the ‘economics of attention’, because attention has become a vital and increasingly valuable resource in the information age. This engaging new book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in sociology, politics, history, celebrity studies, cultural studies, the sociology of media and cultural theory.

Concise Guide to Value Investing

Concise Guide to Value Investing
Author: Brian McNiven
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2016-05-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118320344

The business performance creates the value -- the price creates the OPPORTUNITY. No-one likes to pay too much for something. We all like to thing that what we buy is ' good value'. It's not different when we purchase a share in company listed on the stock market. In the Concise Guide to Value Investing, Brian McNiven reveals how to calculate the true value of a company to find out whether you are paying a fair price. This fascinating book explores: value investing versus speculation the difference between price and value variable values of a dollar of earnings accounting misrepresentation the characteristics of a wonderful business the StockVal® valuation formula. Two of the world's most successful investors, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, are self-confessed value investors. McNiven often draws on their wisdom to support his approach to value investing,which he defines as buying a share at a price lower than its calculated value. Only investors who have the ability to calculate value can call themselves 'value investors'.

Corporate Fraud Exposed

Corporate Fraud Exposed
Author: H. Kent Baker
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2020-10-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1789734193

Corporate Fraud Exposed uncovers the motivations and drivers of fraud including agency theory, executive compensation, and organizational culture. It delves into the consequences of fraud for various firm stakeholders, and its spillover effects on other corporations, the political environment, and financial market participants.

Quarterly Essay 71 Follow the Leader

Quarterly Essay 71 Follow the Leader
Author: Laura Tingle
Publisher: Black Inc.
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2018-09-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1743820593

What is true political leadership, and how do we get it? What qualities should we wish for in our leaders? And why is it killing season for prime ministers? In this wise and timely essay, Laura Tingle argues that democratic leaders build a consensus for change, rather than bludgeon the system or turn politics into a popularity contest. They mobilise and guide, more than impose a vision. Tingle offers acute portraits – profiles in courage and cunning – of leaders ranging from Merkel and Howard to Macron and Obama. She discusses the rise of the strongman, including Donald Trump, for whom there is no map, only sentiment and power. And she analyses what has gone wrong with politics in Australia, arguing that successful leaders know what they want to do, and create the space and time to do it. After the Liberal Party’s recent episode of political madness, where does this leave the nation’s new prime minister, Scott Morrison? “The Liberal Party has been ripped apart and our polity is the worse off for having one of its major political parties rendered largely ungovernable ... Malcolm Turnbull’s fate came down to a series of judgements made not just by him, but by his colleagues, who spent much of his prime ministership failing to follow the leader and also failing in their own collective responsibility for leadership.” —Laura Tingle, Follow the Leader

Quarterly Essay 58 Blood Year

Quarterly Essay 58 Blood Year
Author: David Kilcullen
Publisher: Black Inc.
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2015-05-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1925203263

Last year was a “blood year” in the Middle East – massacres and beheadings, fallen cities, collapsed and collapsing states, the unravelling of a decade of Western strategy. We saw the rise of ISIS, the splintering of government in Iraq, and foreign fighters – many from Europe, Australia and Africa – flowing into Syria at a rate ten times that during the height of the Iraq War. What went wrong? In Blood Year, David Kilcullen calls on twenty-five years’ experience to answer that question. This is a vivid, urgent account of the War on Terror by someone who helped shape its strategy, as well as witnessing its evolution on the ground. Kilcullen looks to strategy and history to make sense of the crisis. What are the roots and causes of the global jihad movement? What is ISIS? What threats does it pose to Australia? What does its rise say about the effectiveness of the War on Terror since 9/11, and what does a coherent strategy look like after a disastrous year? “As things stand in mid-2015, Western countries . . . face a larger, more unified, capable, experienced and savage enemy, in a less stable, more fragmented region. It isn’t just ISIS – al-Qaeda has emerged from its eclipse and is back in the game in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Syria and Yemen. We’re dealing with not one, but two global terrorist organisations, each with its own regional branches, plus a vastly larger radicalised population at home and a massive flow of foreign fighters.” —David Kilcullen, Blood Year Winner of the 2015 Walkley Award for best long feature writing.

Business Leadership and the Lessons from Sport

Business Leadership and the Lessons from Sport
Author: H. Westerbeek
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2005-05-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0230524419

Sport represents a very intense and dynamic form of competition for individuals and for teams. Many of the themes of business, including leadership, teamworking, mentoring and coaching, strategy, innovation, etc. occur in sport in a very acute and focused way and will determine success or failure. With the use of compelling international examples the authors show how sport provides crucial leadership lessons for business.

Quarterly Essay 45 Us and Them

Quarterly Essay 45 Us and Them
Author: Anna Krien
Publisher: Black Inc.
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1921870567

For the first time in history, humans sit unchallenged at the top of the food chain. As we encroach on the wild and a vast wave of extinctions gathers force, how has our relationship with animals changed? In this dazzling essay, Anna Krien investigates the world we have made and the complexity of the choices we face. From pets to the live cattle trade, from apex predators to scientific experiments, Krien shows how we should – and do – treat our fellow creatures. As she delves deeper, she finds that animals can trigger primal emotions in us, which we are often unwilling to acknowledge. This is a clear-eyed meditation on humanity and animality, us and them, that brings out the importance of animals in an unforgettable way. “I am not weighing up whether our treatment of animals is just, because it isn’t. That age-old debate is a farce – deep down we all know it. The real question is, just how much of this injustice are we prepared to live with?” —Anna Krien, Us and Them