The Palgrave Companion to Harvard Economics


Book Description

Harvard University has been and continues to be one of the most important global centres for economics. With three chapters on themes in Harvard economics and 41 chapters on the lives and work of Harvard economists, these two volumes show how economics became established at the University, how it produced some of the world’s best-known economists, including Joseph Schumpeter, Wassily Leontief and John Kenneth Galbraith, and how it remains a global force for the very best in teaching and research in economics. With original contributions from a stellar cast, the volumes provide economists – especially those interested in macroeconomics and the history of economic thought – with an in-depth analysis of Harvard economics. Robert A. Cord holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and his areas of interest include the history of economic thought and, within this, the history of macroeconomics. His publications include Reinterpreting the Keynesian Revolution (2012), Milton Friedman: Contributions to Economics and Public Policy (co-editor; 2016) and The Palgrave Companion to Chicago Economics (editor; 2022).




Monthly Labor Review


Book Description

Publishes in-depth articles on labor subjects, current labor statistics, information about current labor contracts, and book reviews.




Education, Social Background and Cognitive Ability


Book Description

Are socioeconomic inequalities in education declining? Is socioeconomic background becoming less important for people’s occupational class or status? How important is cognitive ability for education and later occupational outcomes? How do countries differ in the importance of socioeconomic background for education and work? Gary N. Marks argues that in western industrialized countries, pervasive views that socioeconomic background (or class background) has strong and unchanging relationships with education and later socioeconomic outcomes, resistant to policy and social change, are unfounded. Marks provides a large amount of evidence from many countries showing that the influence of socioeconomic background for education is moderate and most often declining, and socioeconomic background has only very weak impacts on adults’ occupation and earnings after taking into account education and cognitive ability. Furthermore, Marks shows that cognitive ability is a more powerful influence than socioeconomic background for educational outcomes, and that in addition to its indirect effects through education has a direct effect on occupation and earnings. Its effects cannot be dismissed as simply another aspect of socioeconomic background, nor do the usual criticisms of ‘cognitive ability’ apply. The declining effects for socioeconomic background and the importance of cognitive ability support several of the contentions of modernization theory. The book contributes to a variety of debates within sociology: quantitative and qualitative approaches, explanatory and non-explanatory theory, the relationship between theory and empirical research, the role of political ideology in research, sociology as a social science, and sociology’s contribution to knowledge about contemporary societies. It will appeal to professionals in the fields of education and sociology as well as postgraduate students and academics involved in the debate.




Meanings of Work


Book Description

Meanings of Work examines interconnected cultural, social, and economic dimensions of human work. It provides an innovating interdisciplinary basis for understanding the fast changing patterns of work in a now globally unitary market, increasingly beset with problems such as contingent employment and decline of the middle class. In concentrating on sociocultural considerations of work, the book includes essays from Herbert Applebaum, Marietta L. Baba, Ivar Berg, Judith R. Blau, Amitai Etzioni, Frederick C. Gamst, Walter Goldschmidt, June Nash, and Robert Weiss. The authors discuss the scope, utility, applications, and limitations of historical and contemporary theories, analyses, and ideas about the integration of societies through work organizations and their occupational and other social statuses. Also included are the issues of discontent and satisfaction generated by work; the cultural meanings and myths of work; the exercise of power in work; the decision-making process as affected by emotions and values; the social expectations of work and nonwork, including the distinguishing of work from leisure; and the reactions to and processes of retirement from work.




Work and Industry


Book Description

Work occupies a pivotal role in the daily activities and over the course of a lifetime of members of modern societies. In anticipation, work influ ences education and training; it has much to do with shaping current earned income and status in the community; and in retrospect, it influ ences retirement income and activities. It is a powerful force affecting personal associations. In our society work is deeply encased in moral and religious values: As Poor Richard says, A Life of Leisure and a Life of Laziness are two Things. Do you imagine that Sloth will afford you more Comfort than Labour? No, for as Poor Richard says: ... Industry gives Comfort, and Plenty and Respect. Study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. But few words have as many different meanings and nuances as "work": to forge or to shape, to stir or to knead, to solve, to exploit, to practice trickery for some end, to excite or to provoke, to persuade or to influence, to toil, and the like. A need for precision in meaning is requisite with respect to work, not only in common discourse, but, even more so, in scholarly communication.




The Collapse of the American Management Mystique


Book Description

Every nation likes to believe myths about itself. Americans' belief in the superiority of their managerial know-how seemed to be among those most solidly based in reality. Yet, Locke argues, despite its universal claims, American managerialism has never been more than a cultural peculiarity, one whose claims to superiority had not been proved but assumed, on the premise that the best economy must have the best management. That premise, moreover, has not served American managerialism particularly well, for in the 1970s a gap opened up between the mystique of American management and the realty of a mediocre American managerial performance. The 'mystique' collapsed and those looking for best practice began to look elsewhere. Locke traces the evolution of American management in the postwar era - the phenomenon once described by Churchill as that 'clear cut, logical, mass production style of thought'. He goes on to discuss in detail the views of such business writers as Chandler, Reich, Senge, and Deming. But the force of his critique rests on a thorough examination of alternative forms of management that grew up in West Germany and Japan during the past decades. He argues that these alternative management forms have done a better job managing capitalist economies since the 1970s than has American managerialism. But the book is not an essay in negativism. In the final chapter the author suggests paths that American management can follow in order to fulfil its original promise.




The Development of Human Resource Management Across Nations


Book Description

•This is an excellent book. Bruce Kaufman, in his ever thoughtful way, has not just analyzed the history of the development of HRM, but assembled 17 chapters in which world-class local experts report on that history in their own country. The book is fu




American Capitalism


Book Description

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the legitimacy of American capitalism seems unchallenged. The link between open markets, economic growth, and democratic success has become common wisdom, not only among policy makers but for many intellectuals as well. In this instance, however, the past has hardly been prologue to contemporary confidence in the free market. American Capitalism presents thirteen thought-provoking essays that explain how a variety of individuals, many prominent intellectuals but others partisans in the combative world of business and policy, engaged with anxieties about the seismic economic changes in postwar America and, in the process, reconfigured the early twentieth-century ideology that put critique of economic power and privilege at its center. The essays consider a broad spectrum of figures—from C. L. R. James and John Kenneth Galbraith to Peter Drucker and Ayn Rand—and topics ranging from theories of Cold War "convergence" to the rise of the philanthropic Right. They examine how the shift away from political economy at midcentury paved the way for the 1960s and the "culture wars" that followed. Contributors interrogate what was lost and gained when intellectuals moved their focus from political economy to cultural criticism. The volume thereby offers a blueprint for a dramatic reevaluation of how we should think about the trajectory of American intellectual history in twentieth-century United States.