Opportunism


Book Description

In this bold and forward-looking book, an Israeli civic leader shows how reorienting our society to make the most of "opportunity" could restore the global economy to health—and give added value to the contributions of the new class of knowledge workers. For most of us, opportunism is a tainted concept. Shraga F. Biran thinks otherwise. He shows that our present economy favors the wealthy few more than at any point in history. But such an economy is both unstable and outmoded, unable to recognize the true value of the work done by the new knowledge class, whose commerce is in ideas, not financial assets. This is why most of us have seen no real gains from the spectacular increases in paper wealth during the past three decades. Biran sees a transformative new way in Opportunism. In today's economy, he argues, the way to thrive is to create an opportunity and make the most of it. With great passion, he proposes that we as a society should establish a "right of opportunity," akin to patents and copyrights, enabling all members of society to lay claim to their ideas and benefit from them financially. Thus empowered, the new opportunists can help bring about a revolution in applied knowledge on the scale of the Industrial Revolution— and a more just, stable, and prosperous society.




Jockeying for the American Presidency


Book Description

"This book will compel scholars to take a new look at the role of "political opportunism" in the presidential selection process. Lara Brown provides a fresh, innovative exploration of the roots of opportunism, one that challenges conventional wisdom as it advances our understanding of this complex topic."--Michael A. Genovese, Loyola Marymount University.




The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management


Book Description

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management has been written by an international team of leading academics, practitioners and rising stars and contains almost 550 individually commissioned entries. It is the first resource of its kind to pull together such a comprehensive overview of the field and covers both the theoretical and more empirically/practitioner oriented side of the discipline.




The Fruits of Opportunism


Book Description

An in-depth examination of the regulatory, entrepreneurial, and organizational factors contributing to the expansion and transformation of China’s supplemental education industry. Like many parents in the United States, parents in China, increasingly concerned with their children’s academic performance, are turning to for-profit tutoring businesses to help their children get ahead in school. China’s supplemental education industry is now the world’s largest and most vibrant for-profit education market, and we can see its influence on the US higher education system: more than 70% of Chinese students studying in American universities have taken test preparation classes for overseas standardized tests. The Fruits of Opportunism offers a much-needed thorough investigation into this industry. This book examines how opportunistic organizations thrived in an ambiguous policy environment and how they catalyzed organizational and institutional changes in this industry. A former insider in China’s Education Industry, sociologist Le Lin shows how and why this industry evolved to become a for-profit one dominated by private, formal, nationally operating, and globally financed corporations, despite restrictions the Chinese state placed on the industry. Looking closely at the opportunistic organizations that were founded by marginal entrepreneurs and quickly came to dominate the market, Lin finds that as their non-compliant practices spread across the industry, these opportunistic organizations pushed privatization and marketization from below. The case of China’s Education Industry laid out in The Fruits of Opportunism illustrates that while opportunism leaves destruction in its wake, it can also drive the formation and evolution of a market.




The Opportunist


Book Description

The first book in Tarryn Fisher's fan-favorite Love Me with Lies trilogy, The Opportunist is the twisty, unconventional second-chance love story you didn't see coming! When Olivia Kaspen spots her ex-boyfriend in a Miami record shop, she ignores good sense and approaches him. It’s been three years since their breakup, but when Caleb reveals he’s suffering from amnesia after a recent car accident, first she feels regret—and then opportunity. If he doesn't remember her, then he also doesn’t remember her manipulation, her deceit, or the horrible way she broke his heart. Seeing a chance to reunite with Caleb, she keeps their past, and the details around the implosion of their relationship, a secret. Wrestling to keep her true identity and their sordid history under wraps, Olivia’s greatest obstacle is Caleb’s wicked new girlfriend, Leah, who's equally determined to possess the man who no longer remembers her. But soon Olivia must face the consequences of her lies, and in the process discover that sometimes love falls short of redemption.




Reckless opportunists


Book Description

Aeron Davis takes a close look at the state of elites today. He argues that the Brexit vote and 2017 election outcome are signs of a deeper leadership crisis that has been developing over decades. The great transformations of the 1980s onwards have not only upended societies, they have reshaped elite rule itself. Too many leaders today, regardless of intent, are ignorant, precarious, rootless and self-serving. Although richer, they have lost coherence, influence and control. Increasingly, they are just reckless opportunists, getting what they can amid the chaos they have created. Their failings are not only damaging wider society, they are undermining the very foundations of the Establishment itself. The book, based on interviews with over 350 elite figures, asks: how did we end up producing the leaders that got us here and what can we do about it?




The Fruits of Opportunism


Book Description

"Like many parents in the US, parents in China, increasingly concerned with their children's academic performance, are turning to for-profit businesses to help their children get ahead in school. China's educational testing industry (ETI) is now the world's largest and most vibrant for-profit education market, with almost one-tenth of China's enormous population attending ETI classes every year. We see the results in the US higher education system, as more than 70% of Chinese students studying in American universities have taken test-preparation classes for overseas standardized tests, such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). In addition to telling an interesting educational story, sociologist Le Lin also tells a fascinating organizational one. A former insider at a Chinese ETI business, Lin shows how and why the Chinese educational testing industry evolved to become a for-profit industry dominated by private, formal, nationally operating, and globally financed corporations, despite restrictions the Chinese state placed on the industry. In addition to unpacking the industry-level evolution, he also probes the transformation at the organizational level: why do some organizations thrive while others fail during the transition to market capitalism? Lin answers these questions by looking closely at the opportunistic organizations that were founded by marginal entrepreneurs. He found that the more opportunistic practices, even those that did not always follow the law, thrived in this initially ambiguous industry. The marginal and opportunistic operators in the ETI implemented aggressive firing and hiring policies that kept a wide range of instructors available and even innovated new teaching practices that led to better student performance. The organizations that broke the rules were the ones that most often won the day. Ultimately, Lin shows that state policies against opportunistic practices unintentionally facilitated the domination of opportunists. As opportunists became rule-makers and diffused their practices across the industry, they pushed privatization and marketization from below. The case of Chinese ETI terrifically illustrates how opportunism is often destructive, but it can also be productive to the formation and function of a market"--




Making Markets


Book Description

"In the wake of million-dollar scandals brought about by Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, and their like, Wall Street seems like the province of rampant individualism operating at the outermost extremes of self-interest and greed. But this, Mitchel Abolafia suggests, would be a case of missing the real culture of the Street for the characters who dominate the financial news. Making Markets, an ethnography of Wall Street culture, offers a more complex picture of how the market and its denizens work. Not merely masses of individuals striving independently, markets appear here as socially constructed institutions in which the behavior of traders is suspended in a web of customs, norms, and structures of control. Within these structures we see the actions that led to the Drexel Burnham and Salomon Brothers debacles not as bizarre aberrations, but as mere exaggerations of behavior accepted on the Street. Abolafia looks at three subcultures that coexist in the world of Wall Street: the stock, bond, and futures markets. Through interviews, anecdotes, and the author’s skillful analysis, we see how traders and New York Stock Exchange “specialists” negotiate the perpetual tension between short-term self-interest and long-term self-restraint that marks their respective communities—and how the temptation toward excess spurs market activity. We also see the complex relationships among those market communities—why, for instance, NYSE specialists resent the freedoms permitted over-the-counter bond traders and futures traders. Making Markets shows us that what propels Wall Street is not a fundamental human drive or instinct, but strategies enacted in the context of social relationships, cultural idioms, and institutions—a cycle that moves between phases of unbridled self-interest and collective self-restraint."




Honest Opportunism


Book Description




Lives of Weeds


Book Description

Lives of Weeds explores the tangled history of weeds and their relationship to humans. Through eight interwoven stories, John Cardina offers a fresh perspective on how these tenacious plants came about, why they are both inevitable and essential, and how their ecological success is ensured by determined efforts to eradicate them. Linking botany, history, ecology, and evolutionary biology to the social dimensions of humanity's ancient struggle with feral flora, Cardina shows how weeds have shaped—and are shaped by—the way we live in the natural world. Weeds and attempts to control them drove nomads toward settled communities, encouraged social stratification, caused environmental disruptions, and have motivated the development of GMO crops. They have snared us in social inequality and economic instability, infested social norms of suburbia, caused rage in the American heartland, and played a part in perpetuating pesticide use worldwide. Lives of Weeds reveals how the technologies directed against weeds underlie ethical questions about agriculture and the environment, and leaves readers with a deeper understanding of how the weeds around us are entangled in our daily choices.