America's Corporate Brain Drain


Book Description

"Press '1' to listen to five more phone menus. If this is an emergency, please stay on the line forever for the next available operator?. If you hate phone menus, you're not alone. When big companies saw data proving that up to 70 percent of callers press '0' to reach a live operator, they did exactly what you'd expect. Instead of getting live operators to answer the phones, they disabled the 'zero out' function.From gouging gas prices to free checking accounts that charge for checkbooks and offer pointless point programs (50 percent of points are never redeemed), big businesses in America are disconnected. Most no longer offer the best products and services. America's Corporate Brain Drain reveals that the swell of me-too products and lousy service is because the best people no longer work in Goliath companies. We're moving forward with Toyota and connecting with Nokia because the brightest sparks in the U.S. have left big corporations or are planning exit strategies. The 27 million small-business owners didn't get the boot 89 percent of entrepreneurs quit their former positions. Boomers are negotiating for early retirement to start hobby jobs. Grads aren't willing to climb towering corporate ladders. Of the employees still stuck in big companies, 70 percent are unhappy with their jobs.In Corporate Brain Drain, corporate deserters, employees, and consumers who are fed up with behemoth banks and big old phone companies will find the real reasons why big business stopped working. And they'll discover how Americans, who are increasingly unwilling to put up with inferior products and the corporate culture that creates them, are regaining control.




Hollowing Out the Middle


Book Description

Two sociologists reveal how small towns in Middle America are exporting their most precious resource—young people—and share what can be done to save these dwindling communities In 2001, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas moved to Iowa to understand the rural brain drain and the exodus of young people from America’s countryside. They met and followed working-class “stayers”; ambitious and college-bound “achievers”; “seekers,” who head off to war to see what the world beyond offers; and “returners,” who eventually circle back to their hometowns. What surprised them most was that adults in the community were playing a pivotal part in the town’s decline by pushing the best and brightest young people to leave. In a timely, new afterword, Carr and Kefalas address the question “so what can be done to save our communities?” They profile the efforts of dedicated community leaders actively resisting the hollowing out of Middle America. These individuals have creatively engaged small town youth—stayers and returners, seekers and achievers—and have implemented a variety of programs to combat the rural brain drain. These stories of civic engagement will certainly inspire and encourage readers struggling to defend their communities.







The Immigrant Exodus


Book Description

A 2012 ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR Many of the United States' most innovative entrepreneurs have been immigrants, from Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell, and Charles Pfizer to Sergey Brin, Vinod Khosla, and Elon Musk. Nearly half of Fortune 500 companies and one-quarter of all new small businesses were founded by immigrants, generating trillions of dollars annually, employing millions of workers, and helping establish the United States as the most entrepreneurial, technologically advanced society on earth. Now, Vivek Wadhwa, an immigrant tech entrepreneur turned academic with appointments at Duke, Stanford, Emory, and Singularity Universities, draws on his new Kauffman Foundation research to show that the United States is in the midst of an unprecedented halt in high-growth, immigrant-founded start-ups. He argues that increased competition from countries like China and India and US immigration policies are leaving some of the most educated and talented entrepreneurial immigrants with no choice but to take their innovation elsewhere. The consequences to our economy are dire; our multi-trillion dollar loss will be the gain of our global competitors. With his signature fearlessness and clarity, Wadhwa offers a concise framework for understanding the Immigrant Exodus and offers a recipe for reversal and rapid recovery.




Brain Drain and Brain Gain


Book Description

Part II examines the consequences of brain drain for the sending countries.




Challenges to Globalization


Book Description

People passionately disagree about the nature of the globalization process. The failure of both the 1999 and 2003 World Trade Organization's (WTO) ministerial conferences in Seattle and Cancun, respectively, have highlighted the tensions among official, international organizations like the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, nongovernmental and private sector organizations, and some developing country governments. These tensions are commonly attributed to longstanding disagreements over such issues as labor rights, environmental standards, and tariff-cutting rules. In addition, developing countries are increasingly resentful of the burdens of adjustment placed on them that they argue are not matched by commensurate commitments from developed countries. Challenges to Globalization evaluates the arguments of pro-globalists and anti-globalists regarding issues such as globalization's relationship to democracy, its impact on the environment and on labor markets including the brain drain, sweat shop labor, wage levels, and changes in production processes, and the associated expansion of trade and its effects on prices. Baldwin, Winters, and the contributors to this volume look at multinational firms, foreign investment, and mergers and acquisitions and present surprising findings that often run counter to the claim that multinational firms primarily seek countries with low wage labor. The book closes with papers on financial opening and on the relationship between international economic policies and national economic growth rates.




The Economics of Immigration


Book Description

The inspiration for this book came from a collaborative research project on immigration, begun in 2001, when we were colleagues at University of Nebraska- Lincoln (Bodvarsson was a Visiting Professor there in 2001–05). Our project dealt with the application of Say’s Law to the supply of immigrant labor, meaning that when the supply of immigrant labor grows in an area, the new immigrants, being consumers, bolster labor demand and help to offset the lower wages they may bring about. Our test case was the seemingly obscure Dawson County, Nebraska, where the meatpacking industry experienced a relatively huge increase in Hispanic-born labor supply around 1990. We found for Dawson County this ‘‘demand effect’’ to be signi?cant and our results for this test case generalizable to other, more prominent, test cases. This inspired us to study the famous Mariel Boatlift, where Miami’s labor force grew suddenly by 7% due to the arrival of nearly 125,000 Cuban refugees in the spring of 1980. In that study, we showed that the Marielitos exerted a signi?cant demand effect, which we argue helps to account for the stylized fact that the Mariel in?ux had a relatively benign effect on the Miami labor market. We had the privilege of presenting both studies at various conferences in the USA, Norway, Taiwan and Israel, and these studies have been published in Labour Economics and the Research in Labor Economics series (both studies are discussed in detail in this book).




Chinese America


Book Description

Chinese America - Stereotype and Reality is a comprehensive and fascinating textbook about the Chinese in America. Covering more than 150 years of history, the book documents the increasing importance of the Chinese as a social group: from immigration history to the latest immigration legislation, from educational achievements to socio-cultural and political accomplishments. Employing the author's detailed knowledge of the Chinese Diaspora, combined with her meticulous research, the book explores the history, diversity, socio-cultural structures, networks, and achievements of this often-overlooked ethnicity. It highlights how, based on their current position, Chinese Americans are well-placed to play a major role in future relations between China and the United States - the two largest economies of the twenty-first century.




The Fulbright Difference: 1948-1992


Book Description

The Fulbright Education Exchange program has given American and foreignstudents and scholars transnational educational experiences in every country in the world.The Fulbright Difference brings together twenty-seven ofthese participants, along with ten foreign alumni, in a collective effort to stimulate greaterawareness of the depth of the Fulbright achievement. Fulbright scholars show how the benefits oftheir participation extend well beyond their foreign study. Following an earlier volume,The Fulbright Experience, this second volume exploresissues of importance for historians of society, politics, culture, intellect, and diplomacy, aswell as administrators of the Fulbright program and policymakers in all nations. The collectiveportrait is a hard look at the overseas experience and its implications for publicpolicy.




The Career Lattice: Combat Brain Drain, Improve Company Culture, and Attract Top Talent


Book Description

Reroute your career path for better, faster, longer-lasting success “If you’ve been waiting for your HR department to plan out your next career move, you’ll be stuck waiting forever. Joanne Cleaver explains why the career matrix is what you need to succeed. It’s valuable information that most HR departments aren’t ready or able to give you.” —Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady, evilhrlady.org “ As Cleaver insightfully writes, the traditional career ladder is dead. To stay relevant, workers need to become nimble, enterprising, and far more professionally connected than their pre-recession counterparts. Essential reading for anyone who wants to stand out in today’s highly competitive business world.” —Michelle Goodman, author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide and My So-Called Freelance Life “In post-recessionary Corporate America, the ladder is becoming a thing of the past. You need to think of your career in a new way, a way in which you are constantly focused on acquiring new and honing existing skill sets to remain marketable and competitive. Using Joanne Cleaver’s Career Lattice’s prescription of group-centered coaching and mentoring, you’ll get by with a little help from your friends.” —Alexandra Levit, author of Blind Spots: 10 Business Myths You Can’t Afford to Believe on Your New Path to Success OVER IS THE NEW UP. Thanks to the rise of global labor, increasing automation of job functions, and the flattening of workplace organizations, the traditional corporate ladder is gone—and we’ll probably never see it again. For smart, talented, motivated workers, this is the best career news to emerge in a long time. Instead of following the path of predetermined corporate hierarchies, you need to design a more flexible career path. It’s called the Career Lattice, and it’s about adding new skills to current abilities—while letting go of things that are no longer relevant. It’s about evolving. It’s about embracing change. In The Career Lattice, career consultant and business journalist Joanne Cleaver gives you the insight, information, tools, and best practices you need to: Invest in the best training or continued education for your future goals Make smart lateral moves now to help you make upward moves later Network more strategically than ever See possibilities down the road that would otherwise have escaped you The Lattice is both more stable and more dynamic than the linear career ladder. No matter your age or career stage, latticing equips you to make your move into emerging jobs or careers in all industries with more speed, skill, and confidence than your competitors. It isn’t your father’s world of business anymore. Linearity is out; flexibility is in. The Career Lattice is what you need to make the smartest possible career decisions in a completely transformed world of business.