Big Winners And Big Losers

What keeps great companies winning, year after year, even as yesterday's most hyped businesses fall by the wayside? It's not what you think -- or what you've read. To find the real answers, strategic management expert Alfred Marcus systematically reviewed detailed performance metrics for the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations, identifying 3% who've consistently outperform their industry's averages for a full decade. Many of these firms get little publicity: firms like Amphenol, Ball, Family Dollar, Brown and Brown, Activision, Dreyer's, Forest Labs, and Fiserv. But their success is no accident: they've discovered patterns of success that have largely gone unnoticed elsewhere. Marcus also identified patterns associated with consistently inferior performance: patterns reflected in many of the world's most well-known companies. Drawing on this unprecedented research, "Big Winners and Big Losers" shows you what really matters most. You'll learn how consistent winners build the strategies that drive their success; how they move towards market spaces offering superior opportunity; and how they successfully manage the tensions between agility, discipline, and focus. You'll learn how to identify the right patterns of success for your company, build on the strengths you already have, realistically assess your weaknesses, and build sustainable advantage one step at a time, in a planned and logical way.

Luck of the Draw profiles past winners of big lotteries, and how their windfalls impacted their lives, mostly for the better, but sometimes for the worse, such as the Florida widow who won $5 million in 1984: three years later, she lost her mansion and fancy cars, and owed the IRS $500,000 in back taxes, and was eventually arrested for trying to hire a contract killer for her daughter-in-law, whom she blamed for her lottery misfortune.

From acclaimed political scientist Diana Mutz, a revealing look at why people's attitudes on trade differ from their own self-interest Winners and Losers challenges conventional wisdom about how American citizens form opinions on international trade. While dominant explanations in economics emphasize personal self-interest—and whether individuals gain or lose financially as a result of trade—this book takes a psychological approach, demonstrating how people view the complex world of international trade through the lens of interpersonal relations. Drawing on psychological theories of preference formation as well as original surveys and experiments, Diana Mutz finds that in contrast to the economic view of trade as cooperation for mutual benefit, many Americans view trade as a competition between the United States and other countries—a contest of us versus them. These people favor trade as long as they see Americans as the "winners" in these interactions, viewing trade as a way to establish dominance over foreign competitors. For others, trade is a means of maintaining more peaceful relations between countries. Just as individuals may exchange gifts to cement relationships, international trade is a tie that binds nations together in trust and cooperation. Winners and Losers reveals how people's orientations toward in-groups and out-groups play a central role in influencing how they think about trade with foreign countries, and shows how a better understanding of the psychological underpinnings of public opinion can lead to lasting economic and societal benefits.

The cultural meanings of poker and how it mirrors fundamental aspects of capitalism

Why did the financial scandals really happen? Why are they continuing to happen? In The Death of Corporate Reputation, Yale's Jonathan Macey reveals the real, non-intuitive reason, and offers a new path forward. For over a century law firms, investment banks, accounting firms, credit rating agencies and companies seeking regular access to U.S. capital markets made large investments in their reputations. They treated customers well and sometimes endured losses in transactions or business deals in order to sustain and nurture their reputations as faithful brokers and “gate-keepers.” This has changed completely . The existing business model among leading participants in today’s capital markets no longer treats customers as valued clients whose trust must be earned and nurtured, but as one-off “counter-parties” to whom no duties are owed and no loyalty is required . The rough and tumble norms of the market-place have replaced the long-standing reputational model in U.S. finance. This book describes the transformation in American finance from the old reputational model to the existing laissez faire model and argues that the change came as a result of three factors: (1) the growth of reliance on regulation rather than reputation as the primary mechanism for protecting customers and (2) the increasing complexity of regulation, which made technical expertise rather than reputation the primary criterion on which customers choose who to do business with in today’s markets; and (3) the rise of the “cult of personality” on Wall Street, which has led to a secular demise in the relevance of companies’ reputations and the concomitant rise of individual “rain-makers” reputation as the basis for premium pricing of financial services. This compelling book will drive the debate about the financial crisis and financial regulation for years to come -- both inside and outside the industry.

Integrating the international pressures emanating from the Washington Consensus with an analysis of domestic interest representation, this book explores the political consequences of privatization and the progress of democracy in Eastern Europe. Chris Hasselmann investigates whether the issue of pension reform offers a natural controlled experiment with which to explore both issues throughout the region and the former Soviet Union. The volume will prove of value to those with an interest in public policy and governance issues, the politics of Eastern Europe and political theory more generally.

This comprehensive guide explains how to manage not just the business cycle and industry cycles but also today's unprecedented level of macroeconomic turbulence. Navarro shows how to align every facet of business strategy, tactics, and operations to reflect changing business conditions and not get run over.