Contrepreneurs

This comprehensive text helps students understand the problems involved in studying white collar crime, explanations for crime, the principal focus of the crimes, and the character of the legal and criminal justice response to the crime.

Self-help: To millions of Americans it seems like a godsend. To many others it seems like a joke. But as investigative reporter Steve Salerno reveals in this groundbreaking book, it’s neither—in fact it’s much worse than a joke. Going deep inside the Self-Help and Actualization Movement (fittingly, the words form the acronym SHAM), Salerno offers the first serious exposé of this multibillion-dollar industry and the real damage it is doing—not just to its paying customers, but to all of American society. Based on the author’s extensive reporting—and the inside look at the industry he got while working at a leading “lifestyle” publisher—SHAM shows how thinly credentialed “experts” now dispense advice on everything from mental health to relationships to diet to personal finance to business strategy. Americans spend upward of $8 billion every year on self-help programs and products. And those staggering financial costs are actually the least of our worries. SHAM demonstrates how the self-help movement’s core philosophies have infected virtually every aspect of American life—the home, the workplace, the schools, and more. And Salerno exposes the downside of being uplifted, showing how the “empowering” message that dominates self-help today proves just as damaging as the blame-shifting rhetoric of self-help’s “Recovery” movement. SHAM also reveals: • How self-help gurus conduct extensive market research to reach the same customers over and over—without ever helping them • The inside story on the most notorious gurus—from Dr. Phil to Dr. Laura, from Tony Robbins to John Gray • How your company might be wasting money on motivational speakers, “executive coaches,” and other quick fixes that often hurt quality, productivity, and morale • How the Recovery movement has eradicated notions of personal responsibility by labeling just about anything—from drug abuse to “sex addiction” to shoplifting—a dysfunction or disease • How Americans blindly accept that twelve-step programs offer the only hope of treating addiction, when in fact these programs can do more harm than good • How the self-help movement inspired the disastrous emphasis on self-esteem in our schools • How self-help rhetoric has pushed people away from proven medical treatments by persuading them that they can cure themselves through sheer application of will As Salerno shows, to describe self-help as a waste of time and money vastly understates its collateral damage. And with SHAM, the self-help industry has finally been called to account for the damage it has done. Also available as an eBook

For many Americans, capitalism is a dynamic engine of prosperity that rewards the bold, the daring, and the hardworking. But to many outside the United States, capitalism seems like an initiative that serves only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few hereditary oligarchies. As A History of Corporate Governance around the World shows, neither conception is wrong. In this volume, some of the brightest minds in the field of economics present new empirical research that suggests that each side of the debate has something to offer the other. Free enterprise and well-developed financial systems are proven to produce growth in those countries that have them. But research also suggests that in some other capitalist countries, arrangements truly do concentrate corporate ownership in the hands of a few wealthy families. A History of Corporate Governance around the World provides historical studies of the patterns of corporate governance in several countries-including the large industrial economies of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States; larger developing economies like China and India; and alternative models like those of the Netherlands and Sweden.

This book provides for professionals, teachers and students involved in Russian law, by bringing together an overall and profound analysis of the process of the creation of business entities in the legal environment of the Russian Federation. The book will provide readers from a variety of backgrounds in legal studies with an understanding of the basic principles of Russian civil and corporate law, and the ways in which such principles interact. The book provides a comprehensive examination of the following: • The essential elements of the Russian legal system, including the sources of Russian law; • The law of obligations and the law of torts; • The forms of business organizations; • The formation and constitution of business organizations; • Legal implications related to companies in difficulty and crisis; • The legal status of foreign persons in the Russian Federation and foreign investment law; • Corporate governance and corporate fraudulent behavior. The book will appeal particularly to undergraduate and postgraduate law students, as well as to Russian and foreign lawyers, heads of legal entities, financial directors, chief accountants, and auditors, and to any person interested in Russian law. Each chapter of the book contains a brief overview, central research questions and a list of further reading. Multiple choice questions, practical assignments, key legislation referenced in the book and a glossary are also included in the book.