The Rise And Fall Of Mass Production

This book provides new insights into the changes in interpretation of marketing and the evolution of marketing strategies during the twentieth century. The focus is on the development of mass marketing in the United States and the way in which more flexible and adaptable forms of marketing have increasingly been taking over. This highly international volume draws contributors from the USA, Europe and Japan, and from a variety of academic disciplines, including marketing, economics and business history. Chapters provide detailed analysis of the marketing of a range of products including cars, washing machines, food retailing, Scotch whisky, computers, financial services and wheat.

How do corporations achieve change? In the first analytic book about Hewlett-Packard, Deone Zell also offers an ethnography of corporate redesign, documenting Hewlett-Packard's radical reorganization of both a manufacturing and a research division. Because she writes from within the process as it unfolds, Zell is able to demonstrate how the inclusion of employees in every step of redesign can inspire the knowledge and commitment to transform an organization. Hewlett-Packard is among a growing number of companies in the United States exploring what is called sociotechnical systems (STS) redesign. As competitive pressures have grown, interest in STS has increased because it has the potential to catalyze comprehensive organizational change and avoid the pitfalls of a piecemeal or small-scale approach. STS works from the ground up, involving front-line employees in analysis and redesign of the entire organization and in explicit examination of an organization's culture. In Hewlett-Packard's California Personal Computer Division, production operators worked alongside managers to redesign their printed circuit assembly line into self-managing teams of employees. In the Santa Clara Division, a very different workforce of engineers, initially unwilling to standardize their creativity, had to develop commercial applications and become more responsive to customers in order to survive. On the basis of Hewlett-Packard's success, Zell concludes that, with top-level support and a high investment of resources at the outset, redesign can inspire relatively rapid change, especially suitable for organizations in fast-paced environments. As one H-P manager commented, "Empowerment is no longer a nice thing to do. It is now a business imperative."

A collection of 32 articles written between the 1910s and the 1990s. They focus on the questions of where mass production came from, the fundamental elements of Fordism and why it emerged when and where it did, why and how far mass production spread into the wider economy and how it changed in the process, its impact on work and workers, whether the 20th-century success of Japan is due to a more ruthless exploitation of the principles of mass production or to a new form of productive organization, and whether the late 20th century is witnessing the end of mass production as a dominant or viable paradigm. They are reproduced from the original publications, so the type is variable and the illustrations generally of a poor quality. No subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Through examples and case studies, this book demonstrates how to adopt the methods, technology and techniques pioneered in direct marketing and apply them in the broader context of integrated marketing.

E.J. Salmon left Cuba with his sister at age fifteen, after the Communists confiscated his family's land. He arrived in the United States poor, but he was eager to participate in an economic system that would help his family prosper again. But today, the U.S. economy is in bad shape, and it could get worse. A nation that was once the greatest and most powerful in the world has been shaken to its core, and it could collapse. To prevent such a calamity, industry and government must work together. Salmon draws upon his experiences in Cuba and in the United States to encourage the people to turn things around. He considers the following: - How the failure of the Obama administration to learn lessons derived from the successful government initiatives of the Great Depression - Why the government's response to the current crisis has eliminated more jobs than it has created - How brazen and corrupt executives and politicians are destroying corporate America. Take steps to understand the problems confronting us and discover solutions to renew the partnership among business, government, and the people. It's not too late to reverse the course if you understand The Rise and Fall of Corporate America.

Dr. Mirza's unorthodox but refreshing look at the history of the US and its failure to plant true democracy at home or abroad goes a long way towards explaining its failed invasion of Iraq.

In the context of the historic evolution of capitalism, Suarez-Villa (social ecology, U. of California-Irvine) explores the advent of a form of market capitalism rooted in invention and the development of new technologies. He examines the infrastructure that supports invention and the relationship of techno-capitalism with science, corporate business, and government. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR