Unconventional Wisdom

Author: Tom Standage
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1782837515
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
The world can be an amazing place if you know the right questions to ask: How much does a ghost reduce a house's value? How are winemakers responding to climate change? How much should you tip your Uber driver? Should your dog fear Easter more than fireworks? The keen minds of The Economist love to look beyond everyday appearances to find out what really makes things tick. In this latest collection of The Economist Explains, they have gathered the weirdest and most counter-intuitive answers they've found in their endless quest to explain our bizarre world. Take a peek at some Unconventional Wisdom - and pass it on! The world only gets more amazing when discoveries are shared.

Unconventional Wisdom

Author: John Ward
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470021667
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
Family businesses prosper by pursuing unconventional strategies. Because they are values-driven and think very long-term, they take approaches not popular with current management fashion or most companies. That is the key to their competitive advantage. However, family businesses must find ways to simultaneously serve business needs and family goals, which require very different priorities and principles. As a result, they must think paradoxically, and find insights that single-purpose enterprises need not contemplate. They must dare to be different. Family business requires a different governance system, but it must nevertheless be one that can be controlled. Building on insights from the worldâ??s premier family business executive education course, this book offers the Unconventional Wisdom needed to leverage the strategic and cultural uniqueness of a family business for enduring success.

Unconventional Wisdom

Author: June Boyce-Tillman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134936486
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
Early Christianity saw women in positions of authority and a fluid theology that included feminine figures in the notion of the Divine. However, for centuries a male trinity has dominated theology with the characteristics of triumphalism, clarity, order, eternality and unity. Unconventional Wisdom examines the attempt within the last half of the twentieth century to unearth the hidden theological tradition of feminine Wisdom. The book presents the work of influential theorists, notably Foucault, Belenky and Dorothy Smith. The recovery of the feminine in the divine is linked with the rediscovery of subjugated value systems and what this might mean for ecclesiology.

What Were They Thinking?

Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1422103129
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Book Description
The question of how to improve organizational effectiveness through better people management is always top of mind. This book challenges incorrect and oversimplified assumptions and much conventional management wisdom - delivering business commentary that helps business leaders make smarter decisions.

What's Next?

Author: David Hale
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300170319
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
The world spins in economic turmoil, and who can tell what will happen next? Cold numbers and simple statistical projections don't take into account social, financial, or political factors that can dramatically alter the economic course of a nation or a region. In this unique book, more than twenty leading economists and experts render thorough, rigorously researched prognoses for the world's major economies over the next five years. Factoring in such varied issues as the price of oil, the strength of the U.S. dollar, geopolitics, tax policies, and new developments in investment decision making, the contributors ground their predictions in the realities of current events, political conditions, and the health of financial institutions in each national economy. The most comprehensive volume on the global economy available today, this book presents up-to-date research on Russia, Australia, Europe, sub-Saharan and South Africa, the major Asian economies, North America, and the largest economies of Latin America. With unsurpassed expertise, the authors explain what's going on in individual countries, how important current global issues will impact them, and what economic scenarios they most likely will face in upcoming years.

American Urbanist

Author: Richard K. Rein
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642831700
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
"William H. Whyte's curiosity compelled him to question the status quo--whether helping to make Fortune Magazine essential reading for business leaders, warning of "groupthink" in his bestseller The Organization Man, or standing up for Jane Jacobs as she advocated for the vitality of city life and public space. This compelling biography sheds light on Whyte's bold way of thinking, ripe for rediscovery at a time when we are reshaping our communities into places of opportunity and empowerment for all citizens" -- Backcover.

Unconventional Wisdom

Author: Karen M. Kaufmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199710511
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Late deciders go for the challenger; turnout helps the Democrats; the gender gap results from a surge in Democratic preference among women--these and many other myths are standard fare among average citizens, political pundits, and even some academics. But are these conventional wisdoms--familiar to anyone who watches Sunday morning talk shows--really valid? Unconventional Wisdom offers a novel yet highly accessible synthesis of what we know about American voters and elections. It not only provides an integrated overview of the central themes in American politics--parties, polarization, turnout, partisan bias, campaign effects, swing voters, the gender gap, and the youth vote--it upends many of our fundamental preconceptions. Most importantly, it shows that the American electorate is much more stable than we have been led to believe, and that the voting patterns we see today have deep roots in our history. Throughout, the book provides comprehensive information on voting patterns; illuminates (and corrects) popular myths about voters and elections; and details the empirical foundations of conventional wisdoms that many understand poorly or not at all. Written by three experts on American politics, Unconventional Wisdom serves as both a standard reference and a concise overview of the subject. Both informative and witty, the book is likely to become a standard work in the field, essential reading for anyone interested in American politics.

Against the Grain

Author: Ray Waddle
Publisher: Upper Room Books
ISBN: 0835812448
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 154

Book Description
You won't hear many sermons preached on Ecclesiastes. The plainspoken skepticism and raw weariness expressed in Ecclesiastes make many people of faith uncomfortable. But, as Waddle points out, this book is in the Bible for a reason. The message of this against-the-grain biblical voice offers an emotionally honest view of the meaning of life. "Despite his reputation, Ecclesiastes marks the surprising arrival of consolation and hope," writes Waddle. "This book is about the neglected themes of Ecclesiastes: the goodness of creation; the fingerprints of providence; the frustrations of spirit in a world of affluence and suffering; the beauty of everyday pleasures; the duty to remember the dead; the duty, indeed, to be happy. It's about feeling the wind in your face, the wind of being alive." This poet teaches, toughens, and spans the ages to address very contemporary issues. By giving us permission to admit troubling spiritual moods, Ecclesiastes invites us to grow in wisdom and to accept all of God's gifts including doubt and dissatisfaction. Waddle mixes contemporary reflections with insightful scholarship on Ecclesiastes especially on the topics of biblical authority, politics, grief, wisdom, and spiritual trends in contemporary society. The 12 chapters parallel the 12 chapters of the biblical text. Become better "equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:17) and for the inevitable periods of spiritual doldrums through the renegade-but-faithful realism found in Ecclesiastes.

Inequality And Global Supra-surplus Capitalism

Author: E Ray Canterbery
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9813200847
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 379

Book Description
This book is written as a sequel to John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, and provides a theoretical framework, for the first time, for surpra-surplus capitalism.Conventional economics has the income and wealth distributions as 'givens'. This assumption immediately excludes such distributions from economic and social concern. Occasionally, economists such as Kenneth Boulding and even earlier, Michal Kalecki, have attempted to develop alternative perspectives in which such distributions are integral to the story and therefore have implications for public policy. At the same time, conventional microeconomics is a theory of price only in which economic efficiency (in an engineering sense) is the only value to be optimized. The income or wealth distributions are given as constraints. Mathematically, the constraints thereafter become invisible; they have no further role to play. The choices that are presumed to be made are neither inhibited nor facilitated by a household's position in the income or wealth distributions.This volume will explore problems with conventional theory and policy, but its main thrust comprises a theory of supra-surplus capitalism, applicable to both developed and developing countries, and its relation to inequalities worldwide.

Unconventional Wisdom

Author: Kelly Norris
Publisher: Shanti Arts Publishing
ISBN: 1947067958
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 119

Book Description
As a child experiencing an unorthodox upbringing, author Kelly Norris dreams of Utopia. Yet at forty years old, she finds herself deep in debt, suffering from stress, and speeding through life without a destination. She longs to return to the values of her parents’ generation but doesn’t know where to start or how to stop the conveyor belt she’s on. One day in yoga class she gets the idea to find people living outside the mainstream, interview them, and see if they can help her forge a new path. As she conducts her interviews of, among others, a Sikh minister, a Rastafarian, and a member of an intentional community, Norris finds herself changing in ways that take her outside the mainstream: she simplifies her life and draws her loved ones closer together; she also reconnects with her spiritual core and reestablishes her relationship with nature.