The Functions of the Executive
Author: Chester Irving Barnard
Most of Barnard's career was spent in executive practice. A Mount Hermon and Harvard education, cut off short of the bachelor's degree, was followed by nearly forty years in the American Telephone & Telegraph Company. His career began in the Statistical Department, took him to technical expertness in the economics of rates and administrative experience in the management of commercial operations, and culminated in the presidency of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company. He was not directly involved in the Western Electric experiments conducted chiefly at the Hawthorne plant in Cicero, but his association with Elton Mayo and the latter's colleagues at the Harvard Business School had an important bearing on his most original ideas.
Barnard's executive experience at AT&T was paralleled and followed by a career in public service unusual in his own time and hardly routine today. He was at various times president of the United Services Organization (the USO of World War II), head of the General Education Board and later president of the Rockefeller Foundation (after Raymond Fosdick and before Dean Rusk), chairman of the National Science Foundation, an assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, a consultant to the American representative in the United Nations Atomic Energy Committee, to name only some of his public interests. He was a director of a number of companies, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a lover of music and a founder of the Bach Society of New Jersey.
Book review: Broadcasting in America or Women and Men in Management
The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret
Author: Michael Zweig
The United States is not a middle class society. Michael Zweig shows that the majority of Americans are actually working class and argues that recognizing this fact is essential if that majority is to achieve political influence and social strength. "Class," Zweig writes, "is primarily a matter of power, not income." He goes beyond old formulations of class to explore ways in which class interacts with race and gender.
Defining "working class" as those who have little control over the pace and content of their work and who do not supervise others, Zweig warns that by allowing this class to disappear into categories of middle class or consumers, we also allow those with the dominant power, capitalists, to vanish among the rich. Economic relations then appear as comparisons of income or lifestyle rather than as what they truly are—contests of power, at work and in the larger society.
Using personal interviews, solid research, and down-to-earth examples, Zweig looks at a number of important contemporary social problems: the growing inequality of income and wealth, welfare reform, globalization, the role of government, and the family values debate. He shows how, with class in mind, our understanding of these issues undergoes a radical shift.
Believing that we must limit the power of capitalists to abuse workers, communities, and the environment, Zweig offers concrete ideas for the creation of a new working class politics in the United States.
About the Author:
Michael Zweig is Professor of Economics at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where he has received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is on the state executive board of United University Professions, Local 2190, American Federation of Teachers, representing 22,000 faculty and professional staff throughout SUNY. His earlier books include Religion and Economic Justice and The Idea of a World University.
Booklist - Mary Carroll
Those who take (rather than give) orders at work are the working class; at 62% of the labor force, they are a majority distracted and diverted from its best interests for several generations. Zweig suggests the implications of this analysis for a number of key political issues, including the 'underclass,' 'family values,'globalization and what workers get (and should get) from government. putting class back on the table produces thoughtful, provocative analysis of where the nation is going and what working people could do about it.
Choice - R.L. Hogler
Trends toward globalization and privatization exacerbate workers' lack of meaningful influence over corporate activities, particularly legal regulation...Zweig advocates working-class organization through labor unions and political action groups. He sees 'signs of optimism' in the new leadership of the labor movement and renewed social activism among college students. Altogether, the study makes a convincing case about the working class and its implications for the US economy and society. Readable at all levels.
Publishers Weekly
. . . In this pungent critique of class and economics in the United States—part economic theory part political lecture and part reportage of working class life—Zweig offers an insightful, radical analysis that will make many readers rethink commonly held but unexamined beliefs. . . Zweig supports his arguments with statistics, facts and personal stories and argues with a forcefulness and conviction backed by a deeply moral sense of the dignity that is due to each person in their work and workplace
Library Journal
Even in post-Cold War America this working class has very different economic interests from capitalists and the professional class. Zweig believes that workers must understand this idea in order to unite across race and gender divisions to define and solve their economic plight. This book is convincingly argued, well documented with economic statistics and personal interviews, and upbeat in its conclusion. highly recommended for public and academic libraries.
The Nation - Jack Metzgar
Zweig's investigation of politics goes beyond the electoral, focusing instead on how a broad working-class social movement (often in alliance with segments of the professional middle class) could reshape workplace and community power relations as well as national politics. . . . A plain-spoken economist, rigorous thinker, and clear writer, Zweig defines the American class structure basically by occupations and the amount and kind of power people have in the workplace.
Washington Post Book World - Ronald D. Elving
For Zweig, our station in the world of work determines our fate. And in the power grid of the workplace, someone else makes the decisions, so everyone else is 'powerless' and 'vulnerable' As Zweig himself admits:"Life and politics are complicated, in part, because we as individuals have many 'identities' that shape us.
Public Employee Press - Ken Nash
This is a book for working class activists, whether they fight for justice in the workplace or in the community...He has filled The Working Class Majority with a gallery of pictues of workers, illustrating the faces of the contemporary working class in all its diversity...Until now, the fact that the working class is the majority has been kept a secret. But, with the publication of this book, the secret is out.
Library Journal
Today, the majority of working Americans labor longer hours and have less earning power and fewer job protections than they did 25 years ago. Zweig (economics, SUNY at Stony Brook) argues that "the long decline of working-class living standards coincides with the gradual and now almost total disappearance of the working class as a subject of discussion." The author rejects the comforting notion that most Americans earn middle incomes and are middle class. Instead, he defines the working-class majority as the 60 percent of working people who have little power over their working conditions and who do not boss others. Even in post-Cold War America, this working class has very different economic interests from capitalists and the professional class. Zweig believes that workers must understand this idea in order to unite across race and gender divisions to define and solve their economic plight. This book is convincingly argued, well documented with economic statistics and personal interviews, and upbeat in its conclusion. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.--Duncan Stewart, State Historical Society of Iowa Lib., Iowa City Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
Zweig (economics, State U. of New York-Stony Brook) argues that the US is a working-class rather than middle-class society, and that self- interest is not enough to reap capitalism's benefits. Includes a resource guide. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
What People Are Saying
Stanley Aronowitz
The Working Class Majority is in the finest tradition of popular economics education while at the same time making a genuine scholarly contribution to the literatures on class and inequality. Michael Zweig's major contention is that class matters both with respect to power and to life chances. . . . This book is a controversial but entirely fresh contribution to the debate.
—(Stanley Aronowitz, City University of New York)
Elaine Bernard
Michael Zweig does a good job exposing the attempts to scapegoat welfare recipients, immigrants, and foreigners, etc., and shows how recent policies aimed at these groups as the cause of the declining living standard of working class Americans are profoundly class driven in their intent and outcome. As well, Zweig writes in a clear and interesting style about these complicated topics—a useful book.
—(Elaine Bernard, Executive Director, Harvard University Trade Union Program)
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
For 50 years 'class' was a forbidden word on the shores of the United States. Michael Zweig's excellent text—The Working Class Majority—exposes the realities of class power and class politics in the contemporary USA. This is a book for working class activists, whether fighting for justice in the workplace or in the community.
—(Bill Fletcher, Jr., Assistant to the President, AFL-CIO)
Table of Contents:
| Acknowledgments | vii | |
| Introduction | 1 | |
| Chapter 1 | The Class Structure of the United States | 9 |
| Chapter 2 | What We Think about When We Think about Class | 39 |
| Chapter 3 | Why Is Class Important? | 61 |
| Chapter 4 | Looking at "The Underclass" | 77 |
| Chapter 5 | Looking at Values--Family and Otherwise | 95 |
| Chapter 6 | The Working Class and Power | 115 |
| Chapter 7 | Power and Globalization | 141 |
| Chapter 8 | Power and the Government | 153 |
| Chapter 9 | Into the Millennium | 169 |
| Appendix | Working Class Resource Guide | 175 |
| Notes | 181 | |
| Index | 193 |
No comments:
Post a Comment