Macat

"The Core Competence of the Corporation" challenged and redefined traditional concepts of management strategy in a market that was growing increasingly global and competitive. Business scholars C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel base their 1990 argument for a strategy change on a comparison of case studies. They note that some corporations are adept at inventing new markets, quickly entering emerging markets, and shifting patterns of customer choice in...

Argyris' "The Individual and Organization" is part of a series of essays and books considering how organisations should be run. This essay explores the lack of congruence between the needs and expectations of individual employees and the organisations that employ them. Grounding his argument in studies on human nature, Argyris highlights that demands of greater independence, an expansion of interests, and re-orientation of goals usually accompany...

Reflections on the Revolution in France may read like an exercise in political theory. But when it was first published in 1790, Edmund Burke was fighting a real political battle. Burke saw that the Enlightenment ideas that had inspired radical political change in France the year before were beginning to take root in England. He wanted to discredit these dangerous thoughts before they sparked a revolution in his own country. By publishing his pamphlet...

Born in 1945, Paul Kennedy grew up in England, watching the new political realities of the time contribute to the dismantling of the British Empire. He pursued a lifetime of scholarship, predominantly in the US, trying to understand the social, economic, and military forces that shape great powers. While previous scholars of international history had focused on "great men" and their achievements, Kennedy focused on the interdependent relationship...

Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840, challenged conventional thinking about democracy when it appeared-and is still cited by leading politicians today. Having witnessed some negative effects of democratic revolutions in his native France, Tocqueville visited America in 1831 to see what a functioning republic looked like. His main concerns were that democracy could make people too dependent on the...

Examining 1,200 years of history from the foundation of Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire to the beheading of King Charles I in England is in itself a mammoth undertaking. But it is the issues explored by German American historian Ernst H. Kantorowicz in his 1957 study The King's Two Bodies that have had a profound effect on the way academics think about the study of history. Early European monarchs were considered to have two bodies: one earthly and...

In his 1988 work Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863—1877, Eric Foner drives a final nail into the coffin of outdated interpretations of history. His fascinating account of the decade following the American Civil War shows that black people were an integral part of the movement to end centuries of slavery and were often key drivers of what successes there were in the Reconstruction period. Reconstruction had the potential to make...

Rachel Carson worked at the US Bureau of Fisheries for 15 years while developing a writing career at the same time. Her first book, 1941's Under The Sea Wind, became a best seller. But it was eclipsed by 1962's Silent Spring, one of the first books ever to highlight environmentalist issues. Carson focuses on the negative, widespread, and long-lasting effects of human activity on the environment, and illustrates this through one case study, the use...

Social anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard wrote Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande after 20 months' fieldwork with the Azande people of the South Sudan. It became the founding text in the anthropology of witchcraft, and has been hailed as a classic. Although Witchcraft had little impact when it first appeared in 1937, its popularity grew after World War II. Alongside his subsequent work on the Nuer people, Witchcraft established Evans-Pritchard's...

First published in 1996, Our Ecological Footprint sets out a powerful model for visualizing and measuring humanity's impact on the Earth-the ecological footprint-with the aim of reducing the harm we are causing the planet before it is too late. Although numerous organizations, governments, and individuals worldwide have now adopted the concept of ecological footprinting, the idea has also proved to be controversial. The authors sound a clear warning...