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| Profit with Honor: The New Stage of Market Capitalism
ISBN: 9780300127423
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Yale University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Capitalism -- Moral and ethical aspects; Business ethics; Social responsibility of business;
Social scientist Yankelovich (Uniting America) is a policy-minded pollster who has served on the boards such companies as CBS, ETS and US West. Here he takes stock of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia and other alleged bilkers, arguing that such companies are not just bad apples on a sound branch: the increasing permissiveness and deregulation of the business world, he argues, coupled with the stock market's increased emphasis on short-term shareholder value, has instigated a climate of unenlightened, all-consuming self-interest. Americans are thus faced with a stark choice between a free market or a civil society, but each vision is "radically incomplete." Arguing that the current climate for business is both harmful and unlikely to be legislated away, he proposes a new set of cultural norms dubbed "stewardship ethics"-social responsibility, but without the usual self-righteous disdain for money associated with non-profits. Yaneklovich's guidelines evoke the usual business utopia, where employees and consumers alike return to trust in the corporations, but his slim volume is more visionary than practical, leaving interested parties largely on their own when it comes to implementing his ideas on stewardship. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Daniel Yankelovich was born in Boston, Massachusetts on December 29, 1924. During World War II, he served in the Army. He received a bachelor's degree in 1946 and a master's degree in 1950 from Harvard University. After two years in Paris studying at the Sorbonne, he returned without a doctorate and went to work for a market research firm. He spent six years learning the ropes. He was a pollster, author, and public opinion analyst who mirrored the perceptions of generations of Americans about politics, consumer products, and social changes. In 1958, he founded Daniel Yankelovich Inc. His studies of American youths became the basis for a 1969 CBS television news special entitled Generations Apart. The company became Yankelovich, Skelly and White in 1974. Even when Saatchi and Saatchi, the advertising agency, later bought the company, Yankelovich remained chairman until 1986. He went on to form a new firm, Daniel Yankelovich Group. He wrote several books including New Rules: Searching for Self-Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down, Coming to Public Judgment: Making Democracy Work in a Complex World, The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict Into Cooperation, and Profit with Honor: The New Shape of Market Capitalism. He and I. M. Destler edited a collection of essays entitled Beyond the Beltway: Engaging the Public in U.S. Foreign Policy. He died from kidney failure on September 22, 2017 at the age of 92. (Bowker Author Biography) |
