Synopses & Reviews
Combining perspectives on the interplay of two areas of primary importance to our lives--business and society--this anthology brings together a wide range of readings on the subject. Topics include the historical evolution of the business enterprise, the emergence and development of the labor force, and the impact of the international marketplace. Castro concentrates on the moral and social aspects of business, the way it affects national economy, the environment, careers, the disadvantaged, government, and public opinion. Combining the idea that a good business education must also be a good liberal education, Castro is careful to show the connections between the way Americans have done and thought about business in the past, with the way Americans think and do business today. Considering the abundance of socioeconomic issues in everyday life, he shows that business ethics has always been an integral part of business, and that this continues to be true. He shows that the historical, social, and ethical dimensions of business are an inseparable and necessary component of business education. Chosen for their student interest and accessibility, the readings can be used for a variety of different courses covering business and society.
Table of Contents
I. HISTORY 1. A Parable to Begin With
Daniel Lerner:"The Grocer and the Chief"
2. Opportnity and Dislocation
Oscar Handlin: "Peasant Origins"
The New York Times: "East Side Street Vendors"
Morris Rosenfeld: "Sweat Shop"
Pedro Pietri: "Puerto Rican Obituary"
Stephen Meyer III: "Assembly-Line Americanization"
3. Business: Culture and Technology
Anthony Giddens: "The Themes of the Protestant Ethic"
Clifford Geertz: "Economic Development in Modjokuto"
Alfred D. Chandler: "The Role of Business in the United States: A Historical Survey"
4. Capital Accumulation
John Maynard Keynes: "On Late Nineteenth-Century Capitalism"
Steven F. Cohen: Selections
5. Community
Wendell Berry: "Does Community Have a Value?"
6. Bringing It back Home
Barry Castro: "Socrates in Dallas: Managing the Facilities"
II. Sociology
7. A Poem to Begin With
Robert Frost: "Two Tramps in Mudtime"
8. Workers and Managers
Simone Weill: "The Experience of Factory Life"
Robert Jackall: "The Social Structure of Managerial Work"
George Orwell: "Shooting an Elephant"
9. The Marginalized
William Langer: "The Black Masses"
Herbert George Gutman (Selections)
Cornell West (Selections)
John Tierney: "Harlem Teenagers Checkmate a Stereotype"
R.B. "If Yo Go..."
10. Power and Culture
T.S. Eliot (Selections)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Selections)
11. Power, Culture, and Media
Ben H. Bagdidkian: "The Wrong Kind of Readers: The Fall and Rise of the New Yorker"
Gloria Steinem: "Sex, Lies, and Advertising"
12. Bringing It Back Home
Barry Castro: "Learning about Education at the Workplace"
III. Ethics
13. A Dilemma To Begin With
Douglas Hofstadter: "The Prisoner's Dilemma and the Evolution of Cooperation"
14. Conscience
Robert Solomon: "The Corporation As Community"
Roger Rosenblatt: "How Do They Live With Themselves?"
15. Law
Montesquieu: "On Commerce"
16. Environment
Garrett Hardin: "The Tragedy of the Commons"
Max Oelschaeger: "The Idea of Wilderness"
Lynn White: "The Historical Roots of Or Ecological Crisis"
17. An Overview
Albert O. Hirshman: "Rival Interpretation of Market Society: Civilizing, Destructive, or Feeble?"
18. Bringing It Back Home
Barry Castro: "Business Ethics: Knowing Ourselves"