Dr. Deming: The American Who Taught the Japanese about Quality
Author: Rafael Aguayo
Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a household name in Japan, became the prime catalyst behind the incredible success of Japanese industry. In fact, since 1951, the Deming Prize has been the most coveted and prestigious award among Japanese corporations, similar to the Malcolm Baldrige Award for quality in business in the United States. Today, Deming is finally becoming a household name in his own country. The lessons he has to teach American business are more urgent than ever.
Just how different is the Deming Management Method? Compare just a few of the many differences in beliefs between conventional organizations and Deming organizations:
Standard Company
* Quality is expensive
* Defects are caused by workers
* Buy at lowest cost
* Fear and reward are proper ways to motivate
* Play one supplier off against another
Deming Company
* Quality leads to lower costs
* Most defects are caused by the system
* Buy from vendors committed to quality
* Fear leads to disaster
* Work with suppliers
Publishers Weekly
Urges statistician and quality-control expert Deming, ``Don't blame the Japanese'' for the U.S. trade deficit--``we did it to ourselves.'' According to Aguayo, Deming is largely responsible for Japan's industrial revolution, though he is little known in the U.S. Here addressing America's corporate leadership, the author--a former bank executive who studied with Deming at New York University--contends persuasively that Deming's advice is savvy, current, even indispensable: American management practices must change, renouncing goals of immediate profit in favor of long-term quality. Aguayo expounds on the leadership training techniques and specific steps that would likely trigger lower costs, increased productivity, larger market share and profits, along with more jobs and higher standards of living for all. (Nov.)
Booknews
The long famed (in Japan) and increasingly recognized (in the US) W. Edwards Deming was a prime catalyst behind the success of Japanese industry. Aguayo, who studied with Deming for seven years, introduces the man and his management lessons to a wide audience, and shows how Deming's principles can be applied to American industry. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Book about: Options as a Strategic Investment or High Altitude Leadership
Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World
Author: Gregory Clark
Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations.
Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education.
The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations.
A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed throughoutside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.
The New York Times - Benjamin M. Friedman
Clark's book is delightfully written, offering a profusion of detail on such seeming arcana as technology in Polynesia and Tasmania before contact with the West, Sharia-consistent banking practices in the Ottoman Empire and bathing habits (actually, the lack thereof) in 17th-century England. But Clark's eye is fixed steadily on the idea he's pushing; the details are fascinating, but they are there because they help make his central argument. Clark is also marvelously adept at drawing out the relevance of many facets of his historical inquiry for present-day concerns…Right or wrong, or perhaps somewhere in between, Clark's is about as stimulating an account of world economic history as one is likely to find.
Lawrence R. Maxted - Library Journal
In 1798, Thomas Malthus theorized that real economic progress was impossible, as any improvement of living standards would inevitably lead to population growth that would then devour resources and lower living standards back to their earlier subsistence level. Clark (economics, Univ. of California, Davis) explores this Malthusian Trap and how England broke through it around 1800, starting the Industrial Revolution that spread throughout the West. He paints a bleak portrait of the pre-1800 Malthusian world and contends that the Industrial Revolution was more a coincidental combination of technological advances and societal factors than an evolutionary inevitability. He also doubts that Western economic prescriptions will cure the ills of developing countries still in the Malthusian Trap. In measured language and with many explanatory tables and charts, he eloquently reaffirms the importance of this Malthusian Trap in understanding economics. Because his thesis depends on somewhat arcane economic and societal arguments such as comparing fertility to wealth in 1620-38 England, Clark's work, which doesn't deserve such a silly, punning title, is appropriate only for academic and larger public libraries, for which it is highly recommended.
Table of Contents:
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: The Sixteen-Page Economic History of the World 1
The Malthusian Trap: Economic Life to 1800
The Logic of the Malthusian Economy 19
Living Standards 40
Fertility 71
Life Expectancy 91
Malthus and Darwin: Survival of the Richest 112
Technological Advance 133
Institutions and Growth 145
The Emergence of Modern Man 166
The Industrial Revolution
Modern Growth: The Wealth of Nations 193
The Puzzle of the Industrial Revolution 208
The Industrial Revolution in England 230
Why England? Why Not China, India, or Japan? 259
Social Consequences 272
The Great Divergence
World Growth since 1800 303
The Proximate Sources of Divergence 328
Why Isn't the Whole World Developed? 352
Conclusion: Strange New World 371
Technical Appendix 379
References 383
Index 409
Figure Credits 419
