Ideology and National Competitiveness; An Analysis of Nine Countries

x, [2], 350, [4] pages. Preface. Introduction. Contributors. Notes. Index. Several small tears, and some creasing to dust jacket edges. Ink name previous owner, as well as the date, are written in ink on front free endpaper. Date written in ink on title page. Other ink makes and comments noted. Topics covered include France: Ideological Divisions and the Global Reality; Germany: Competing Communitarianisms; The United States: The Costs of Ambivalence; Japan: Adaptive Communitarianism; Statism and Familism on Taiwan; Korea; Order and Progress in Brazil; Revolution and Flexibility in Mexico; and Conclusion. The authors do not attempt to describe the ideal society. Rather, they suggest that successful communities are those that are effective at managing ideological change and contradictions by clarifying goals and, ultimately, by achieving. Perhaps most important to the business person or policymaker is the assertion that effective managers must understand the ideological implications of their actions. A country's ideology-the framework of ideas it uses to make values explicit and its institutions legitimate-shapes the manner in which corporations and managers live and act. If not properly understood, it can blind a manager to problems he cannot avoid; if properly understood, it can alert managers to issues that help them in dealing with government agencies, the public, their workers, and in developing their own business strategy. In this probing study, Harvard Business School professor George C. Lodge and Harvard University sociologist Ezra F. Vogel have combined their expertise to examine ideology as a useful tool for understanding national communities-how and why they have evolved, the tensions that exist within them, and the differences between them. George Cabot Lodge II (born July 7, 1927) is an American professor and former politician. Lodge was a political reporter and columnist at the Boston Herald prior to entering federal civil service. In 1954, Lodge became Director of Information at the U.S. Department of Labor. In 1958, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs by Dwight D. Eisenhower, and was reappointed by John F. Kennedy in 1961. He was the United States Delegate to the International Labour Organization and was elected chairman of the organization's Governing Body in 1960] He later entered politics and was the 1962 U.S. Senate candidate from Massachusetts against Ted Kennedy, marking the third time in history that the Lodges faced the Kennedys in a Massachusetts election. Previously, Lodge's father was the incumbent 1952 U.S. Senate candidate from Massachusetts against John F. Kennedy for the same seat. Additionally, Lodge's patrilineal great-grandfather Henry Cabot Lodge was reelected for the same Senate seat as the incumbent 1916 U.S. Senate candidate against the Kennedy brothers' maternal grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald. In 1961 Lodge became a member of the Harvard Business School faculty, leaving to run for office in 1962, before returning the following year. He remained at Harvard until his retirement in 1997, when he became Professor Emeritus. He conducted research, published articles, and received honorary fellowships and distinctions in the latter parts of his career. Ezra Feivel Vogel (born July 11, 1930) is a Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University and has written on Japan, China, and Asia generally. In 1960-1961 he was assistant professor at Yale University and from 1961-1964 a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, studying Chinese language and history. He remained at Harvard, becoming lecturer in 1964 and, in 1967, professor. He retired from teaching on June 30, 2000. Since retirement he has published a book on Deng Xiaoping and his era. He taught at Harvard starting in 1964 and became a tenured professor in 1968. Vogel succeeded John Fairbank to become the second Director (1972-1977) of Harvard's East Asian Research Center and Second Chairman of the Co.…