Life and Death on the Corporate Battlefield [antikvár]

Preface Long before this book was written, when we first became interested in business, we discovered to our dismay that many of our assumptions about it were false. We also discovered that we were by no means alone in our ignorance—that our friends and colleagues were as uninformed as we were. So we set about, in a very modest way, to educate ourselves, and eventually, as these things often happen, wound up educating others. In our attempts to make some simple sense out of what is often thought of as a hopelessly confusing subject, we have arrived at a rather unconventional view of American business. It's not an academic view, although we have spent time at Harvard and elsewhere learning that perspective. It's not a corporate view, although we have watched business work from the inside. And it's not an ideological view, although we have been exposed to ideology from all sides. Instead, it is the view of two journalists trying to depict, as vividly as possible, what has come to fascinate them: how business really works. Naturally, we are deeply in debt to many people and institutions that helped us shape our thoughts. First, the Nieman Foundation for Joumalism; its curator, Jim Thomson; and Dean Lawrence Fouraker provided the opportunity for 11