Download or read book The Matthew Effect written by Daniel Rigney and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-23 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The old saying does often seem to hold true: the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, creating a widening gap between those who have more and those who have less. The sociologist Robert K. Merton called this phenomenon the Matthew effect, named after a passage in the gospel of Matthew. Yet the more closely we examine the sociological effects of this principle, the more complicated the idea becomes. Initial advantage doesn't always lead to further advantage, and disadvantage doesn't necessarily translate into failure. Does this theory need to be revisited? Merton's arguments have significant implications for our conceptions of equality and justice, and they challenge our beliefs about culture, education, and public policy. His hypothesis has been examined across a variety of social arenas, including science, technology, politics, and schooling, to see if, in fact, advantage begets further advantage. Daniel Rigney is the first to evaluate Merton's theory of cumulative advantage extensively, considering both the conditions that uphold the Matthew effect and the circumstances that cause it to fail. He explores whether growing inequality is beyond human control or disparity is socially constructed and subject to change. Reexamining our core assumptions about society, Rigney causes us to rethink the sources of inequity.

Download or read book The JOLT Effect written by Matthew Dixon and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling co-author of The Challenger Sale, a paradigm-shattering approach to overcoming customer indecision and closing more sales In sales, the worst thing you can hear from a customer isn’t “no.” It’s “I need to think about it.” When this happens, deeply entrenched business advice says to double down on your efforts to sell a buyer on all the ways they might win by choosing you and your business. But this approach backfires dramatically. Why? Because it completely gets wrong the primary driver behind purchasing decision-making: once purchase intent is established, customers no longer care about succeeding. What they really care about is not failing. For years, sales expert Matthew Dixon has been busting longstanding business myths. Now in The JOLT Effect, he and co-author Ted McKenna turn their trademark analysis and latest research to the vital and growing problem of customer indecision—and offer a shocking new approach that turns conventional wisdom on its head. Drawing on a brand-new, first-of-its-kind study of more than two and a half million sales conversations from across industry, they reveal the surprising truth that high-performing sales reps grasp and their average-performing peers don’t: only by addressing the customer’s fear of failure can you get indecisive buyers to go from verbally committing to actually pulling the trigger. Packed with robust data, counterintuitive insights, and practical guidance, The JOLT Effect is the playbook for any salesperson or sales leader who wants to close the gap between customer intent and action—and close more sales.

Download or read book Visible Hand written by Matthew Hennessey and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To most people, the word "economics" sounds like homework. In Visible Hand, Wall Street Journal op-ed editor Matthew Hennessey brings basic economic principles vividly to life in plain English, without resort to numbers, graphs, or jargon. This isn't Fed policy or the stock market. This is the essential stuff: supply and demand, incentives and tradeoffs, scarcity and innovation, work and leisure. A teenager should be able to discuss these things intelligently. Sadly, too few of us can explain them even in adulthood. Visible Hand equips readers with the essential vocabulary necessary to understand and explain how we make the choices we do. In Hennessey's hands, economics is far from the dismal science. It's the sparkling art of decision making. No homework necessary.

Download or read book Theory for the World to Come written by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can social theories forge new paths into an uncertain future? The future has become increasingly difficult to imagine. We might be able to predict a few events, but imagining how looming disasters will coincide is simultaneously necessary and impossible. Drawing on speculative fiction and social theory, Theory for the World to Come is the beginning of a conversation about theories that move beyond nihilistic conceptions of the capitalism-caused Anthropocene and toward generative bodies of thought that provoke creative ways of thinking about the world ahead. Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer draws on such authors as Kim Stanley Robinson and Octavia Butler, and engages with afrofuturism, indigenous speculative fiction, and films from the 1970s and ’80s to help think differently about the future and its possibilities. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

Download or read book Well Being and Fair Distribution written by Matthew Adler and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive philosophically grounded argument for the use of social welfare functions as a framework for governmental policy analysis.

Download or read book Status Signals written by Joel M. Podolny and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are elite jewelers reluctant to sell turquoise, despite strong demand? Why did leading investment bankers shun junk bonds for years, despite potential profits? Status Signals is the first major sociological examination of how concerns about status affect market competition. Starting from the basic premise that status pervades the ties producers form in the marketplace, Joel Podolny shows how anxieties about status influence whom a producer does (or does not) accept as a partner, the price a producer can charge, the ease with which a producer enters a market, how the producer's inventions are received, and, ultimately, the market segments the producer can (and should) enter. To achieve desired status, firms must offer more than strong past performance and product quality--they must also send out and manage social and cultural signals. Through detailed analyses of market competition across a broad array of industries--including investment banking, wine, semiconductors, shipping, and venture capital--Podolny demonstrates the pervasive impact of status. Along the way, he shows how corporate strategists, tempted by the profits of a market that would negatively affect their status, consider not only whether to enter the market but also whether they can alter the public's perception of the market. Podolny also examines the different ways in which a firm can have status. Wal-Mart, for example, has low status among the rich as a place to shop, but high status among the rich as a place to invest. Status Signals provides a systematic understanding of market dynamics that have--until now--not been fully appreciated.

Download or read book Storyworthy written by Matthew Dicks and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A five-time Moth GrandSLAM winner and bestselling novelist shows how to tell a great story — and why doing so matters. Whether we realize it or not, we are always telling stories. On a first date or job interview, at a sales presentation or therapy appointment, with family or friends, we are constantly narrating events and interpreting emotions and actions. In this compelling book, storyteller extraordinaire Matthew Dicks presents wonderfully straightforward and engaging tips and techniques for constructing, telling, and polishing stories that will hold the attention of your audience (no matter how big or small). He shows that anyone can learn to be an appealing storyteller, that everyone has something “storyworthy” to express, and, perhaps most important, that the act of creating and telling a tale is a powerful way of understanding and enhancing your own life.

Download or read book The Effortless Experience written by Matthew Dixon and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong? In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted many longstanding myths about sales. Now they’ve turned their research and analysis to a new vital business subject—customer loyalty—with a new book that turns the conventional wisdom on its head. The idea that companies must delight customers by exceeding service expectations is so entrenched that managers rarely even question it. They devote untold time, energy, and resources to trying to dazzle people and inspire their undying loyalty. Yet CEB’s careful research over five years and tens of thousands of respondents proves that the “dazzle factor” is wildly overrated—it simply doesn’t predict repeat sales, share of wallet, or positive wordof-mouth. The reality: Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems, not on how spectacular its service experience might be. Most customers don’t want to be “wowed”; they want an effortless experience. And they are far more likely to punish you for bad service than to reward you for good service. If you put on your customer hat rather than your manager or marketer hat, this makes a lot of sense. What do you really want from your cable company, a free month of HBO when it screws up or a fast, painless restoration of your connection? What about your bank—do you want free cookies and a cheerful smile, even a personal relationship with your teller? Or just a quick in-and-out transaction and an easy way to get a refund when it accidentally overcharges on fees? The Effortless Experience takes readers on a fascinating journey deep inside the customer experience to reveal what really makes customers loyal—and disloyal. The authors lay out the four key pillars of a low-effort customer experience, along the way delivering robust data, shocking insights and profiles of companies that are already using the principles revealed by CEB’s research, with great results. And they include many tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, decrease customer churn, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the “dazzle factor” fails to deliver. The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked.

Download or read book Interests and Integration written by Matthew Joseph Gabel and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2009-12-10 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integration in Europe has been a slow incremental process focusing largely on economic matters. Policy makers have tried to develop greater support for the European Union by such steps as creating pan-European political institutions. Yet significant opposition remains to policies such as the creation of a single currency. What explains continued support for the European Union as well as opposition among some to the loss of national control on some questions? Has the incremental process of integration and the development of institutions and symbols of a united Europe transformed public attitudes towards the European Union? In this book, Matthew Gabel probes the attitudes of the citizens of Europe toward the European Union. He argues that differences in attitudes toward integration are grounded in the different perceptions of how economic integration will affect individuals' economic welfare and how perceptions of economic welfare effect political attitudes. Basing his argument on Easton's idea that where affective support for institutions is low, citizens will base their support for institutions on their utilitarian appraisal of how well the institutions work for them, Gabel contends that in the European Union, citizens' appraisal of the impact of the Union on their individual welfare is crucial because their affective support is quite low. This book will be of interest to scholars studying European integration as well as scholars interested in the impact of public opinion on economic policymaking. Matthew Gabel is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Kentucky.

Download or read book The Future of the Social Investment State written by Marius R. Busemeyer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social investment is part of a strategy to modernize the European welfare states by focusing on human resource development throughout the life-course, while ensuring financial sustainability. The last decades have seen cost containment in areas such as pensions and health care, but also expansion in areas such as early childhood education, higher education and active labor market policies. This development is linked to a Social Investment (SI) approach, which should, ideally, promote a better reconciliation of work and family life, high levels of labor market productivity and strong economic growth, while also mitigating social inequality. However, institutionalization of policies that may mainly benefit the middle class has some unintended effects, such as perpetuating new inequalities and the creation of other Matthew effects. While research on the rise of the social investment state as a new paradigm of social policy-making for European welfare states has grown significantly, there are still important gaps in the literature. The chapters in this book address the controversies around social investment related to inequalities, individual preferences and the politics of social investment. This volume is therefore organized around policies, politics and outcomes. The contributing authors bring together expert knowledge and different perspectives on SI from several disciplines, with original path-breaking empirical contributions, addressing some key questions that thus far are unanswered, related to Matthew effects, inequalities, ambiguities of social investment and institutional complementarities. Furthermore, it is the first volume that covers the core policy areas of social investment: childcare, education and labour market policies. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Download or read book Evicted written by Matthew Desmond and published by Crown. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • One of the most acclaimed books of our time, this modern classic “has set a new standard for reporting on poverty” (Barbara Ehrenreich, The New York Times Book Review). In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY President Barack Obama • The New York Times Book Review • The Boston Globe • The Washington Post • NPR • Entertainment Weekly • The New Yorker • Bloomberg • Esquire • BuzzFeed • Fortune • San Francisco Chronicle • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • Politico • The Week • Chicago Public Library • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly • Booklist • Shelf Awareness WINNER OF: The National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism • The PEN/New England Award • The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE AND THE KIRKUS PRIZE “Evicted stands among the very best of the social justice books.”—Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and Commonwealth “Gripping and moving—tragic, too.”—Jesmyn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones “Evicted is that rare work that has something genuinely new to say about poverty.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Download or read book Inventing the Market written by Lisa Herzog and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inventing the Market explores two paradigms of the market in the thought of Adam Smith and G.W.F. Hegel, bridging the gap between economics and philosophy, it shows that both disciplines can profit from a broader, more historically situated approach to the market.

Download or read book Adapting to Climate Change written by Matthew Kahn and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory study of how climate change will affect individual economic decisions, and the broad impact of those choicesSelected by Publishers Weekly as one of its Top Ten books in Business and Economics for Spring 2021 It is all but certain that the next century will be hotter than any we’ve experienced before. Even if we get serious about fighting climate change, it’s clear that we will need to adapt to the changes already underway in our environment. This book considers how individual economic choices in response to climate change will transform the larger economy. Using the tools of microeconomics, Matthew E. Kahn explores how decisions about where we live, how our food is grown, and where new business ventures choose to locate are impacted by climate change. Kahn suggests new ways that big data can be deployed to ease energy or water shortages to aid agricultural operations and proposes informed policy changes related to public infrastructure, disaster relief, and real estate to nudge land use, transportation options, and business development in the right direction.

Download or read book The Economics of Artificial Intelligence written by Ajay Agrawal and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely investigation of the potential economic effects, both realized and unrealized, of artificial intelligence within the United States healthcare system. In sweeping conversations about the impact of artificial intelligence on many sectors of the economy, healthcare has received relatively little attention. Yet it seems unlikely that an industry that represents nearly one-fifth of the economy could escape the efficiency and cost-driven disruptions of AI. The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: Health Care Challenges brings together contributions from health economists, physicians, philosophers, and scholars in law, public health, and machine learning to identify the primary barriers to entry of AI in the healthcare sector. Across original papers and in wide-ranging responses, the contributors analyze barriers of four types: incentives, management, data availability, and regulation. They also suggest that AI has the potential to improve outcomes and lower costs. Understanding both the benefits of and barriers to AI adoption is essential for designing policies that will affect the evolution of the healthcare system.

Download or read book Confessions of an Investigative Reporter written by Matthew Schwartz and published by Koehler Books. This book was released on 2020-05-24 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A fascinating look behind the media mirror that reflects celebrity and power ... incredible." --Bob Dotson, New York Times bestselling author, former national correspondent, the Today show Award-winning investigative reporter Matthew Schwartz was ordered to lie on TV in the name of sensationalism. He was arrested for trespassing on the property of a business he exposed for committing fraud. A target of one of his investigations swung a baseball bat at his head. He's been shoved, sued, and cursed out. He caught a car dealership rolling back odometers and selling used cars as new. In Confessions of an Investigative Reporter, this veteran journalist reveals his inner thoughts and the inside stories viewers never saw. Confessions of an Investigative Reporter is funny, fast-moving, and dishy. It provides a rare look inside the world of local news from someone who spent four decades in it. It's not only for news viewers. It's for anyone who cares about justice and their community. And about that time he was ordered to lie? His answers lie within.

Download or read book Valuation of Network Effects in Software Markets written by Andreas Kemper and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-12-12 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The customer base is an important value driver of software companies and a reliable prediction of its development is fundamental for investment decisions. A particularity in software markets is that an individual’s purchasing decision is often influenced by other users’ choices. Although such customer network effects are evident, their quantitative assessment remain elusive with conventional approaches. This book contributes to closing this gap by developing methods for measuring network effects and their implications for valuation in software markets. Based on the theory of complex networks the book reveals that such diffusion processes highly depend on structural properties of customer networks. Moreover, it depicts that such insights are contributions to improve the quality of valuations in software markets. But the implications of this research also comprise social and political aspects as they can be applied in order to prevent corporate failures in all network effect markets.

Download or read book The European Social Model under Pressure written by Romana Careja and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Social Model is at a crossroad. Although from the 1990s onwards, the threat of an imminent crisis shaped much of the rhetoric surrounding the future of the welfare state, disagreement within the academic community remains. What is however increasingly clear is that with the global financial crisis and the Euro crisis that followed it, the challenges the European Social Model faces have become more acute and demand action. This volume launches a multifaceted inquiry into these challenges. Each contribution, written by renowned scholars in their fields, represents an in-depth exploration of issues that cut to the core of current political, economic and social processes. They are an invitation to the seasoned scholars as well as to the beginning students of social sciences, public administration or journalism to engage with, by now, a large body of scholarship, to accompany the authors in their endeavours to seek an explanation to burning questions and start their own inquiries.