Medicine and business management share certain similarities, writes John Kay. For centuries, the theories behind medical practice were mostly nonsense. Doctors simply applied fashionable nostrums, bleeding one patient, starving another, and sometimes the patient got better, sometimes not. The prestige of a doctor rested more on the social rank of his patients and the confidence of his assertions than on the evidence of his cures. Much the same can be said of present-day management gurus. But there is one difference between medicine and management, Kay adds. In the last 100 years, medicine has been transformed by science. Management has not. In The Business of Economics, Kay argues that it is economics that can provide the science that management presently lacks, that economics is the natural backbone of business management. In the many insightful and lively pieces collected here, Kay looks at the application of economics to the central strategic issues facing firms--their choice of activities and markets. He is particularly interested in microeconomics, the study of markets, industries, and firms, and is on the other hand highly critical of macroeconomics, economic modeling, and economic forecasting (which he says is inevitably wrong). He is especially illuminating on the recently developed resource-based theory of strategy, which attempts to explain the success or failure of a firm in terms of its "distinctive capabilities" (the factors which differentiate them from others in the same market and which cannot be easily reproduced by competitors even when recognized.) For instance, BMW's highly skilled work force, due to Germany's high level of general education, is hard to reproduce by competitors in other countries. Kay shows how BMW exploited its highly skilled labor force (opposed to low-wage foreign workers or robots found in many other auto plants) to get a large share of the market for up-scale, high-performance cars. Among the many other topics discussed in this idea-rich book are Saatchi &amp; Saatchi's dismal attempt to globalize in the 1980s, Honda's great success selling low-end motorcycles in the U.S., the fare of the Eurotunnel, and the reason why race-car driver Nigel Mansell makes seventy-five times as much money a year as Britain's Prime Minister, John Major. Described in Business Age as the "most important business analyst in Britain bar none," John Kay is renowned for his incisive, entertaining, and controversial columns in the Financial Times of London. In addition, he is a regular commentator on radio and TV, and is in much demand as a speaker and consultant. In The Business of Economics, he shares his thoughts on a wide range of issues facing businesses today. His clear and down-to-earth writing style informs, challenges, and entertains, and his rigorous and clever analysis of the corporate world offers insights into the business problems and decisions faced by executives and managers every day.

The Business of Economics

Business & Money

JOHN KAY

Economics

Oxford University Press

This sixth edition of this highly successful text updates the entire book to present a comprehensive picture of the UK tax system, including the 1995 budget changes. All facts and statistics reflect the latest information available, and the local taxation chapter has been completely rewritten to include material on the community charge and council tax systems.

The British Tax System

Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings, Vol. 2: Part II (Classic Reprint)

Arts & Photography

Forgotten Books

Memoir of John Kay of Bury: Inventor of the Fly-Shuttle ... with a Review of the Textile Trade and Manufacture from Earliest Times

John Lord

Franklin Classics Trade Press

Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings, Vol. 1: With Biographical Sketches and Illustrative Anecdotes (Classic Reprint)

In this ambitious and wide-ranging book, John Kay unravels the truth about markets. He explains why market economies outperformed socialist or centrally directed ones, but also why the imposition of market institutions often fails. Kay's search for the truth about markets takes him from the shores of Lake Z&amp;uuml,rich

The Truth About Markets: Their Genius, Their Limits, Their Follies

Allen Lane.

The Western powers - Britain, France and the USA - discovered the imperatives for intervention that have plunged the region into crisis ever since. It was then, too, that most of the region's modern-day states were created and their regimes forged; and then that their management by the West earned abiding resentment. Sowing the Wind tells of how and why this happened. The subject is painful and essentially sombre, but John Keay illuminates it with lucid analysis and anecdotes. This is that rarest of works, a history with humour, an epic with attitude, a dirge that delights. Here are unearthed a host of unregarded precedents, from the Gulf's first gusher to the first aerial assault on Baghdad, the first of Syria's innumerable coups, and the first terrorist outrages and suicide bombers. Little known figures - junior officers, contractors, explorers, spies - contest the orthodoxies of Arabist giants like T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Glubb Pasha and Loy Henders Four Roosevelts juggle with the fate of nations. Authors as alien as E.M. Forster and Arthur Koestler add their testimony. And in Antonius and Weizmann, the Mufti and Begin, Arab is inexorably juxtaposed with Jew. Pertinent, scholarly and irreverent, Sowing the Wind provides an ambitious insight into the making of the world's most fraught arena.

Sowing the Wind : The Mismanagement of the Middle East 1900-1960

History

World

John Murray Publishers, Ltd.

Studies businesses as diverse as Honda Motors, the grandes marques of Champagne, and Jenners department store in Princes Street, Edinburgh. This work provides an introduction to business strategy and a guide to many of the key issues in business.

Hare & the Tortoise: An Informal Guide to Business Strategy

Management & Leadership

GAZELLE BOOK SERVICE

The Long and the Short of It - Finance and Investment for Normally Intelligent People Who Are Not in [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2009] John Kay ... 0954809327

The Long and the Short of It - Finance and Investment for Normally Intelligent People Who Are Not in

Erasmus Press LtD

"Obliquity" is based on a simple concept: that an oblique, or indirect, approach to any problem or challenge is often more successful than the obvious and direct one. This explains why the most profitable companies are not the most aggressive in chasing profits, the wealthiest men and women are not the most materialistic, and the happiest people do not pursue happiness. Pre-eminent economist and columnist for the "Financial Times", John Kay applies his provocative theory to everything from business to warfare and from football to managing forest fires. Very rarely does a brilliant idea emerge that is brand new, immediately makes sense and genuinely changes the way we think. With "Obliquity", John Kay introduces one of those rare ideas. "...you will gain invaluable insights into how successful decisions are made". (Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England). "Persuasive, rigorous, creative and wise. Brilliant". (Tim Harford, author of "The Undercover Economist"). Ric Jerrom reads John Kay's original book on how to reach our goals indirectly - complete and unabridged.

Obliquity

BBC Audiobooks

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Books by JOHN KAY