Books

The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda for Business Leaders, Harvard Business School Press, November, 2002

In The Politics of Fortune, Jeffrey E. Garten poses two questions:

What is the emerging shape of the world in the wake of both September 11 terrorist attacks and the corporate scandals that began with Enron? What role should business leaders play in this new era? In this controversial book, Garten recommends a bold but feasible new agenda for CEOs – one that will not only require them to rebuild their tarnished reputations, but to partner with government in charting a new course that differs radically from what we’ve known in the 1980s and 1990s.

Garten calls for business leaders to engage in constructive public initiatives to an extent that we’ve not seen since the immediate aftermath of World War II. He shows CEOs must change not just their corporate and public strategies but their way of thinking about their responsibilities – not only to their shareholders but to a broader society. He describes the challenges that they must confront and the concrete steps that they must take in a number of areas:

• Protecting homeland security
• Rebuilding trust in markets and corporate America
• Establishing a stronger foundation for free trade
• Devising better ways to reduce global poverty
• Expanding corporate citizenship abroad
• Charting a more effective foreign policy
• Reorienting business education for the new era

The Politics of Fortune contains critical insights for anyone who wants to understand better the context for the enormous changes sweeping over our country and our world, and the role that private enterprise must play in building a more secure and more prosperous future.

The Mind of the CEO, Perseus/Basic Books, February, 2001

In these times of intense change, what role should our most important business leaders play in society? How do the CEOs of major corporations construe their jobs? How should they construe them? These are the questions posed and answered in The Mind of the CEO.

Based on extensive and highly personal interviews with forty CEOs around the world – people such as GE’s Jack Welch, AOL’s Steven Case, Allen & Co.’s Nancy Peretsman, Newscorp’s Rupert Murdoch, BP Amoco’s John Browne, Nokia’s Jorma Ollila, and Toyota’s Hiroshi Okuda – Jeffrey E. Garten takes us on a journey into the innermost thoughts of the world’s corporate titans and provides a context for understanding the turmoil in today’s boardrooms. His conclusions may surprise you:

  • Global CEOs are not nearly as powerful as many people think, nor do they see themselves that way. Many are overwhelmed by the complexity of what’s demanded of them.
  • The real Internet wars will not involve the dot-coms but will be fought among the traditional corporate titans. And they’ve only just begun.
  • Many global CEOs are complacent about their international strategies; they know less than they think they do.
  • Corporate success in the future will require much more than creating short-term value for shareholders. Most top executives will have to devote more attention to employees, customers, suppliers, and communities – but achieving the right balance is nearly an impossible task.
  • With creative and expert workers more important than ever, keeping employees’ trust and articulating clear values are increasingly crucial. But in an era of restructuring, layoffs, and “golden parachutes,” trust is increasingly hard for CEOs to win.
  • For CEOs to thrive, their visions must be increasingly bold, and execution increasingly flawless. But the bolder the vision, the more difficult the execution.
  • CEOs need to take a much stronger role than most now contemplate to create the framework of globalization – to manage the environment, train workers, and design the rules and institutions for trade, finance and communications. Otherwise, globalization will end in chaos and anarchy.

In the end, Jeffrey Garten advocates a much broader leadership role for CEOs than they now appear willing to play – though he acknowledges the extreme difficulties many will have in doing so. His ideas are a challenge to those who are suspicious of corporate power, those who believe CEOs should focus only on enriching shareholders, and even to many CEOs who see their jobs much more narrowly. They will be welcomed by anyone who is wrestling with how to make globalization work better, and those who genuinely seek ways for multinational corporations to exercise the citizenship responsibilities that come with vast economic power. No one interested in the future can afford not to read, think about, and debate The Mind of the CEO.

World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy, (editor and introduction), Harvard Business School Press, 2000

At a time in which globalization impacts corporate strategy as never before, corporate leaders are challenged to consider all the implications of a new global economy. Characterized by a myriad of competing forces, this new global economy is highlighted by unprecedented advances in technology of all kinds.

With such unrelenting change blurring the view, corporate leaders need the benefit of the best thinking in order to focus on the right global strategies. World View offers just such thinking, featuring examples of strategies and best practices used by successful companies worldwide in moving toward global markets. In his introduction to this collection of Harvard Business Review articles, editor Jeffrey Garten pinpoints five emerging themes:

  • Operating in a global market requires CEOs to rethink every aspect of their strategies.
  • The best strategies require that organizations gather massive amounts of information and process it effectively.
  • Companies that succeed on a global scale are constant innovators, learning and implementing simultaneously.
  • Great global companies create cultures conducive to extensive internal and external collaboration and networking.
  • Radical change brings unprecedented opportunity to capture markets and enhance shareholder value.

Seeing globalization through the eyes of leading thinkers and executives who have mastered its challenges, World View presents forward-thinking insights for corporate leaders determined to succeed in the always-new and uncertain global economy.

The Big Ten: Big Emerging Markets and How They Will Change Our Lives, Basic Books, 1997, 1998

A dramatic transformation of global power is under way, one only dimly recognized by most Americans. As economics and trade now loom larger than nuclear stockpiles or Cold War ideology, those countries with the fastest growing economies have begun to rewrite the rules of power and influence in the world. These nations are the Big Emerging Markets, and for too long we have failed to recognize their importance. We can no longer afford that luxury.

The Big Ten is the essential guide to the ten most important Big Emerging Markets. Jeffrey E. Garten, the Dean of the Yale School of Management and the former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, explains who they are, why they have burst onto the world scene, and how they will reshape the world in the twenty-first century. The ten countries to watch are spread across the globe: Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina in the Americas; China, India, Indonesia, and South Korea in Asia; Poland and Turkey in Europe; and in Africa, South Africa. The Big Ten are bigger than most people realize: they are home to half the world’s population, and the United States exports more products to these countries than to Europe and Japan combined. They also wield immense political influence in many of the world’s most critical regions. Moreover, American industrial firms, mutual funds, and pension plans have begun to invest heavily in these dynamic economies, making our own prosperity increasingly dependent on theirs.

While the Big Ten offer new opportunities for the United States, Garten observes, their potential political instability could create economic havoc around the world. In addition, they pose powerful ethical and strategic dilemmas. The BEMs do not share our values regarding human rights, child labor, corruption, or environmental degradation, and our growing contacts with these societies are sure to violate our notions of fairness and our moral sensibilities. And as the Big Ten grow and mature as regional powers, they will pose unprecedented challenges to American global leadership.

Drawing on his first-hand experiences at the highest levels of government, finance, and academia, Garten advances a comprehensive plan for America to meet the challenges of this emerging new world. He addresses the critical questions facing American policy makers, business executives, educators, and concerned citizens, and he outlines the bold changes that will be necessary if we are to control our national destiny in the decades to come. The Big Ten will help readers understand the importance of NAFTA, the rise of China, the connection between trade and human rights, and the imperatives for American foreign policy, business, and higher education. Packed with powerful insights and real-life stories from the front lines of international commerce, The Big Ten will redefine the way we think about America’s global role in the twenty-first century.

A Cold Peace: America, Japan, Germany and the Struggle for Supremacy, Times Books, 1993, 1994

No issue may be more crucial to America’s standing in the world and to its ability to solve its social and economic problems at home than its widening competition with Japan and Germany. In A Cold Peace, Jeffrey E. Garten, an investment banker who has served in the White House and the State Department, shines an intense light on the growing conflicts with our two most important allies and rivals – and on the critical impact they will have on America’s future.

Garten explains how the often irreconcilable agendas of Washington, Tokyo, and Berlin stem from over a century of deeply held cultural, institutional, and political traditions. Whether the issue is trade, banking, technology, defense policy, immigration, or the environment, in the coming decade we could well see grueling struggles among the three countries including new forms of economic warfare, differing notions of national security, the formation of new regional empires, and destructive rivalries in the global organizations.

Going beyond today’s headlines and sound bites, beyond the sterile debates over protectionism versus free trade, and beyond the dead-end arguments over whether America is the lone superpower or whether it is in decline, A Cold Peace reveals the most fundamental dilemmas for America in the years ahead. In a powerful analysis drawn from two decades of high-level experience in both the public and private sectors, Garten shows that the greatest threat to the United States is home grown – in our reluctance to recognize the links between our domestic and foreign policies, in our liability to see how the global rules of the game have changed, and in our failure to adopt a new mind-set not only toward Japan and Germany but toward ourselves as well.