The competitiveness of the U.S. economy depends on changes inside firms, particularly their willingness to take risks in reshaping four key relationships. Competitiveness, it turns out, depends on new kinds of collaboration.
Features
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Small Children, Small Pay: Why Child Care Pays So Little
Child care is expensive, yet those who provide it are poorly paid. Solving the dilemma may call for a Solomonic choice.
Posted inAmerica and the World
They Are Not Us: Why American Ownership Still Matters
You don’t have to be a Japan-basher to want American-based firms to thrive. As long as separate nation-states do business by different rules, it isn’t One World yet.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Congress Without Cohabitation: The Democrats’ Morning-After
The budget rebellion in October seemingly ended Congress’s long night of unholy cohabitation with the Reagan and Bush administrations. But can the Democrats really get out of bed?
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
The Cultural Enemy Within
In the past year, the opinion has gained currency, particularly in conservative circles, that the great ideological battles of our time are shifting to the terrain of culture. The controversies over free speech and the arts; multiculturalism and education; the relevance of gender, race, and class to the study of the humanities and society; the […]
Posted inLaw and Justice
Does the Supreme Court Matter?
An exchange on the significance of the courts in the achievement of civil rights.
Posted inCivil Rights in America
The Elusive Promise of Vaccines
Children are not getting vaccines now available, much less a new generation of vaccines that the biomedical revolution has put within our reach.
Posted inEnergy and the Environment
Up From Humanism
Some may feel that “stronger”, “deeper” forms of environmentalism must be better. But watch out. Our great ecological awakening has led to some deeply anti-human philosophies.
Posted inAmerica and the World
Rejoinder: Who Do We Think They Are?
Ever since I argued in the Harvard Business Review last year that we should pay less attention to corporate nationality and more attention to whether our nation’s work force was gaining the skills and competences it needed to compete, I’ve had the curious sense of being shoved — quite against my will — to the […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
The Reaganites and the Renegade
Conservative Republican strategists are hopping mad at Kevin Phillips. For years, they have embraced (with much success) the notion outlined by Phillips in his 1969 book, The Emerging Republican Majority, that middle-class voters could be wooed by running against the poor. But now, Phillips seems to have deserted his erstwhile allies. In his latest book, […]