New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (U California Press, 2024). Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society. His research centers on how digital technologies are affecting work and employment, organizations, and economic exchange. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagining After Capitalism (Triarchy Press, 2025) is the culmination of a decade-long exploration of what comes next after capitalism. It leverages previous work in developing foresight methodologies, which are featured in two previous books: Teaching about the Future and Thinking about the Future (2nd edition), both with Peter Bishop. It also leverages my work in identifying long-term values shifts—which are pivotal to After Capitalism—that are highlighted in ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape.Arguing that the absence of compelling positive alternatives keeps us stuck in a combination of fear, denial, and false hope, he offers three “guiding images” for the long-term future: an environmentally driven Circular Commons, a socially and politically driven Non-Workers’ Paradise, and a technology-driven Tech-Led Abundance.Imagining After Capitalism argues “first things first.” Let us first decide where we want to go before building detailed plans for getting there. The three “guiding images” are not the answers, but are intended to provoke discussion about the possibilities.The book offers an alternative to the prevailing doom and gloom and suggests there are indeed positive alternatives out there and it’s time to get started on crafting a different path to the future!Andy Hines brings more than three decades of experience as a futurist to the Imagining After Capitalism work. He has explored the future from multiple vantage points. He is currently an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator at the University of Houston Foresight program. He also spent a decade as an organizational futurist, first with Kellogg’s and then Dow Chemical. His consulting futurists roles included Coates & Jarratt, Inc., Social Technologies/Innovaro and currently his own firm Hinesight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (Duke University Press, 2024)  provides a much-needed study of the political economy of music streaming, drawing from Western Marxism, social reproduction theory, eco-socialist thought and more to approach the complex and highly contested relationship between music and capital. By attending to the perverse ways in which recorded music has been ultimately decommodified under the current regime of music production, circulation and consumption, Eric Drott explores issues that far exceed music - consumer surveillance, Silicon Valley monopolism, the crisis of care, capitalist extractivism and the climate emergency - while showing us how the streaming economy is thoroughly imbricated, and implicated, in these processes. Drott's rigorous and wide-ranging analysis thus offers novel ways of understanding music, culture, digitalisation and capitalism in present and future tenses .Eric Drott is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I sat down with Alex Keller, then a Digital Content Producer at CBS News Texas, to talk about his unconventional career path. From studying biology and neuroscience to earning an MA in history, Alex’s journey is a testament to the unexpected ways history skills can shape careers. We dove into how his history background prepared him for his role at CBS, where he uses storytelling to help audiences make sense of important community issues. Alex explained how skills like analyzing sources, breaking down complex ideas, providing context, and writing have been invaluable. He also shared his thoughts on journalism’s deeper purpose—not just reporting the facts but helping people understand why they matter. If you’re a history grad—or just curious about how to turn history skills into real-world impact—this episode is for you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How does the music industry actually work? In Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out Toby Bennett, a Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture & Organisation in the School of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster offers a deep ethnography of everyday life in a contemporary record company. The book examines the challenges facing music, both businesses and artists, as digital transforms every element of the industry. Offering a detailed theoretical framework for understanding these changes, as well as rich details on the ordinary organisational practices that keep the music industry running, the book will be essential reading across humanities, social sciences, and for anyone interested in music and culture industries.Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ken Wilcox, the former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank and author of 'The China Business Conundrum', shares his fascinating experiences establishing a joint venture in China. He discusses the cultural complexities and misunderstandings that can arise, from communication barriers to unexpected design disputes. Wilcox candidly reflects on his missteps and the importance of realistic expectations when navigating the Chinese market. He emphasizes the need for strong connections and cultural adaptability to avoid pitfalls and succeed in this unique business environment.

How do states build vital institutions for market development? Too often, governments confront technical or political barriers to providing the rule of law, contract enforcement, and loan access. In From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China (Princeton, 2024) Lizhi Liu suggests a digital solution: governments strategically outsourcing tasks of institutional development and enforcement to digital platforms—a process she calls “institutional outsourcing.”China’s e-commerce boom showcases this digital path to development. In merely two decades, China built from scratch a two-trillion-dollar e-commerce market, with 800 million users, seventy million jobs, and nearly fifty percent of global online retail sales. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Liu argues, this market boom occurred because of weak government institutions, not despite them. Gaps in government institutions compelled e-commerce platforms to build powerful private institutions for contract enforcement, fraud detection, and dispute resolution. For a surprisingly long period, the authoritarian government acquiesced, endorsed, and even partnered with this private institutional building despite its disruptive nature. Drawing on a plethora of interviews, original surveys, proprietary data, and a field experiment, Liu shows that the resulting e-commerce boom had far-reaching effects on China.Institutional outsourcing nonetheless harbors its own challenges. With inadequate regulation, platforms may abuse market power, while excessive regulation stifles institutional innovation. China’s regulatory oscillations toward platforms—from laissez-faire to crackdown and back to support—underscore the struggle to strike the right balance.Lizhi Liu is assistant professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, where she is also a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government. Her work has been published by American Economic Review: Insights, Studies in Comparative International Development, Minnesota Law Review, Oxford University Press, and Princeton University Press. She was also listed as a Poets&Quants Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professor of 2021. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD), Statistics (MS), and International Policy Studies (MA) from Stanford University and in International Relations (LLB) from Renmin University of China.Interviewer Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of San Francisco, a nonresident scholar at the UCSD 21st Century China Center, an alumnus of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. His research focuses on the economics of information, incentives, and institutions, primarily as applied to the development and governance of China. He created the unique Master’s of Science in Applied Economics at the University of San Francisco, which teaches the conceptual frameworks and practical data analytics skills needed to succeed in the digital economy.Lorentzen’s other NBN interviews relating to China’s tech sector include Trafficking Data, on how Chinese and American firms exploit user data, The Tao of Alibaba, on Alibaba’s business model and organizational culture, Surveillance State, on China’s digital surveillance, Prototype Nation, on the culture and politics of China’s innovation economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode Drora Arussy interviews her husband, Lior. As this book brings in personal accounts and builds on experiences, there was some banter and stories that normally do not come up in discussions like this. Lior Arussy’s latest book, Dare to Author! from Greenleaf book club press, 2024, is a call for people to write—and therefore own—their life’s story, even when events are unexpected and don’t always turn out the way we want. The book is a manifesto and a guide to converting life experiences into future strength, resilience, and development and, in the process, transforming ourselves from victims to victors. Incorporating unique personal insights and his own professional experiences, Arussy carefully describes the challenges and dangers of living life authored by circumstances, social pressures, or other people, and he provides a proactive way to process and convert life experiences into future resilience, strength, and development. If we are not converting life experiences into authored chapters of our own life story, we are blocking our ability to grow and manage future challenges.Readers will come away inspired, confident, and ready to act with three important concepts A reality check/wake-up call asking Who is authoring your life’s story? and an explanation of why readers may not have authored their own life thus far. A process to start writing the reader’s story by crafting chapters that will develop resilience and a growth toolbox for life. An understanding of the application of the Authoring Process to professional and personal situations, making that authoring process more relevant and accessible. Readers from broad backgrounds who are looking for guidance in how to live and lead in the best way possible, in personal relationships and professional life, will finish this book with the following thoughts: It’s about me. He gets me. I am not alone. My feelings are real. I can do it. I can take control of my life. It is a choice to become the victor. I refuse to default to victimhood. I am hopeful. Lior Arussy is a seven-time author and one of the world’s leading authorities on customer experience, transformation, and change, and the founder of the transformation firm Strativity Group. Arussy helped some of the world’s leading brands such as Mercedes Benz, Delta Airlines, Walmart, FedEx, Johnson & Johnsons and MasterCard to author the next chapter in their success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I talked to the river historian Scot McFarlane who runs his own historical consulting firm, the Oxbow History Company. My guest shared how he translated his passion for river histories into work with clients and how he found his niche within this competitive market. It was fascinating to learn about the daily grind of running a historical consulting firm, the numerous challenges involved as well as tremendous rewards. Scot talked about rediscovering the pleasures and the freedom of historical writing for non-academic audiences, helping others see familiar spaces in a completely different way as well as helping organizations connect with people who may be into "environmentalism" yet who care deeply about rivers. We also discussed overcoming the various challenges to building non-academic career pathways while completing a PhD. A very honest conversation, hope you'll check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The restaurant industry is one of the few places in America where workers from lower-class backgrounds can rise to positions of power and prestige. Yet with over four million cooks and food-preparation workers employed in America’s restaurants, not everyone makes it to the high-status position of chef. What factors determine who rises the ranks in this fiercely competitive pressure-cooker environment?In Making It: Success in the Commercial Kitchen (Rutgers University Press, 2024), Ellen T. Meiser explores how the career path of restaurant workers depends on their accumulation of kitchen capital, a cultural asset based not only on their ability to cook but also on how well they can fit into the workplace culture and negotiate its hierarchical structures. After spending 120 hours working in a restaurant kitchen and interviewing fifty chefs and cooks from fine-dining establishments and greasy-spoon diners across the country, sociologist Ellen Meiser discovers many strategies for accumulating kitchen capital. For some, it involves education and the performance of expertise; others climb the ranks by controlling their own emotions or exerting control over coworkers. Making It offers a close and personal look at how knowledge, power, and interpersonal skills come together to determine who succeeds and who fails in the high-pressure world of the restaurant kitchen.Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is at the intersection of built-environment, experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research on how architectural designers, builders, and community planners negotiate a sense of identity and place for residents of newly constructed neighborhoods. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices