Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin
Redefining the way we view business success, Pamela Laird demolishes the popular American self-made story as she exposes the social dynamics that navigate some people toward opportunity and steer others away. Who gets invited into the networks of business opportunity? What does an unacceptable candidate lack? The answer is social capital—all those social assets that attract respect, generate confidence, evoke affection, and invite loyalty.

In retelling success stories from Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates, Laird goes beyond personality, upbringing, and social skills to reveal the critical common key—access to circles that control and distribute opportunity and information. She explains how civil rights activism and feminism in the 1960s and 1970s helped demonstrate that personnel practices violated principles of equal opportunity. She evaluates what social privilege actually contributes to business success, and analyzes the balance between individual characteristics—effort, innovation, talent—and social factors such as race, gender, class, and connections.

In contrasting how Americans have prospered—or not—with how we have talked about prospering, Laird offers rich insights into how business really operates and where its workings fit within American culture. From new perspectives on entrepreneurial achievement to the role of affirmative action and the operation of modern corporate personnel systems, Pull shows that business is a profoundly social process, and that no one can succeed alone.

1100301578
Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin
Redefining the way we view business success, Pamela Laird demolishes the popular American self-made story as she exposes the social dynamics that navigate some people toward opportunity and steer others away. Who gets invited into the networks of business opportunity? What does an unacceptable candidate lack? The answer is social capital—all those social assets that attract respect, generate confidence, evoke affection, and invite loyalty.

In retelling success stories from Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates, Laird goes beyond personality, upbringing, and social skills to reveal the critical common key—access to circles that control and distribute opportunity and information. She explains how civil rights activism and feminism in the 1960s and 1970s helped demonstrate that personnel practices violated principles of equal opportunity. She evaluates what social privilege actually contributes to business success, and analyzes the balance between individual characteristics—effort, innovation, talent—and social factors such as race, gender, class, and connections.

In contrasting how Americans have prospered—or not—with how we have talked about prospering, Laird offers rich insights into how business really operates and where its workings fit within American culture. From new perspectives on entrepreneurial achievement to the role of affirmative action and the operation of modern corporate personnel systems, Pull shows that business is a profoundly social process, and that no one can succeed alone.

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Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin

Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin

by Pamela Walker Laird
Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin

Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin

by Pamela Walker Laird

Paperback

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Overview

Redefining the way we view business success, Pamela Laird demolishes the popular American self-made story as she exposes the social dynamics that navigate some people toward opportunity and steer others away. Who gets invited into the networks of business opportunity? What does an unacceptable candidate lack? The answer is social capital—all those social assets that attract respect, generate confidence, evoke affection, and invite loyalty.

In retelling success stories from Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates, Laird goes beyond personality, upbringing, and social skills to reveal the critical common key—access to circles that control and distribute opportunity and information. She explains how civil rights activism and feminism in the 1960s and 1970s helped demonstrate that personnel practices violated principles of equal opportunity. She evaluates what social privilege actually contributes to business success, and analyzes the balance between individual characteristics—effort, innovation, talent—and social factors such as race, gender, class, and connections.

In contrasting how Americans have prospered—or not—with how we have talked about prospering, Laird offers rich insights into how business really operates and where its workings fit within American culture. From new perspectives on entrepreneurial achievement to the role of affirmative action and the operation of modern corporate personnel systems, Pull shows that business is a profoundly social process, and that no one can succeed alone.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780674025530
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 10/30/2007
Series: Harvard Studies in Business History , #48
Pages: 464
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.25(d)

About the Author

Pamela Walker Laird is Professor of History at the University of Colorado Denver.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Connections at Work

1. Social Capital and the Mechanisms of Success

2. Organizing and Synthesizing Social Capital

3. Social Rungs on Corporate Ladders

4. Contacts and Buffers

5. The Business of Integration

6. Strangers on the Ladder

7. Uncovering the Power of Pull

8. Social Tools for Self-Help

Notes

Index

What People are Saying About This

This eye-opening book helps explains why so many individuals­-and nearly all African Americans and women­-were so long left out when they exhibited the same intelligence and ambition as those who 'made it.' Read the full page review of Pull in Business Week's March 13th issue.

Daniel Horowitz

This eye-opening book helps explains why so many individuals­-and nearly all African Americans and women­-were so long left out when they exhibited the same intelligence and ambition as those who 'made it.' Read the full page review of Pull in Business Week's March 13th issue.

Daniel Horowitz, author of The Anxieties of Affluence

Walter A. Friedman

This eye-opening book helps explains why so many individuals­-and nearly all African Americans and women­-were so long left out when they exhibited the same intelligence and ambition as those who 'made it.' In emphasizing the social forces that blocked pathways up, in addition to those which held people down, Laird presents an exciting new way to think about success.
Walter A. Friedman, author of Birth of a Salesman

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