Lead, Follow, or Fail: The Human Struggle for Productivity, and how Nations, Organizations, and People will Prosper in our Changing World

by Peter J. Brews

Overview

A THOUGHT-PROVOKING EXPLORATION OF OUR WORLD'S ECONOMIC PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

In a journey over centuries only recently marked by prosperity, Lead, Follow, or Fail captures the socio-economic forces that have shaped our world.

Dividing economic history into three eras—Pre-Industrial, Industrial, and Post-Industrial—Peter Brews chronicles the evolution of productivity and how nations, organizations, and individuals fall into the roles of Failures, Followers, or Leaders. Failures in the Pre-Industrial Era are plagued by scarcity, Followers are on their way to abundance through industrialization, and Leaders maintain Post-Industrial competitiveness through unrelenting innovation at the leading edge of global commerce.

Understanding the transition across these eras and how Leading, Following, and Failing differ also offers insights into what our economic future will hold. After considering the implications of a world more economically diverse than ever before, three future scenarios—Balanced Global Growth, Unbalanced Global Growth, and Global Meltdown—conclude the book.

Armed with the knowledge of what it takes to build and sustain competitiveness whether Leader, Follower, or Failure, readers also learn what we all must do so Balanced Global Growth prevails, and the 21st century is a triumph for us all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646871650
Publisher:	Ideapress Publishing
Publication date:	10/01/2024
Pages:	420
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

PROFESSOR PETER J. BREWS stepped down as Dean of the Darla Moore School of Business (DMSB) in December 2022 after 9 years in office, and left academic life as dean emeritus in December 2023. Brews’ professional career started in investment banking and then moved into higher education, where after earning graduate degrees in both law and business and two PhDs in business he taught business law, economics, finance, corporate strategy/strategic management and international business while conducting research at three leading universities, the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and Duke Universityand UNC-Chapel Hill in the United States.

His accomplishments range from world class researcher/teacher as individual contributor—he holds multiple awards for both activities—to academic entrepreneur in the proposal and leadership of innovative high value academic programs, to transformational leader of DMSB, the 6,400-student strong premier academic brand of the University of South Carolina. 

Brews has published in Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Executive, Business Strategy Review, Long Range Planning, The South African Journal of Business Management, The South African Company Law Journal, The Investment Analysts’ Journal, The Financial Times, and other journals and publications.

Companies have often invited Brews to share his views on topics that range from nation building and the structure and evolution of the global economy, to the human struggle for productivity worldwide—focusing on how nations, firms, and individuals maintain global competitiveness in the fast changing, complex global economy—to how the internet/IT and the networking of business operations are altering business and global competitiveness.

He has also taught widely and consulted internationally in these fields.  Firms he has worked with include Barclays Bank, Boeing, Caterpillar, Eastman Chemical, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Grant Thornton, Lucent Technologies Asia/Pacific (H.K.) Ltd., Merrill Lynch, Progress Energy, Siemens AG, The Mandarin Hotel Group of Hong Kong, LG of South Korea, and Standard Bank and Telkom in South Africa.

Editorial Reviews

"Much of the writing on economics today falls into two categories: prohibitively dense academic studies or more popular works that indulge in extravagant simplifications and reductions. Brews’ book belongs to a rare third category: analysis that is serious without being indecipherable and that comments pragmatically on the hurdles that must be cleared for a bright future. This is a valuable contribution to the literature on productivity for experts and novices alike." —KIRKUS REVIEWS

From the Publisher

2024-09-18
Brews gives a historical account of the engines of economic productivity and delivers a prognosis regarding the future of American and global economies.

Prior to 1800, per the author, humanity suffered through “over 150,000 years of stumbling around,” making painfully slow progress toward overcoming the persistent problems of scarcity. This “millennia of human struggle” was followed by 250 years of breakneck economic gains so impressive that the living standards enjoyed by the American middle class in the mid-20th century were superior to what French nobility experienced at the end of the 18th century, a striking point made by Brews in this intellectually lively study. To anatomize these quantum leaps and better comprehend “the human struggle for productivity in all its dimensions,” the author employs an epochal mode of analysis that divides history into three eras: the Pre-Industrial Era (before 1800), the Industrial Era (1800–1950), and the Post-Industrial Era (beginning 1950). Each time period is personified by the author as a human type: Respectively, there are “failures,” “followers,” and “leaders.” The failures of the Pre-Industrial Era—in which, Brews asserts, there was virtually no progress—are largely attributed to a dearth of usable capital and freedom. The members of the subsequent Industrial Era solved these problems and made mass production and consumption possible, partly by shouldering the “deferred gratification and sacrifice” necessary for long-term investments. The Post-Industrial Era is characterized by innovation, its chief product the computer, which allowed for a sweeping transformation not only of economies, but also the very nature of work itself. However, cautions the author, there are still great challenges to progress, including mounting inequality and the considerable threat posed by global warming. These, though, are manageable menaces, Brews avers—the United States could use higher rates of taxation to redistribute wealth and curb consumption, though these shifts would require a “recalibration” of the nation’s social contract.

Brews’ empirically rigorous study deftly manages to combine a panoramic historical survey with a granular account of the machinations of productivity. While the subject matter is inherently complex and the text often technically formidable, his explanations are consistently accessible to even readers with limited backgrounds in economics. Predictions of any kind are always to be taken with a grain of salt, but the author presents his persuasively, without the grating push of dogmatic certainty. There is an astute political dimension to his analysis; for example, “As other nations join the post-industrial world, democracy’s dominance over other regime types may be where convergence occurs. All industrialized nations today are democracies, and no autocracy is yet fully industrialized. Time will tell if China or other autocracies will industrialize and remain nondemocratic.” Much of the writing on economics today falls into two categories: prohibitively dense academic studies or more popular works that indulge in extravagant simplifications and reductions. Brews’ book belongs to a rare third category: analysis that is serious without being indecipherable and that comments pragmatically on the hurdles that must be cleared for a bright future. This is a valuable contribution to the literature on productivity for experts and novices alike.

A thoughtful and exacting discussion of the economic future.

Kirkus Reviews