The Henry Fords Of Healthcare Lessons The West Can Learn From The East

How can health services in the UK and Europe be improved? And can costs be reduced at the same time? Over the years, many ideas have been put forward – from increased spending on preventive healthcare to the better use of technology to reduce bureaucracy and ‘pay for performance’ schemes. But author Nima Sanandaji says this is merely tinkering at the margins. What’s needed, he argues, is a completely new approach – one which embraces disruptive innovations from a new breed of entrepreneurs. Allowing true entrepreneurialism in healthcare might be considered extreme in a Western setting – but he points to a spectacular wave of success in the East to support his case. In India, Thailand, China and the Middle East, entrepreneurs have drawn inspiration from the motor industry to streamline procedures and create economies of scale. In areas such as heart surgery, they’ve dramatically driven down costs – and dramatically improved outcomes. So much so that the new market economies of the East are now, he contends, many steps of ahead of the West. In The Henry Fords of Healthcare Sanandaji outlines the lessons the West can now learn from the East, making a radical, compelling and controversial contribution to the debate on our own ailing health systems.

Transactions have always taken place. For hundreds of years that ‘place’ was a market or, more recently, a shopping mall. But in the past two decades these physical locations have increasingly been replaced by their virtual counterparts – online platforms. Here, author Michael C. Munger demonstrates how these platforms act as matchmakers or middlemen, a role traders have adopted since the very first exchanges thousands of years ago. The difference today is that the matchmakers often play no direct part in buying or selling anything – they just help buyers and sellers find each other. Their major contribution has been to reduce the costs of organising and completing purchases, rentals or exchanges. The Sharing Economy: Its Pitfalls and Promises contends that the key role of online platforms is to create reductions in transaction costs and it highlights the importance of three ‘Ts’ - triangulation, transfer and trust – in bringing down those costs.

What is democracy? How does it work? What are its strengths – and its shortcomings? Two-thirds of the world’s population, in over 100 countries, live under governments that claim to be democratic. Yet few of those governments live up to the ideals of democracy, or respect its key principles and institutions. Here, author Eamonn Butler defines democracy, explains its purposes, and shows the difference between genuine democracy and the many sham versions that currently exist. He outlines the history of democracy and the benefits it brings. But he also points out the many myths about it that blind us to its limitations. And he explains why it’s important to have a clear understanding of democracy – and how easily it can be lost or abused when people do not properly understand it. Importantly, he asks why so many people today have become disillusioned with democratic politics – and what, if anything, can be done about it. This lucid and fascinating book provides a straightforward introduction to democracy, enabling anyone to understand it – even if they’ve never experienced it.

Today should be a Golden Age for free speech – with technology providing more ways of communicating ideas and opinions than ever before. Yet we’re actually witnessing a growing wave of restrictions on freedom of thought and expression. In Having Your Say a variety of authors – academics, philosophers, comedians and more – stress the fundamental importance of free speech, one of the cornerstones of classical liberalism. And they provide informed and incisive insights on this worrying trend, which threatens to usher in a new, intolerant and censorious era.

What is free speech? How is it under threat? And why should it be defended at all costs? In this succinct and insightful book, author Jamie Whyte contends that free speech brings fundamental benefits to society – it promotes the growth of knowledge and provides an essential bulwark against tyranny. He argues against new attempts to constrain free speech – particularly in social media – and critiques the rationale of politicians and activists who seek to limit it. And he proposes a key test – a limiting principle – which legislators and judges should apply against any proposed curtailment of free speech. Being offensive, for example, wouldn’t pass this test – because important new ideas are often offensive to people whose worldview they challenge. Whyte also issues a rallying cry: Those who prize free speech must once again come to its defence – as he outlines exactly Why Free Speech Matters.

Henry Ford's industrial innovations were directly responsible for the transformation of the United States into the most productive, affluent, and powerful nation on Earth. My Life and Work describes exactly how Ford did this in terms of not only manufacturing science, but also economics and organizational behavior. This holistic approach, and its validation by world-class results, make Ford's original work the best business leadership book ever written. The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work: Henry Ford's Universal Code for World-Class Success updates this original with modern perspectives that explain and organize Ford’s thought process explicitly. My Life and Work is not a mechanistic or industry-specific formula that practitioners can follow like work instructions in a factory, but rather a holistic synergy of impartial laws of economics, science, and human behavior—a synergy that Ford called the universal code. This universal code simultaneously delivered high profits, high wages, and low prices in every industry to which Ford applied it. It also realized unprecedented improvements in industries ranging from coal mines to railroads, and even healthcare as practiced in the Henry and Clara Ford Hospital. This annotated edition introduces Ford’s universal code along with vital economic, behavioral, Lean manufacturing, and customer service principles. It contains almost all the material of the original, plus more than 30 percent new content that reinforces Ford’s timeless principles. Readers who understand and internalize Ford’s universal code can easily overcome the self-limiting paradigms that afflict today’s organizations. These include, for example, the belief that healthcare is a zero-sum game in which escalating costs are the price of quality. The book illustrates the basic elements of what is now called the Toyota Production System as well as the organizational and human relations principles needed to gain buy-in and engagement from all participants.

The book that has inspired entrepreneurs for generations! This book is Henry Ford's original autobiography, founder of the Ford Motor Company. In this book, you will learn how Henry Ford got into business his business philosophy and business acumen, the strategies that he used to become a wealthy and successful industrialist, and what others can do by learning from the examples he has outlined. This book must read by budding small business owners, business students and those interested in the history of the automobile. Henry Ford will take you through a journey of history, business and lessons to be learned from which he used to develop his business empire. If you are interested in the world of enterprise this book is a must read!

With over a million copies sold, Economics in One Lesson is an essential guide to the basics of economic theory. A fundamental influence on modern libertarianism, Hazlitt defends capitalism and the free market from economic myths that persist to this day. Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the “Austrian School,” which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993), was a libertarian philosopher, an economist, and a journalist. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an early editor of The Freeman magazine, an influential libertarian publication. Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson, his seminal work, in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy. Economic commentators across the political spectrum have credited Hazlitt with foreseeing the collapse of the global economy which occurred more than 50 years after the initial publication of Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt’s focus on non-governmental solutions, strong — and strongly reasoned — anti-deficit position, and general emphasis on free markets, economic liberty of individuals, and the dangers of government intervention make Economics in One Lesson every bit as relevant and valuable today as it has been since publication.

Synthesizes the empirical literature on organizationalstructuring to answer the question of how organizations structure themselves --how they resolve needed coordination and division of labor. Organizationalstructuring is defined as the sum total of the ways in which an organizationdivides and coordinates its labor into distinct tasks. Further analysis of theresearch literature is neededin order to builda conceptualframework that will fill in the significant gap left by not connecting adescription of structure to its context: how an organization actuallyfunctions. The results of the synthesis are five basic configurations (the SimpleStructure, the Machine Bureaucracy, the Professional Bureaucracy, theDivisionalized Form, and the Adhocracy) that serve as the fundamental elementsof structure in an organization. Five basic parts of the contemporaryorganization (the operating core, the strategic apex, the middle line, thetechnostructure, and the support staff), and five theories of how it functions(i.e., as a system characterized by formal authority, regulated flows, informalcommunication, work constellations, and ad hoc decision processes) aretheorized. Organizations function in complex and varying ways, due to differing flows -including flows of authority, work material, information, and decisionprocesses. These flows depend on the age, size, and environment of theorganization; additionally, technology plays a key role because of itsimportance in structuring the operating core. Finally, design parameters aredescribed - based on the above five basic parts and five theories - that areused as a means of coordination and division of labor in designingorganizational structures, in order to establish stable patterns of behavior.(CJC).