Word: machiavelli
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Prince, Machiavelli had already solved the problem, although the Italian was discussing conquered territories: "Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot...
Such similarities are the gist of a provocative book by English Author Antony Jay called Management and Machiavelli (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.; $4.95). Jay, a Cambridge-educated amateur historian, has an unabashed enthusiasm for Machiavelli. As a former television writer and editor for the British Broadcasting Corp. who has become an independent television consultant in London, he is fascinated by management. "The history of General Motors over the past 50 years," he says, "is far more important than the history of Switzerland or Holland." Mixing Machiavelli and management, Jay discovers some interesting and instructive corollaries between states and corporations...
...sensed this concept accidentally. "I had just been reading Machiavelli's The Prince," he recalls, "on the day when a friend of mine in management began talking to me about takeovers. He complained that there is no book which explains to industrialists how to go about fitting a new acquisition into the corporate empire...
...easily translated Machiavelli into modern corporatese: "Senior men in taken-over firms should either be warmly welcomed and encouraged, or sacked: because if they are sacked they are powerless, whereas if they are simply downgraded they will remain united and resentful and determined to get their own back." Admits...
...succeeded by a remarkable trio of ex-reporters who established a highly personal, flamboyant p.r. style. One was Bernays, now 75 and retired, who thought like a eupeptic Machiavelli and talked like a psychology professor (his uncle, as he has never forgotten, was Sigmund Freud). The second was Benjamin Sonnenberg, now 65 and semiretired, a connoisseur both of power and pleasure who established himself in an antique-crammed house on Manhattan's Gramercy Park, where he could play his favorite game: making his clients feel they were doing well just to be seen with him. The third was Carl...