Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Make the switchGift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingMoney for Nothing
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreOf the world's two hundred largest economies, more than half are corporations. They have more influence on our lives than any other institution, but while boards of directors are supposed to police CEOs and provide independent leadership, they have become enabling lapdogs rather than trustworthy watchdogs. As America contends with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, all eyes are turning to the corporate leaders who have perpetrated such egregious failures, padding their own pockets with grossly inflated pay packages even as their businesses fall to ruin, asking, How could things have gone so terribly wrong? How could the stewards of American business—who are supposed to be the gold standard of the global economy—turn out to be so incompetent?
Taking readers right into the boardrooms and behind the scenes of the lavish C-Suites, John Gillespie and David Zweig have interviewed a host of upper-echelon managers and board members at leading companies, from Exxon and Citigroup and Home Depot to Countrywide, to shine a glaring light on the clubby culture of the business elite. The book reveals just how the machinations of good governance have broken down, replaced by a compromised system plagued by greed and see-no-evil culpability, and also reports on a handful of pioneering companies who are bold leaders in corporate reform, offering powerful proof that the system most certainly can be fixed.
John Gillespie worked as an investment banker with Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, and Bear Stearns for eighteen years. He also served as executive vice president and CFO for the Mentor Network, a nationwide health-care company with 24,000 employees.
David Zweig cofounded Salon.com. He has worked at Time Inc., Dow Jones, and the World Business Academy, an international research and education institute dedicated to promoting responsibility in business and pioneering best practices to solve problems in business ethics. He currently consults on improving the performance of executive groups.
Mel Foster, an audiobook narrator since 2002, won an Audie Award for Finding God in Unexpected Places by Philip Yancey. He has also won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. Best known for mysteries, Mel has also narrated classic authors such as Thoreau, Nabokov, and Whitman.