REVIEWS zyxw When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten. (1995). West Han- ford, CT: Kumarian Press. 374 pp., $29.95 cloth. The Master sat in rapt attention as the renowned economist explained his blueprint for economic development. “Shouldgrowth be the only consider- ation for an economic theory?” the Master asked. ”Yes,” said the economist. “Allgrowth is good in itself.”“Isn’tthat the thinking of the cancer cell?” said the Master [DeMello, 1985, p. zyxwv 811. This vignette describes the central theme of When Corporations Rule the World. David Korten takes issue with the prevailing paradigm that economic growth and development is the solution to the global problems of poverty, hunger, and war. Speaking from the perspective of a development manager for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as well as from that of a Stanford-trained M.B.A. and Ph.D., Korten challenges the values of the global economic system that dominate trade and production in the 1990s. The book is a mixture of contrarian thinking about business and market efficiency and unabashed optimism that the human condition can be improved on an international scale if the powerful forces of global integration are reined in. Instead of a world dominated by efficiency and integration, Korten pro- poses a world where local responsiveness in both the political and economic arenas drives resource allocation decisions. Rather than repudiate the benefits of free markets, Korten embraces an efficiently functioning market as a unique way to distribute goods and services. Where he diverges from more traditional business literature is in his disbelief in the ability of large, globally integrated, multinational corporations (MNCs) to achieve the kind of real market effi- ciency that can maximize social welfare. This treatment of MNCs should pro- vide new insight for academics as well as for business practitioners. The book is organized into five sections. In the first section, Korten chal- lenges the assumption that economic growth is desirable and inevitable. Although over the past one hundred years it has been assumed that markets reflect an ever-growing pie, Korten reminds us that in reality the pie is of fixed size. Although post-World War I1 economic expansion has created great improvements in quality of life, Korten suggests that our planet’s finite resources, combined with explosive population growth, require reevaluation of this old paradigm. The nature of the current global economy, Korten argues, takes choice and power away from individuals and hands it over to corporate entities. This dis- tribution of power relegates individuals to the roles of consumer and worker in a system dominated by the agendas of the large, powerful, globally domi- HUMAN RESOURCE zyxwvutsrqp DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, vol. 7, zyxwvut no. 4, Winter 1996 QJossey-Bass Publishers zyxw 381