Fat Cats Research Articles

Fat Cats and Self-Made Men: Globalization and the Paradoxes of Collective Action

When and how do business people act collectively? This paper examines why manufacturers mobilized in Morocco but remained politically dormant in Tunisia in response to nearly identical incentives and challenges from global markets. New economic conditions created cleavages in the business class in both countries, but these cleavages were only politicized to the extent that producer groups mobilized. To explain why analogous groups mobilized collectively in Morocco but not in Tunisia, I argue that the ability to generate a cohesive class identity, which arose in response to perceived threats from other producer factions, was critical for successful business collective action. The findings call into question key assumptions in theories of collective action and introduce a new approach to studying globalization and domestic politics.

CEO Pay and Appointments: A Market-Based Explanation for Recent Trends

CEOs increased from an average of $700,000 in 1970 (in 2002-constant dollars) to over $2.2 million in 2000.1 During the same period, the ratio of CEO cash compensation to average pay for production workers increased from about 25 in 1970 to nearly 90 in 2000.2 The most prevalent explanation in the popular press for this trend is the fat cat theory, a variant of which has been espoused among academics by Lucian Bebchuk et al. (2002).3 Accord-

Learning from the fat cats

European Eating Disorders ReviewVolume 13, Issue 1 p. 72-73 Winding up Learning from the fat cats Bob Palmer, Bob PalmerSearch for more papers by this author Bob Palmer, Bob PalmerSearch for more papers by this author First published: 21 December 2004 https://doi.org/10.1002/erv.626AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume13, Issue1January/February 2005Pages 72-73 RelatedInformation

Classification of 2X2 Games and Strategic Business Behavior

This note discusses the classifications of general symmetric and anti-diagonally symmetric 2×2 games, illustrated with business-related examples. It also shows how 2×2 games can be used to explain and interpret business strategies such as “top dog,” “puppy dog,” “fat cat” and “lean-and-hungry look” (Fudenberg and Tirole, 1984). A strategic move basically changes a prisoner's dilemma game, coordination game or chicken game into one with a unique Nash equilibrium that favors the strategic player.

From Voyeurism to Feminism: Victorian and Edwardian London's Streetfighting Slum Viragoes

The cover of the Illustrated Police News of 21 July 1888 [Figure 1] shows two contrasting images of working-class women of London's East End: the victim and the virago. In the main picture montage, skeletal workers are portrayed as victims of the sweated labour system, watched over by a Victorian 'fat cat* industrialist They are surrounded by germs and disease. Captions detail the low rates paid to them for piece work. Watching these exploited humans, their employers' dog thinks I'm glad I was born a dog. This picture is surrounded by images of the strike at the Bryant and May match in the East End, including a picture of supposedly starving strikers (who in fact look remarkably healthy and well-fed). Another inset shows two women making matchboxes for 2Vi[d] a gross in a dingy room with paper peeling off the walls. By contrast, the picture immediately above this montage shows three factory girls (who were not connected with the strike) violently assaulting a policeman who has been unwise enough to interfere in one of their personal disputes. The contrast between the two images vividly illustrates the popular press's Jekyll-and-Hyde conception of the East End female. She was seen as both a figure of pathos and a threat, a virtuous victim and a vicious virago. These stereotypes were fundamental to late Victorian popular culture's view of slum women, and gained increasing currency as the middle-classes' fascination with the London slums grew at the fin de si?cle.1 Women are often the central characters in slum fiction and slum

Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (review)

Say your name is Garfield, and you register the domain name garfield.com. Who decides whether you or the fat cat gets the site? This, basically, is the question of internet naming authority. It is also the topic of Milton Mueller's new book. Ruling the Root is both a useful work of institutional history for those in the field and an engaging read for those who enjoy stories of invention, popularization, and desecration of new media.

Leaving the Hills

MEMOIR Leaving the Hills Lee Dowdy Some winters in the West Virginia hills a fellar can sit out on the porch and bask in warm winter sunshine. February of 1950 was one of those years. Coalminers went out on strike as oil fast replaced coal. Fat Cat operators up in Philly looked like they would shut down the mines, tear down our tired old tipple, and put me out of work. Steep hills never did give us much bottom land, but that day I had to look straight up to see any future for me. "Whatta we gonna do?" Buddy said to me. "Danged if I know, but we can't sit here riding this porch swing into tomorrow. I don't fancy going back to raising hogs and drinking sassafras tea, like we did when we were young'ns." "Naw, me neither," he said. "Might go into the Army before that." That brought my head around. "Boy, you done lost your marbles thinking you gonna get me into the Army. Don't you remember your brother talking about walking across Belgium dodging bullets and drinking diarrhea medicine?" A slight smile came across his face. "Yeah, but I also remember his telling about getting off the train in Paris and walking down Rue St. Deni past all those pretty girls. And let me tell you, two or three times he stopped with mighty fine results." "All the same," I answered. "You still ain't gonna get me in no Army. Howsomeever, they made this new thing called the Air Force which I hear ain't too bad." Buddy wasn't impressed. "Ah, shucks. You wanna be a AIR man? Coalminers are marines and rangers; we ain't full of no air, except maybe when we eat pinto beans." He grinned as I went on. "I like these hills and all that, but carrying sacks of taters, corn, and beans down offthathillside across the creeknever did come to my liking." Ole Buddy laughed a little. "You said it. My brother still swears his arms are so long from carrying heavy buckets of slop up to feed the hogs. Never could figure why they wouldn't let us raise 'em here in the coal camp. No worse than 44 thesebig rats rirnningback and forthbetween the toilet and wash house." I kinda laughed with him. "You reckon that Air Force bunch has toilets inside the barracks? That appeals to me." Buddy's response sounded like Joshing. "Now why would they want a smelly thing like that inside the barracks?" With him you never knew whether he was joking or not so I answered in kind. "Well, it is a funny thing that we cook in the house and crap in the yard, but I understand it's getting fashionable to cook in the yard and crap in the house." Buddy didn't laugh so I guess he wasn't kidding. Anyway, he got up, motioned to me and said, "It don't matter to me which way they do it. There's only one way to find out. Let's go talk to 'em." So we walked out to the white bridge and pointed our thumbs down the road. Hitch-hiking to the county seat through five coal camps across three mountains never came easy. For that matter, Buddy and I going anywhere could be a far out episode. We got us a ride down the hollar to Rift in a pick-up truck more suited to cows. Sure glad to get off right above white water washing through a big deep cut. In 1902 a cloud burst dug its way into a narrow ridge, making us a real nice swimming hole. The road went on around but we could take a short cut by wading the creek. Actually, it was bigger than the Rio Grande river in El Paso, but folks around our place called it a creek. Fast water over sharp rocks could sweep your frail body right into deep water. To a youngster that offered a thrilling piece of fun. Dressed in Sunday clothes I wasn't too keen on the idea, especially in February. Standing in the middle looking...

The Integrated Behavioral Health Continuum: Theory and Practice

The Integrated Behavioral Health Continuum: Theory and Practice

Paul Buhle, Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland and the Tragedy of American Labor. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999. ix + 302 pp. $18.00 paper.

Labor historians have always been better at explaining what should have been than what was. This problem plagues Paul Buhle's Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland and the Tragedy of American Labor. No one familiar with Dr. Buhle's work—his detailed treatments of socialist radicals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—will be surprised by the conclusions of his most recent work. The leadership of the mainstream organized labor movement always has been an anathema to the far left, and Buhle attacks Samuel Gompers, George Meany, and Lane Kirkland with a vengeance for having undermined true social democracy in favor of personal gain and corporate accommodation with employers and the state. These themes already have received significant development from the likes of Nelson Lichtenstein, Kim Moody, and Michael Goldfield. Relying almost entirely on secondary sources, Buhle has little to add to previous treatments, although he does focus more closely on the issue of racial exclusion. Ultimately, he breaks new ground only in the passion and uncompromising nature of his criticism. Buhle spares no hyperbole in assaulting the three “over-fed fat cats”—Gompers is a “doddering conservative,” Meany as a young man was “neither conspicuously bright or mechanically talented,” and Kirkland, is “a colorless functionary.” The author's aim clearly is to denounce rather than to understand.

New Deal Fat Cats: Business, Labor, and Campaign Finance in the 1936 Presidential Election

In New Deal Fat Cats, Michael Webber offers a fresh perspective on the New Deal. The author analyzes the role of various segments of society in party politics during the political change brought on by the Great Depression. Webber uses analysis of campaign contribution as a major method of evaluating the 1936 presidential election. Today's readers may be surprised at the statistical breakdown of the group that reelected FDR. These groups ranged from southern Democrats and organized labor, to Catholics, Jews, and small businesses. A considerable portion of the author's analysis rests on interpretive literature about the politics of the New Deal and specifically about the role of business in the construction of those politics. The emphasis of this work is on the coalition of what seem to be disparate elements in society suggesting that large and monolithic power blocks are not necessarily the road to major political change in U.S. society. The reader will begin to sense the seemingly divisive pressures from different groups that made the New Deal not only a paradox, but an effective social reality.

Class, tax and spending: problems for the Left in postindustrial and postdemocratic politics—or why aren't we taxing the fat cats till the pips squeak?

Class, tax and spending: problems for the Left in postindustrial and postdemocratic politics—or why aren't we taxing the fat cats till the pips squeak?

Health System Changes Portend Drop in Physicians’ Charity Care

Health System Changes Portend Drop in Physicians’ Charity Care

New Deal Fat Cats: Business, Labor, and Campaign Finance in the 1936 Presidential Election (review)

New Deal Fat Cats: Business, Labor, and Campaign Finance in the 1936 Presidential Election. By Michael J. Webber. Bronx, New York: Fordham University Press, 2000. xvi + 208 pp.

Editorial: Are Lawyers Responsible for Low Morale in the NHS?

Are greedy fat cat lawyers really to blame for the miserable state of the NHS – or is there a far deeper and more complex explanation – starting with poor management at all levels, unacceptable standards of care, non-compliant patients and year-on-year underfunding? The government is keen to stem the increasing flow of cash out of the NHS in settlement of clinical negligence and other claims – and most particularly to prevent a sizeable percentage from winding up in lawyers’ pockets. How much better if their fees could be retained for the NHS to fund more doctors and nurses and cleaning staff and re-equip struggling hospitals. How much better for patients if standards were actually improved. Doctors bemoan their dramatic loss of Olympian status and dented morale on the “blame” and greed culture that is being exploited and milked by odious and parasitic lawyers (who profit from other people’s misfortunes) and pocket fees which are often grossly disproportionate to the damages recovered by their clients. It is often forgotten when outrageous and extravagant figures are bandied about in the media that a substantial proportion of the fees earned by lawyers and their medical experts (who by rights should be hard at work treating people not propping up negligence claims against their colleagues) flows back into the government’s coffers as taxed income. But how much more fun to have the whole lot so that it can be spent on jollier projects like the Dome at Greenwich.

The NHS manager. A view from the bridge.

The changing role of the manager has been a growing area of both academic and popular literature over recent years. In addition, the interest of the popular press has made terms like "grey suit" and "fat cat" common terminology. Management roles and managerial authority within today's organisations have seen many changes. This has led to frustration and anxiety for managers as they have watched their role change. In the NHS, like other sectors, managers have become a target for organisational redundancies and have experienced increased responsibility, closer monitoring of performance and heightened job insecurity. This paper aims to offer a contribution to the empirical data on managers by investigating one group of NHS managers' own perceptions of how others see their role. The findings suggest that NHS managers are very aware of the largely negative perceptions that surround them but accept this as an integral part of their role.

Fat cats and all that jazz

Fat cats and all that jazz

Fat cat surgeons: the enemy within?

Dobbo and his cobber, David Hinchcliffe, who is Chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on Health, are old style socialists recently ‘teflon’ coated into Blurism. Way back in their youth they probably read the selected works of that vicious old mass murderer, Mao Tse-Tung. Mao told the faithful ‘to know your enemy’. Only if you studied your enemy, he argued, could you understand his ways and defeat his evil intent. Surely it is time for Dobbo and Dave to know their ‘enemy’ in private practice?

Blurred vision: public trust in charities

AbstractRecent evidence that people's trust in charities is low holds serious implications for a sector that needs high levels of public confidence and support to thrive. This paper reports on qualitative focus group research initiated by the Third Sector Foresight Consortium on Trust, set up by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) and the Henley Centre. Strong negative views about fundraising and marketing strategies, ‘fat cat’ salaries and fraud are only partially offset by favourable opinions of the aims and role of charities in society. There appears to be a ‘blurring’ of the voluntary sector's identity and boundaries in the public mind, with overlaps with the state and business sector threatening to obscure the distinctive character of charity and widespread suspicion of the abuse of charitable status. A consequent demand for greater openness and accountability focuses on information about charity finances and performance measurement. Suggestions for further research and strategies for the charity sector to respond to the findings conclude the paper. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications

How Funny?

How Funny?

Fat cats, thin kittens: a portrait of life at the junior bar.

Fat cats, thin kittens: a portrait of life at the junior bar.