Lectures - Spring 2007

The Empire strikes flak: powerful companies, culture clash, and political backlash

Speaker: Daniel Litvin
24th March

You may have thought the age of empires was over. However, while political empires may be on the decline, in today's globalised world, corporate empires continue to flourish. Daniel Litvin's talk will examine the role of some of the most powerful companies through history, from the East India Company to modern day corporate giants such as Shell and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. He will ask: are we kidding ourselves if we imagine history is made by the politicians? And, if companies fail to understand local cultures, what does history tell us to expect?

Daniel Litvin is author of Empires of Profit: Commerce, Conquest & Corporate Responsibility. This has been described as "riveting" by the International Herald Tribune, as "hair-raising accounts of greed, megalomania, conspiracy, coups" by the Guardian, and as "thoughtful, intensively researched and deeply impressive" by the Financial Times. Daniel Litvin is an independent advisor to a number of major corporations on social and sustainability issues. He is a former McKinsey consultant, as well as policy advisor to Rio Tinto plc (where he drafted guidelines on human rights for the company’s managers). He was also the award-winning environment correspondent of The Economist magazine. He has first-class degrees in anthropology and development from LSE, and in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford.

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