The greatest concern for all Americans today - leaders and followers alike - is how their prosperity seems to depend on a shrinking foundation of technology-only growth. And the onset of artificial intelligence only threatens to marginalize people even more with job loss and increasing isolation inside the few remaining jobs that it will leave behind.This book helps us understand that business growth fueled by labor productivity does not rely on leadership as we've come to celebrate it, but on our ability to sustain loyalty and commitment to one another- a following if you will - inside and outside our workplaces. When we recognize and understand our historical Followership Cycles, we can begin to restore our workplaces to their lost role as a place to meet the demand of all Americans for a better future.This illuminating book:Provides a new, sustainable growth model based in the socioeconomic realities of modern America and the world it wants to lead - a new Followership System.Tells the story of how one profession, on the brink of disappearing into irrelevance, will lead the new Decision Economy into the 21st century. Demonstrates the development of the "e;leaderless"e; specialists who will manage evidence together to pursue a Reason-to-Grow.Stresses the importance of charging all C-Suite executives with leading a continuous process of discovering, articulating and then defending those stakeholder agreements to share purpose.Reveals, not the technology infrastructure, but the social architecture that organizations will use to build new social capital - the Followership that will propel our New Giants to future greatness.New Giants Rising takes us on a journey of the Followership Cycles of our recent past. And, more importantly, it puts forth a plan of action - voiced very simply by Henry Ford during the last cycle over a century ago when he faced the same moment then as we do now: "e;Coming Together is the Start. Keeping Together is Progress. Working Together is Success."e;

This interdisciplinary volume explores the fictional portrayal of marriage by women novelists between 1800 and 1900. It investigates the ways in which these novelists used the cultural form of the novel to engage with and contribute to the wider debates of the period around the fundamental cultural and social building block of marriage. The collection provides an important contribution to the emerging scholarly interest in nineteenth-century marriage, gender studies, and domesticity, opening up new possibilities for uncovering submerged, marginalized, and alternative stories in Victorian literature. An initial chapter outlines the public discourses around marriage in the nineteenth century, the legal reforms that were achieved as a result of public pressure, and the ways in which these laws and economic concerns impacted on the marital relationship. It beds the collection down in current critical thinking and draws on life writing, journalism, and conduct books to widen our understanding of how women responded to the ideological and cultural construct of marriage. Further chapters examine a range of texts by lesser-known writers as well as canonical authors structured around a timeline of the major legal reforms that impacted on marriage. This structure provides a clear framework for the collection, locating it firmly within contemporary debate and foregrounding female voices. An afterword reflects back on the topic of marriage in the nineteenth- century and considers how the activism of the period influenced and shaped reform post-1900. This volume will make an important contribution to scholarship on Victorian Literature, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, and the Nineteenth Century.