|
By Boss, January 2007
Management Mumbo-Jumbo
Adrian Furnham
Palgrave Macmillan
Adrian Furnham’s book is a welcome relief. He writes plainly,
and each of the chapters is a 1000-word (or less) essay on different
work-related topics. He pricks the pompous and the silly, but most
of the articles are serious in tone and useful for those working
in the field. He brings a common-sense psychology to his analysis
of workers and while he enjoys spearing a fad or two, he’s
interested in helping the reader who works in an organisation as
manager or subordinate.
The author’s sense of fun is palpable — we can almost
forgive him for not having a mobile phone.
Get to work: A manifesto for women of the world
Linda R. Hirshman
Viking
Hirshman stirred the possum with this short polemic on women and
paid work. Forget those silly ideas about choice feminism and stop
wasting that expensive education, she exhorts middle-class women.
It’s time to take paid work seriously and in the process reject
the “second shift’ of housework. She even recommends
having one child only to cut down the domestic burden — at
least until men offer to share the load. A refreshing read, warts
and all.
Purpose
Nikos Mourkogiannis
Palgrave Macmillan
According to Mourkogiannis, a business without a purpose is like
a car with no engine. It is the raison d’être that drives
the organisation and its employees, provides a moral framework and
sustains the business. Drawing on his classical education in the
great philosophical traditions, the author maps out four main kinds
of purpose and points to successful companies that exemplify them.
Intuition on Demand
Jane Mara
Management Books
Mara has spent many years advising business executives on how to
use their intuition in everyday decision-making. This book outlines
her approach to harnessing innate abilities and learning how to
trust gut instincts.
Hard Facts Dangerous Half-truths & Total Nonsense
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
Harvard Business School Press
A brilliant look at trends and management fashions that stays well
clear of the obvious demolition jobs while managing to be constructive
and sensible. These two legendary Stan lord academics criticise
without demeaning their discipline.
One Billion Customers: Lessons from the front lines of
doing business in China
James McGregor
Free Press
The mega-markets of China, and the many challenges they present,
are explored in detail by The Wall Street Journals former China
bureau chief.
To Hell With All That
Caitlin Flanagan
Little, Brown and Company
Infuriating and incisive in equal doses, Flanagan writes about the
contradictions around bearing and raising children in a work-and-
success-obsessed society. Flanagan’s columns in The Atlantic
Monthly and The New Yorker give her ideas plenty of oxygen, however
her thinking is generally too contradictory even hypocritical to
really push the debate forward. Amusing, yes. Groundbreaking, no.
Social Intelligence
Daniel Goleman
Random House
You’re familiar with the thesis but it’s worth reiterating
the importance of relationships and the emotional side of life.
Goleman is the master.
Changing Minds
Howard Gardner
Harvard Business School Press
The cognitive psychologist who has drilled down into the brain and
behaviour takes a close look at how we change our minds —
and those of others.
Supermarket Wars
Andrew Seth and Geoffrey Randall
Palgrave Macmillan
This book offers a wonderfully crafted insight into the future of
international food retailing. The tone is set by an in-depth overview
of the economic vagaries. political intrigues and social discord
that have affected several countries in recent times, and led them
to open their economies to the outside world. Once exposed, they
then created opportunities for the development of modern international
retailing platforms.
The World According to Y: Inside the new adult generation
Rebecca Huntley
Allen & Unwin
From around 2010, the Largest youth generation in history will break
out and begin to make its impact upon the world, Generation Y (everyone
born since 1982) will, according to author Rebecca Huntley, make
it’s mark as its X predecessors never could. “We will
have to understand their mind-set in order to navigate our own future,”
she declares. This is one of the better analyses of the Y-ers and
worth a look if you are parenting, employing or just keeping company
with someone in this cohort.
Are Men Necessary?
Maureen Dowd
Hodder
The answer to the question is yes, no and sort of. Dowd has her
tongue firmly in her cheek in this book, which is more a collection
of articles than a series of chapters. But as with much of her writing,
The New York Times columnist is amusing as well as enlightening
on the nuances of gender and work.
Brave New Workplace
David Peetz
Allen & Unwin
This is an important addition to the analysis of Australian industrial
relations (Peetz prefers that nomenclature to the more corporate
friendly term, workplace relations). Brave New Workplace sets out
the data to support his thesis that the swing to individual contracts
is all about corporations, backed by the State, asserting their
power to reduce the power of their employees. He suggests the evidence
that individual contracts increase productivity (the central economic
argument advanced for such arrangements) is at best equivocal.
The Big Moo
Edited by Seth Godin
Penguin
You might have had enough of Godin’s marketing theses but
the central one here — be remarkable if you want to stand
out and sell — may be irrefutable. Godin doesn’t rely
on his own ideas. Instead he picked the brains of The Group of 33
— everyone from Malcolm Gladwell to Tom Peters to Daniel Pink.
Milk it for what it’s worth.
A Very Short Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book
about Studying Organisations
Christopher Grey
Sage Publications
The most fascinating part of this book is Grey’s discussion
of organisational culture and its ramifications for managers, employees
and society. He informs his analysis with humour and humility, but
it’s far from a mere personal rant. The argument is cogent
and concise, embedded firmly within current organisational and management
thinking, and augmented by a useful bibliography for further reading.
Grey argues that while understanding organisations is both intrinsically
fascinating and essential for everyone, the study of them is often
marred by extravagant claims of “provability’.
Politics of Fear: Beyond left and right
Frank Furedi
Continuum
A sometimes brilliant analysis of why we have accepted a limited
view of our power to engage with politics for real change. The University
of Kent sociologist calls for a new “enlightenment”
for 21C.
Boom
Mary Brown and Carol Osborn
McGraw-Hill
This book is about “marketing to the ultimate power consumer
— the baby-boomer woman”. But it’s also rich in
social observation and a source of fascinating information about
the ways women operate at home and at work.
Treat People Like Dogs! Six tasks for passionate leaders
Robert Norton
Wild Norton Fire
Dogs unexpectedly inspired Robert Norton, a motivational expert,
to think about his own life journey. Last year, Norton (a Montana
native and Australian citizen) and his Australian wife, Catherine,
rode their motorcycles from Montana through the Canadian Rockies
to Alaska and back. On the way, Norton visited Muktuk Kennels in
the Yukon. Drawing inspiration from dog sledders who know the meaning
of leading from behind through a stewardship relationship, Norton
created the model of leadership outlined in this book.
Silos Politics and Turf Wars: A leadership fable about
destroying the barriers that turn colleagues into competitors
Patrick M. Lencioni
Jossey-Bass
Lencioni has cred from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Jossey-Bass,
2002) and the question of what to do with your workplace silos is
as vital as ever.
Packers Lunch
Neil Chenoweth
Allen & Unwin
This is a real page-turner. The players and the power shifts of
Sydney’s corporate scene at the tail end of the 20th century.
Why Its Hard to be Good
Al Gini
Routledge
In this lucid book, Al Gini, professor of philosophy at Loyola University,
Chicago, challenges us’ “We’ve all seen a film,
a play, TV show, where the ‘bad guys’ do terrible things
to an individual and no one tries to stop them or help the injured
party. But it doesn’t have to be just about ‘bad guys’.
“Passivity in the face of wrongdoing, he suggests, is “not
a lack of moral awareness, reasoning or knowledge of what is right
or wrong — but rather a reluctance to do the right thing ...
The problem is our unwillingness to be engaged, to be mobilised
and energised, to be empathetic to others, to step outside the protect
ye cocoon of self.”
Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?
Robert Goff cc and Gareth Jones
Harvard Business School Press
With pithy heads such as “Read and re-write context”
and “Remain authentic but conform enough”, the book
is an engaging read. There are valuable reminders about why leaders
should not act too quickly, and why it is important to decide which
values or parts of the organisation should be maintained. The best
chapter is the last, “The price and prize of leadership”.
Here you get a flavour of what really matters to the authors - a
glimpse into their own authenticity — and perhaps an answer
to the question “Why should anyone read a book by you?”
Leadership Can Be Taught
Sharon Daloz Parks
Harvard Business School Press
Fuel for this side of the “born or made” argument and,
at the least, some useful pointers on how to do it.
The Wal-Mart Effect
Charles Fishman
Penguin
This book is another anecdote-based study with some academic underpinnings.
But unlike most of the other critics of the retailing behemoth,
Fishman comes up with
mission statement so devoid a “solution”. You can’t
change Wal-Mart, so maybe we should change the way that we think
about capitalism. Fishman makes a plea for customers to respond
to Wal-Mart’s (mostly pricing) power. In the longer term,
he argues, capitalism needs to understand that Wal-Mart represents
a new paradigm - the mega-corporation - and free market rules apply
differently.
The Longest Decade
George Megalogenis
Scribe
Journalist Megalogenis has built a substantial career by looking
closely at data that provides a window into the era in Austral a
largely created by Keating and Howard.
NEO Power: How the new economic order is changing the
way we live, work and play
Ross Honeywill and Verity Byth
Scobe
A well-argued take on the contemporary drivers of consumption. The
authors spent several years surveying thousands of respondents to
uncover a “revolutionary breed” that is changing the
social and economic landscape.
The Creating Brain: The neuroscience of genius
Nancy C. Andreasen
Dana Press
More on the endlessly fascinating story of how our brains work.
Speed @ Work / DNA @ Work / Love @ Work
Wiley
These three are published by the Australian Institute of Management
and collect writings from a range of people (including this magazine’s
editors). There is interesting material on key trends and while
the essays are uneven, there is plenty of useful - and local -material
about the changing world of work.
The World is Flat: A brief history of the Twenty-first
century
Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar Straus and Giroux
Friedman has been on the globalisation track for years, but this
one goes further and looks at the extent to which technology is
breaking down borders.
The Lying Ape: An honest guide to the world of deception
Brian King
Allen & Unwin
Everyone’s a liar, says the author in this exploration of
deceit. Looking beyond the usual suspects - politicians, used-car
salesmen - King roams through the territory of white lies, great
lies of history, body language that gives the game away, and what
goes on in the brain when we’re telling porkies.
Company: A novel
Max Barry
Doubleday
A satire on corporate shenanigans by an Australian writer, this
novel has been very well received in the US. “If you’re
reading a management book right now, any management book, even an
old collection of essays by the late Peter Drucker, put it down
and get this book instead,” writes Michael Marello in a review
in Forbes earlier this year. “The other stuff can wait. Indeed,
after reading Barry’s story about Zephyr Holdings, a major,
multinational corporation with of meaning that not even the company’s
employees know what the company does, you’ll read all of those
‘how to’ management books with new eyes.”
Inside the Lifestyles of the Rich and Tasteful
Andrew West
Pluto Press
We’re changing as a society, thanks to the market and the
money, and West is keen to chart the shifts and explain ourselves
to curse yes. Essential reading for trend spotters and marketers.
The Quantum Theory of Trust: The secret of mapping and
managing human relationships
Karen Stephenson
Financial Times Prentice Hall
This one comes recommended by the management magazine strategy+business
and is by one of the leaders in the field of social network analysis.
Stephenson’s ideas were featured in the AFR BOSS story “Power
Points” in September 2006.
Elton Mayo: The Humanist Temper
Richard CS Trahair
Footprint Books
George Elton Mayo (1880-1949) was a prominent social scientist of
the last century and a pioneer in the field of applying psychological
method to business practice. From 1926 to 1947 he was a professor
at the Harvard Business School and the publication of this operations
so complex and a scholarly biography was part of its 75th anniversary
commemorations. As Mayo asserted: “The demand for material
goods as a substitute for social values is not indicative of a high
but of a low standard of living.” He recommended that society
should give as much attention to the ends of production as it does
to the means. His ideas have a contemporary resonance we ignore
at our peril.
The Labour Market Ate my Babies
Barbara Pocock
The Federation Press
Pocock argues that the modern way of working is shifting the way
we run our lives. It’s time new policies and social norms
are introduced, she argues, so Australians have time for a life
and relationships outside the paid workforce and learn to break
the “work and spend” cycle that obsesses even kids these
days.
Snakes in Suits: When psychopaths go to work
Paul Babiak and Robert D, Hare
Harper Collins
The title says it all. Arm yourself for the year ahead.
Myself and Other More Important Matters
Charles Handy
Random House
The management guru reflects on his own life, from his experiences
as a young Shell executive in Borneo to his role in starting up
the London Business School and the lessons be learnt along the way.
The New Individualism
Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert
Routledge
It’s not a business book, but these two sociologists have
some interesting things to say about the way we construct our identities
in the age of Botox.
The Secrets of Happiness
Richard Schoch
Allen & Unwin
There’s a lot of them about - books on happiness. This one
looks back at philosophical and religious traditions to explain
why we have all become so overt in our search for the big H.
The Long Tail: Why the future of business is selling less
of more
Chris Anderson
Random House
Original. Explains how, in offering customers greater choice, the
internet is altering business models, more radically than we could
have imaged.
Tough Choices: A memoir
Carly Fiorina
Portolio Hardcover
She ended up with a mixed rep as Hewlett-Packards CEO but Fiorina
was one of the most powerful people in American business - and one
of the smartest.
Leading from the Front
Angie Morgan and Courtney Lynch
McGraw-Hill
Drawing on their combined 18 years as US Marines, Morgan and Lynch
offer “no-excuse leadership tactics for women”. The
successful consultants exhort women in the workforce to cultivate
‘character based” leadership.
The Baby Business: How money, science and politics drive
the commerce of conception
Debora L Spar
Harvard Business School Press
Through pioneering research and interviews with the industry’s
top reproductive scientists, Spar looks at the economics of fertility
— a hot topic for companies as well as governments.
The New Capitalists: How citizen investors are reshaping
the corporate agenda
Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomruk and David Pitt-Watson
Harvard Business School Press
We’ll review this one in February, but it looks like a timely
analysis of the way distributed shareholder power s reshaping capitalism.
The Age of Fallibility: The consequences of the war on
terror
George Soros
Allen & Unwin
The “man who broke the Bank of England” looks at the
fatal flaws of the American Administration and the wider American
yew of the world.
Bait and Switch
Barbara Ehrenreich
Crania Books
The journalist goes undercover to look for a job in the white-collar
world and
discovers that there are a lot of people making a lot of money from
advising the unemployed. Sharply cynical about modern management
and workplace rhetoric.
Corporate Elders
Leonie V. Still
University of Western Australian Press
An analysis of the state of mind of 50-something executives, based
on revealing interviews. Includes candid material about the way
these people work and what drives their ambition.
Managing Intellectual Capital in Practice
Göran Roo, Stephen Pike and Lisa Fernstrom
Elsevier
How to incorporate intellectual capital thinking into everyday business
by managing intangible resources. Case studies show the tools in
use in various kinds of companies.
Alpha Male Syndrome
Kate Ludeman and Eddie Erlandson
Harvard Business School Press
A useful analysis of the dominant workplace operating model. Ludeman
and Erlandson identify four types of alphas and look at how they
can leverage their unique strengths and confront their “flip-side
risks”.
Why We Want You to be Rich
Donald J Trump and Robert T. Kiyosaki
Rich Press
Okay, it doesn’t really qualify as a management book - and
we still haven’t read it. But with these two authors, and
that title, it’s the perfect stocking filler.
Contributions from Aaron Hechtman, Guy Humphreys,
Debora Campbell, Sean Aylmer, Amanda Sinclair and Helen Trinca.
|
