The manager's bookshelf

305 Pages·115.317 MB·English

by  Newstrom, John W., Pierce, Jon L. (Jon Lepley) editor of compilation

Pearson New International Edition

The Manager's Bookshelf

Jon L. Pierce John W. Newstrom
Tenth Edition
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ISBN 10: 1-292-04034-3
ISBN 13: 978-1-292-04034-9
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ISBN 10: 1-292-04034-3
ISBN 10: 1-269-37450-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-292-04034-9
ISBN 13: 978-1-269-37450-7
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P E A R S O N C U S T O M L I B R AR Y
Table of Contents
1. Understanding and Using the Best Sellers
Jon L. Pierce and John W. Newstrom 1
2. Reflections on the Best Sellers and a Cautionary Note
Jon L. Pierce and John W. Newstrom, with Larry L. Cummings, Brad Jackson, and Anne Cummings 9
3. The Practice of Management
Peter F. Drucker 21
4. The One Minute Manager
Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson 27
5. Out of the Crisis
W. Edwards Deming 31
6. The Human Side of Enterprise
Douglas McGregor 37
7. Maslow on Management
Abraham H. Maslow 45
8. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen R. Covey 49
9. The Fifth Discipline
Peter M. Senge 53
10. Competitive Advantage
Michael E. Porter 61
11. Big Winners and Big Losers
Alfred Marcus 71
12. How the Mighty Fall
Jim Collins 79
13. Higher Ambition
Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat, Nathaniel Foote, Tobias Fredberg, and Flemming Norrgren 85
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14. Responsible Restructuring
Wayne F. Cascio 91
15. Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture
Edgar H. Schein 97
16. Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor  
Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman, and James O’Toole 113
17. The Enthusiastic Employee  
David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind, and Michael Irwin Meltzer 119
18. Psychological Capital
Fred Luthans, Carolyn M. Youssef, and Bruce J. Avolio 125
19. Why Pride Matters More Than Money
Jon R. Katzenbach 133
20. Mojo 
Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter 139
21. Positive Leadership
Kim Cameron 145
22. Bad Leadership
Barbara Kellerman 149
23. Power
Jeffrey Pfeffer 155
24. Beyond Teams
Michael M. Beyerlein, Sue Freedman, Craig McGee, and Linda Moran 163
25. Building the Bridge as You Walk on It
Robert E. Quinn 171
26. A Sense of Urgency
John P. Kotter 175
27. Workplace Survival
Ella W. VanFleet and David D. VanFleet 181
28. The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t
Robert I. Sutton 187
29. It’s All Politics
Kathleen Kelley Reardon 193
30. Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman 199
31. Super Crunchers
Ian Ayres 205
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32. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious
Gerd Gigerenzer 211
33. Blind Spots
Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel 217
34. Authentic Leadership
Bill George 223
35. Prisoners of Our Thoughts
Alex Pattakos 231
36. Toxic Emotions at Work
Peter J. Frost 237
37. The Upside of Irrationality and Predictably Irrational 
Dan Ariely 243
38. Content Rules
Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman 249
39. Who Moved My Cheese?
Spencer Johnson 257
40. Fish!
Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen 261
41. The Fun Minute Manager
Bob Pike, Robert C. Ford, and John W. Newstrom 263
42. What Were They Thinking?
Jeffrey Pfeffer 269
43. Managing
Henry Mintzberg 275
44. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton 281
Bibliography of Inclusions
Jon L. Pierce, John W. Newstrom 289
Index 293
III
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Understanding and Using the
Best Sellers
Jon L. Pierce and John W. Newstrom
For several decades now, large numbers of newly published books have focused on various
aspects of management. These books have been in high demand at local bookstores and
on the Internet. Several individuals have authored books that have sold millions of c opies,
among them Peter Drucker (The Practice of Management), Tom Peters and Bob Waterman
(In Search of Excellence), Spencer Johnson (Who Moved My Cheese?), Jim Collins (Good to
Great), Stephen Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), Kenneth Blanchard and
Spencer Johnson (The One Minute Manager), and Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat).
Some of these books have stayed on “best-seller” lists for many weeks, months, and even
years. What are the reasons for their popularity? Why have business books continued to catch
the public’s attention through both good economic times and bad?
We have all read newspaper stories about (and many have felt the shock waves and per-
sonal impact of) downsizing, pension fund losses, restructuring, corporate ethical scandals, out-
sourcing of jobs, globalization, and excessive executive compensation and benefits. We have all
read stories about the sometimes-remarkable success of foreign organizations. We have contin-
ued to watch bigger and bigger portions of our markets being dominated by foreign-owned and
foreign-controlled organizations. We have witnessed foreign interests purchase certain segments
of America, while more and more jobs have been moved offshore. Perhaps in response to these
trends, a tremendous thirst for American success stories and a desire to learn what would prevent
some of these negative phenomena have arisen. In essence, the public is receptive and the timing
is right for the writing, publication, and sale of popular management books.
A second reason for the upsurge in management books stems from another form of com-
petition. Many management consultants, fighting for visibility and a way to differentiate their
services, have written books they hope will become best sellers. Through the printed word they
hope to provide a unique take-home product for their clients, communicate their management
philosophies, gain wide exposure for themselves or their firms, and profit handsomely.
Third, the best sellers also provide an optimistic message to a receptive market. In difficult
economic times or under conditions of extreme pressure to produce short-term results, managers
may be as eager to swallow easy formulas for business success as sick patients are to consume their
prescribed medicines. Sensing this propensity, the authors of the best sellers (and of many other
books with lesser records) often claim, at least implicitly, to present managers with an easy cure
for their organizational woes, or with an easy path to personal success. In a world characterized by
From Part 1 Reading 1 of The Manager’s Bookshelf, Tenth Edition. Jon L. Pierce, John W. Newstrom. Copyright ©
2014 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Understanding and Using the Best Sellers
chaos, environmental turbulence, and intense global competition, managers are driven to search
for the ideas provided by others that might be turned into a competitive advantage.
Fourth, we are witnessing an increased belief in and commitment to proactive organiza-
tional change and a search for differentiating one’s approach. Increasing numbers of managers
are rejecting the notion that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and instead are adopting a more con-
structive bias toward action. These managers are seriously looking for and experimenting with
different approaches toward organizational management. Many of the popular books provide
managers with insights into new and different ways of managing. At a minimum, readers are en-
gaging in the process of benchmarking their competition and adopting “best practices” that have
worked for others; hopefully, they are using the established practices of others as a springboard
to developing even better ideas themselves.
In their search for the “quick fix,” generations of risk-taking American managers have
adopted a series of organizational management concepts, such as management by objectives,
job enlargement, job enrichment, sensitivity training, flextime, matrix organizational structures,
and a variety of labor–management participative schemes, such as quality circles, total quality
management, and quality of work–life programs. Each has experienced its own life cycle, often
going through the stages of market discovery, wild acceptance by passionate believers, careful
questioning of it by serious critics, broad disillusionment with its shortcomings, and sometimes
later being abandoned and replaced by another emerging management technique (while a few
advocates remain staunchly supportive of the fad).1
As a consequence of this managerial tendency to embrace ideas and then soon discard
them, many viable managerial techniques have received a tarnished image. For example, many of
the Japanese participative management systems that were copied by American managers found
their way into the garbage cans of an earlier generation of American managers. The continuing
demand for quick fixes stimulates a ready market for new, reborn, and revitalized management
ideas. We encourage you to read and seriously reflect on the questionable probability of find-
ing a legitimate quick fix. The search for solutions to major organizational problems in terms
of “one-minute” answers reflects a Band-Aid® approach to management—one that is destined
to ultimately fail and one that we condemn as a poor way to enrich the body of management
knowledge and practice.
We alert you to this managerial tendency to look for “new” solutions to current orga-
nizational problems. The rush to resolve problems and take advantage of opportunities fre-
quently leads to the search for simple remedies for complex organizational problems. Yet few of
today’s organizational problems can be solved with any single approach. The high-involvement
management, the learning organization, and the compassionate corporate culture advocated in
today’s generation of popular management books may also join the list of tried-and-abandoned
solutions to organizational woes if implemented without a broader context and deeper under-
standing. We especially hope that the quick-fix approach to organizational problem solving
that characterizes the management style of many will not be promoted as a result of this mosaic
of today’s popular business books.
Rationale foR this text
The business world has been buzzing with terms like vision, alignment, flow, pride, authenticity,
innovation, credibility, narcissism, paradigms, stewardship, the learning organization, the spirit
of work, the soul of business, transformational and charismatic leaders, knowledge management,
high-involvement management and organizations, and corporate cultures. On the negative side,
these terms feed the management world’s preoccupation with quick fixes and the perpetuation of
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Understanding and Using the Best Sellers
management fads. On the positive side, many of these concepts serve as catalysts to the further
development of sound management philosophies and practices.
In the mid-twentieth century, a few books occasionally entered the limelight (e.g., Parkin-
son’s Law, The Peter Principle, The Effective Executive, and My Years with General Motors), but
for the most part they did not generate the widespread and prolonged popularity of the current
generation of business books. Then, too, many were not written in the readable style that makes
most contemporary books so easy to consume.
Managers find the current wave of books not only interesting but also enjoyable and enter-
taining to read. A small survey conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership found that a sig-
nificant number of managers who participated in a study of their all-around reading selections
chose one or more management books as their favorite.2 In essence, many of the popular man-
agement books are being read by managers—probably because the books are often supportive of
their present management philosophies! Many managers report that these books are insightful,
easily readable, interestingly presented, and seemingly practical. Whether the prescriptions in
these books have had (or ever will have) a real and lasting impact on the effective management of
organizations remains to be determined.
Despite the overall popularity of many business best sellers, some managers do not read
any current management books, and many others have read only a limited number or small parts
of a few.* Similarly, many university students studying management have heard about some of
these books, but not read them. This text presents perspectives from (but not a criticism of) a
number of those popular management books. It is designed for managers who are interested
in the best sellers but do not have time to read all of them in their entirety and for students of
management who want to be well informed as they prepare to enter the work world. Reading
about the views expressed in many of the best sellers will expand the knowledge and business
vocabulary of both groups and enable them to engage in more meaningful conversations with
their managerial colleagues.
Although reading the book summaries provided here can serve as a useful introduction to
this literature, they should not be viewed as a substitute for immersion in the original material,
nor do they remove the need for further reading of the more substantive management books and
professional journals. The good news is that the popularity of these books suggests that millions
of managers are reading them and are exhibiting an interest in learning about what has worked
for other managers and firms. This is an important step toward the development of an open-
system paradigm for themselves and for their organizations.
We strongly advocate that both managers and students be informed organizational citi-
zens. Therefore, we believe it is important for you to know and understand what is being written
about organizations and management. We also believe that it is important for you to know what
is being read by the managers who surround you, some of which is contained in best sellers, and
much of which is contained in more traditional management books, as well as in professional
and scientific journals.3
Contents of the best selleRs
What topics do these best-selling books cover, what is their form, and what is their merit?
Although many authors cover a wide range of topics and others do not have a clear focus, most
of these books fall into one of several categories. Some attempt to describe the more effective
*For a discussion on incorporating these types of management books into management training programs, see John W.
Newstrom and Jon L. Pierce, “The Potential Role of Popular Business Books in Management Development Programs,”
Journal of Management Development, 1989, 8:2, 13–24.
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