Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2015 - Social & Behavioral Sciences — Business, Management & Labor

In this important, insightful, and clearly written book, Cunningham (George Washington Univ.) explains how Warren Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway from a small company with problems into a $300 billion conglomerate with 50 diversified subsidiaries.  In essence, Buffett created a corporate culture that values cost consciousness, integrity, fairness, generosity, ethical behavior, entrepreneurship, both autonomy and teamwork, and a sense of permanence.  Rich with lessons for those wishing to profit from the Berkshire model, the book provides many examples and chapter-long cases of the diverse companies Berkshire acquired that achieved success.  Buffett's policies encourage low debt, social responsibility, a decentralized organization structure, and very careful selection of companies with excellent managers who had fine reputations.  Beyond that, delegating clear responsibilities and decision-making authority to these managers, as well as having performance appraisals and rewards based on performance and long-term success, is critical to Berkshire's success.  The author emphasizes that these values ensure the conglomerate's perpetual prosperity.  A major contribution to the management literature, this book should be read by managers of all organizations, business professors and students, business owners, and investors.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.

Almost two decades ago, Campbell-Kelly (Univ. of Warwick, UK) co-wroteComputer: A History of the Information Machine (CH, Jan'97, 34-2793), one of the most authoritative histories of information technology.  In his new book, co-written with Garcia-Swartz (economist, Compass Lexecon), he offers a concise history of the companies that created the computer industry.  The book provides a compact but thorough history of the different companies that have become part of daily life.  The authors split the history of the industry into four sections, each covering 15-year increments from 1950 to 2010.  In each section, the authors look at the most important companies and explain the breakthroughs and innovations that pushed the industry forward.  Written for general readers, the book traces a clear outline of how the computer industrys obsession with miniaturization and standardization pushed giants such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, and Apple to continually reinvent their products and services.  The authors present an overview of the industry with a foundational look at the trends and companies that shaped computer technology and also devote several chapters to the international marketplace.  This book is a worthy addition to the literature of the history of computing.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

For the public, a great company is defined by its productswitness Thomas Edisons lightbulb.  Though such inventions are essential, practitioners and students of business recognize that they are only the first step for success.  Creating an organization capable of continually innovating and bringing to market the next big thing is ultimately more pressing and daunting.  If Google can be described as the information ages version of Edisons Menlo Park, this work ranks among the most credible and compelling organizational design and management books of our time.  The authors, Schmidt (executive chairman, Google) and Rosenberg (former senior vice president of products, Google), who were brought in to provide adult supervision to firm founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and their cadre of engineers, are in a unique position to offer valuable insights.  The volume is a quick, high-value read filled with insights into how Google stays innovative and on top of a fast-moving industry.  Key takeaways include understanding the importance of culture, accepting failure, and attracting and motivating smart creatives.  Unlike many business books that highlight the importance of such dimensions, Schmidt and Rosenberg's provides ample and compelling examples of how the company puts these ideas into practice.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

In this book, leadership scholar Kellerman (Kennedy School, Harvard) argues that leadership in any American organizationwhether in education, business, government, or the nonprofit worldis more challenging than ever because society has become more complex.  The author argues that before leaders can even begin to be effective, they need to know and develop contextual expertise; that is, leaders need to understand the broad picture of the issues affecting society.  Kellerman has selected 24 issues to discusseconomics, religion, law, technology, media, money, and culture, among others.  For each topic, she provides historical background and, more important, an analysis of recent trends and how they impact leaders and their followers.  For example, she examines how the ubiquity of law and the US's litigious culture complicate the situation and possibly restrain leaders if they do not understand the myriad laws that affect citizens at every level.  In contrast, the culture of the Internet is essentially leaderless because followers are free to communicate and connect with one another without someone's being in charge.  Thorough understanding of contemporary issues, argues the author, is what prepares an individual to be a leader in today's complicated world.  This book, like Kellerman's others, is engaging, challenging, and well researched.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

With its apt and dramatic title, this book addresses the challenges of learning as technology, globalization, and other factors drive the velocity of change at an ever-accelerating rate.  Hess (Univ. of Virginia Darden School of Business) does the great service of examining the processes of both organizational and individual learning, including how those processes overlap and interact.  By focusing on structures and culture in the organizational milieuwhile comparing and contrasting this milieu with individual cognitive and emotional behavior, largely in lay termsthe author conducts a dialogue with readers that is refreshingly unobscured by jargon and cant.  Hess presents strategies to encourage the creation of high-performance learning organizations and sprinkles his discussion with practical case studies throughout.  Through the author's methodology, the text presents both theory and practice in a no-nonsense, practical discussion about how to create an actionable blueprint for becoming a leading-edge learning organization.  Innovation without learning causes organizations to become staleand perhaps even diein this age of ongoing and accelerating change.  How refreshing it is to have a serious discussion of these important issues.  Bravo!Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

In an ideal world, this book would be labeled true crime, but unfortunately, very little of what is detailed herethe environmental, economic, and social atrocities resulting from corporations' perpetually outsourcing both labor and pollution to destitute populationsis considered criminal.  Opening with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, Loomis (Univ. of Rhode Island) surveys more than a century of corporations' moving industrial and agricultural production to areas with ever-poorer worker and environmental protectionsnot for the sake of profit, for they are already profitable, but rather for greater and greater profits.  As Loomis makes clear, this destroys not only the communities left behind but also those on the receiving end, where workers labor in factories such as the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, which collapsed in 2013, killing 1,134 workers, and suffer the degradation of the local environment.  Combining an easily read style with a wealth of information, this captivating book offers many damning examples of corporate sociopathy while skillfully delving into the complex network of international trade agreements that facilitate it; at the same time, the book also charts a history of resistance and a path forward, away from catastrophe.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Sociologist Rivera (Northwestern Univ.) has written an exceptionally useful study of how hiring for elite starting jobs is actually done in the US.  This insider study shows how the top investment banks, law firms, and consulting companies hire only from a double handful of leading universities, law schools, and business schools.  At each step of the selection process, qualities that favor students with the most privileged backgrounds are the very qualities that help them get hired.  Those doing the hiring, unsurprisingly, tend to have these qualities themselves. When they select for fit with the firm, polish," and drive," they tend to reproduce the elite level of the class structure.  Yet the hiring committees believe they are simply hiring the best individuals, without favoring any particular background.  In her book, Rivera explicates what Bourdieus idea of elite cultural capital means in an American context today.  She also shows that most students at these schools succumb to the pressure to apply for this very tiny pool of jobs and firms, a process in which the schools themselves are full partners.  This significant sociological study will also likely be read as a how-to manual.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners.

Big data is, arguably, the most important and transformational decision-making tool for such disparate areas as business, government, security, politics, and research.  Massive data sets describing human behavior can be aggregated for use by these various, and other, constituencies, and this access has raised important issues regarding the use of these data.  Consequently, this volume of collected papers is an important summary and examination of both the positive opportunities and potential negatives of big data.  The book presents an array of contributors who set out to examine and address these issues and arrive at some rough balance weighing the public good against various ethical, legal, and privacy concerns.  This well-organized, well-articulated examination is structured into three buckets: a conceptual framework; a practical framework; and, of course, a statistical framework utilizing big data to buttress the frameworks.  All of the papers are well chosen and collectively provide a concise, comprehensive, and current view of this complex, important landscape.  This essential volume should be required reading for all those interested in developing a thorough understanding of the opportunities and potential costs of the utilization of big data.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Keating has delivered an exceptional chronicle of the history of Robert M. Keating and the Keating Wheel Company (later renamed the Keating Wheel and Automobile Company).  The depth of this work is a researchers (and reader's) dream.  Readers might be tempted to think that the author and the subject of the work are related, but they are not; the author simply became intrigued because he shares a last name with his subject.  R. M. Keating started manufacturing bicycles in 1891, then went into manufacturing motor carriages.  In 1900, he filed a series of patents for a motorized bicycle.  He filed over 50 patents in his lifetime, including one for the home plate now used in the game of baseball.  Other publications only briefly mention Keating and his accomplishments; no other resource covers the inventor like this one does.  It is well written and has a rich table of contents, a number of useful appendixes, a lengthy bibliography, and a detailed index.  In addition, many historical photos are included.  This book is recommended to readers interested not only in entrepreneurship but also in the early history of bicycles, motorcycles, and automobiles.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.