Classic Business Books  

In this fourth edition of his ground-breaking work, Herbert A. Simon applies his pioneering theory of human choice and administrative decision-making to concrete organizational problems. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the book's original publication, Professor Simon enhances his timeless observations on the human decision-making process with commentaries examining new facets of organizational behavior. Investigating the impact of changing social values and modem technology on the operation of organizations, the new ideas featured in this revised edition update a book that has become a worldwide classic. Named by Public Administration Review as "Book of the Half Century," Administrative Behavior is considered one of the most influential books on social science thinking, and was referred to by the Nobel Committee as "epoch-making." Written for managers and other professionals who wish to understand the decision-making processes at the heart of organization and management, it is also essential reading for students in business and management, economics, sociology, psychology computer science, government, and law.

'A compelling challenge to conventional thought' - "New York Times". In this newly updated edition of his classic text on the "economics of abundance", Galbraith lays bare the hazards of individual and social complacency about economic inequality. It is as relevant now, with the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, as when it was first published 40 years ago. Galbraith challenges why we worship work and productivity when so many of the goods we produce are superfluous, and why we grudge spending on public works while ignoring extravagance in the private sector. "The Affluent Society" exemplifies Galbraith's wit, clarity and eloquence of prose.

Behavioral Theory of the Firm has become a classic work in organizational theory, and is one of the most significant contributions to improving the theory of the firm. This second edition includes new material which puts the original text in a contemporary context.The authors:* Use experiments and empirical observations to build a model of decision making which can be compared with reality.* Reject the structure of the firm as represented by classical economic theory, instead focus on the discretion of management.* Offer a new way of viewing the effects of the organization, communications and individuals on the firm's activity.For students and specialists the second edition of this pathbreaking book offers the original theory, a new summary of the most important work that has taken place since the book was originally published, and an approach which not only advances the theory of the firm but provides a rigorous model for all research in the social services.It is the most important and provocative view yet advanced for seeing inside the firm to understand it as an organization and an economic entity.

When Benjamin Graham died in 1976 at age 82, he had achieved legendary status on Wall Street. He had laid the foundation of modern security analysis, inspiring legions of disciples and personally mentoring such up-and-comers as Warren Buffett (who went to work for Graham in 1954). Graham was widely regarded as brilliant, successful, and ethical, a rare trinity of attributes in the rough-and-tumble world of investing. In his later years, Graham wrote a memoir that looked back on the early, seminal decades of his colorful life. Twenty years after his death, this work is being published at last. Brimming with details that will captivate investors and history buffs alike, these pages evoke one of the richest most eventful lives of the century. Graham weaves an eloquent tale of talent and good fortune, viewed against the dynamic backdrop of New York and Wall Street.

"The Calculus of Consent" was co-authored by Buchanan with Gordon Tullock, with whom Buchanan collaborated on many books and academic enterprises throughout their careers. As Robert D. Tollison states: (this book) is a radical departure from the way democracies conduct their business. The 'Calculus' is already a book for the ages. This classic work analyses the political organisation of a free society through the lens of the economic organisation of society. The authors acknowledge their unease as economists in analysing the political organisation, but they take the risk of forging into unfamiliar territory because they believe the benefits of their perspective will bear much fruit.As the authors state, their objective in this book is 'to analyze the calculus of the rational individual when he is faced with questions of constitutional choice...We examine the (choice) process extensively only with reference to the problem of decision-making rules'. The authors describe their approach as 'economic individualism'. They believe that economists have explored individual choice extensively in the market sector while social scientists have largely ignored the dynamics of individual decision-making in the dynamics of forming group action in the public sector. Written in the early 1960s, "The Calculus of Consent" has become a bulwark of the public choice movement for which James M. Buchanan is so justly famous.

How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threats it can pose to individual freedom? In this classic book, Milton Friedman answers this question with the definitive statement of his immensely influential economic philosophy, one in which competitive capitalism - the organization of the bulk of economic activity through private enterprise operating in a free market - serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. In the process, he outlines the role that government should play in a society dedicated to freedom and relying primarily on the market to organize economic activity.

Schumpeter's contention in this text that the seeds of capitalism's decline were internal, and his equal and opposite hostility to centralist socialism have perplexed, engaged and infuriated readers since the book's publication in the 1940s. By refusing to become an advocate for either position Schumpeter was able both to make his own original contribution and to clear the way for a more balanced consideration of one of the most important social movements of the 20th century.

The Change Masters looks behind the scenes at some of the most important companies in America, including Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, Polaroid, General Motors, Wang Laboratories and Honeywell, to describe their organizational structures, their corporate cultures, and their specific strategies.

Widely respected and admired, Philip Fisher is among the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, introduced almost forty years ago, are not only studied and applied by today's finance professionals, but are also regarded by many as gospel. He recorded these philosophies in 'Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits', a book considered invaluable reading when it was first published in 1958, and a must-read today.

Electrifying in its simplicity - like all great breakthroughs - COMPETITIVE STRATEGY captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Author Michael Porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies - lowest cost, differentiation, and focus - which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presents a whole new perspective on how profit is created and divided. More than a million managers in both large and small companies, investment analysts, consultants, students, and scholars throughout the world have internalised Porter's ideas and applied them to assess industries, understand competitors and choose competitive positions. COMPETITIVE STRATEGY has filled a void in management thinking. It provides an enduring foundation and grounding point on which all subsequent work can be built. Porter's rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century.

Mary Parker Follett agreed with Sheldon about the need to emphasize human factors in management, but placed greater stress on the need to develop a science of cooperation. Follett's "Law of the Situation" sought to bridge the gap between an ideal of scientific management and the unilateral position that it seemed to involve in practice. In effect she was proposing the same collaboration between leaders and subordinates that was usually to be found between leaders of the same rank.

These 14 essays covering a wide range of subjects of great current interest reflect the continuous evolution of the author's thought from 1951 to 1961. Range and flexibility characterize Mr. Gerschenkron's dynamic approach to Europe's industrial history. Connecting evolution in individual countries with their degree of economic backwardness, he presents the industrialization of the continent as a "case of unity in diversity," thus offering a cogent alternative, supported by case studies, to the traditional view of industrialization as monotonous repetition of the same process from country to country. Brought together for the first time, these essays were originally published in specialized periodicals in the United States and abroad.

This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.

Peter Senge, founder and director of the Society for Organisational Learning and senior lecturer at MIT, has found the means of creating a 'learning organisation'. In "The Fifth Discipline", he draws the blueprints for an organisation where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nutured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are contually learning together. "The Fifth Discipline" fuses these features together into a coherent body of theory and practice, making the whole of an organisation more effective than the sum of its parts. Mastering the disciplines will: reignite the spark of learning, driven by people focused on what truly matters to them; bridge teamwork into macro-creativity; free you from confining assumptions and mind-sets; teach you to see the forest and the trees; and end the struggle between work and family time. "The Fifth Discipline" is a remarkable book that draws on science, spiritual values, psychology, the cutting edge of management thought and Senge's work with leading companies which employ Fifth Discipline methods. Reading it provides a searching personal experience and a dramatic professional shift of mind.

Foundations of Economic Analysis is a book by Paul A. Samuelson published in 1947 (Enlarged ed., 1983). It sought to demonstrate a common mathematical structure underlying multiple branches of economics from two basic principles: optimizing behavior of agents and stability of equilibrium as to economic systems (such as markets or economies). Among other contributions, it advanced the theory of index numbers and generalized welfare economics. It is especially known for definitively stating and formalizing qualitative and quantitative versions of the "comparative statics" method for calculating how a change in any parameter (say, a change in tax rates) affects an economic system. One of its key insights about comparative statics, called the correspondence principle, states that stability of equilibrium implies testable predictions about how the equilibrium changes when parameters are changed. (Source: Wikipedia)

In this classic about economics, freedom, and the relationship between the two, Milton and Rose Friedman explain how our freedom has been eroded and our prosperity undermined through the explosion of laws, regulations, agencies, and spending in Washington, and how good intentions often produce deplorable results when government is the middleman. The Friedmans also provide remedies for these ills--they tell us what to do in order to expand our freedom and promote prosperity.

Most of Barnard's career was spent in executive practice. A Mount Hermon and Harvard education, cut off short of the bachelor's degree, was followed by nearly forty years in the American Telephone & Telegraph Company. His career began in the Statistical Department, took him to technical expertness in the economics of rates and administrative experience in the management of commercial operations, and culminated in the presidency of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company. He was not directly involved in the Western Electric experiments conducted chiefly at the Hawthorne plant in Cicero, but his association with Elton Mayo and the latter's colleagues at the Harvard Business School had an important bearing on his most original ideas. Barnard's executive experience at AT&T was paralleled and followed by a career in public service unusual in his own time and hardly routine today. He was at various times president of the United Services Organization (the USO of World War II), head of the General Education Board and later president of the Rockefeller Foundation (after Raymond Fosdick and before Dean Rusk), chairman of the National Science Foundation, an assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, a consultant to the American representative in the United Nations Atomic Energy Committee, to name only some of his public interests. He was a director of a number of companies, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a lover of music and a founder of the Bach Society of New Jersey.

Superb nontechnical introduction to game theory and related disciplines, primarily as applied to the social sciences. Clear, comprehensive coverage of utility theory, 2-person zero-sum games, 2-person non-zero-sum games, n-person games, individual and group decision-making, much more. Appendixes. Bibliography. Graphs and figures.

Fayol was one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management, having proposed that there are five primary functions of management: (1) planning, (2) organizing, (3) commanding, (4) coordinating, and (5) controlling (Fayol, 1949, 1987). Controlling is described in the sense that a manager must receive feedback on a process in order to make necessary adjustments. Fayol's work has stood the test of time and has been shown to be relevant and appropriate to contemporary management. Many of today’s management texts including Daft (2005) have reduced the five functions to four: (1) planning, (2) organizing, (3) leading, and (4) controlling. Daft's text is organized around Fayol's four functions. [Source: Wikipedia]

In 1936, Keynes published the most provocative book written by any economist of his generation. Arguments about the book continued until his death in 1946, and still continue today. This new edition, published 70 years after the original, features a new introduction by Paul Krugman, which discusses the significance and continued relevance of The General Theory. '"The General Theory" is nothing less than an epic journey out of intellectual darkness. That, as much as its continuing relevance to economic policy, is what makes it a book for the ages. Read it, and marvel.' - From the introduction by Paul Krugman.

Friedman and Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, published in 1963, stands as one of the most influential economics books of the twentieth century. A landmark achievement, the book marshaled massive historical data and sharp analytics to support the claim that monetary policy--steady control of the money supply--matters profoundly in the management of the nation's economy, especially in navigating serious economic fluctuations. The chapter entitled "The Great Contraction, 1929-33" addressed the central economic event of the century, the Great Depression. Published as a stand-alone paperback in 1965, The Great Contraction, 1929-1933 argued that the Federal Reserve could have stemmed the severity of the Depression, but failed to exercise its role of managing the monetary system and ameliorating banking panics. The book served as a clarion call to the monetarist school of thought by emphasizing the importance of the money supply in the functioning of the economy--a concept that has come to inform the actions of central banks worldwide.

This work examines the 'gold-rush fantasy' in American psychology and describes its dire consequences. The Florida land boom, the operations of Insull, Kreuger and Hatry, and the Shandoah Corporation all come together in Galbraith's study of concerted human greed and folly. Reviewing Galbraith's classic examination of the 1929 financial collapse, The Atlantic Monthly said, "Economic writings are seldom notable for their entertainment value, but this book is. Galbraith's prose has grace and wit, and he distills a good deal of sardonic fun from the whopping errors of the nation's oracles and the wondrous antics of the financial community."

At the time of his death in 1950, Joseph Schumpeter was working on his monumental "History of Economic Analysis" . Unprecedented in scope, the book was to provide a complete history of economic theory from Ancient Greece to the end of World War II. A major contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics, "History of Economic Analysis" rapidly gained a reputation as a unique and classic work. Topics addressed include the techniques of economic analysis, contemporaneous developments in other sciences and the sociology of economics. This inclusiveness extends to the periods and individuals who figure in the book. As well as dealing with all of the major economists from Adam Smith to Maynard Keynes, the book considers the economic writings of Plato and Aristotle, of the Medieval Scholastics and of the major European economists. Throughout, Schumpeter perceived economics as a human science.

"A History of Interest Rates" presents a very readable account of interest rate trends and lending practices over four millennia of economic history. Despite the paucity of data prior to the Industrial Revolution, authors Homer and Sylla provide a highly detailed analysis of money markets and borrowing practices in major economies. Underlying the analysis is their assertion that "the free market long-term rates of interest for any industrial nation, properly charted, provide a sort of fever chart of the economic and political health of that nation." Given the enormous volatility of rates in the 20th century, this implies we're living in age of political and economic excesses that are reflected in massive interest rate swings. Gain more insight into this assertion by ordering a copy of this book today.

The History of the Standard Oil Company is a book written by journalist Ida Tarbell in 1904. It was an exposé of the Standard Oil Company, run at that time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in America's history. Originally serialized in 19 parts in McClure's magazine, the book was a seminal example of muckraking, and inspired many other journalists to write about trusts, large businesses that (in the absence of strong antitrust law in the 19th century) attempted to gain monopolies in various industries. The History of the Standard Oil Company was credited with hastening the breakup of Standard Oil, which came about in 1911. [Source: Wikipedia]

Dale Carnegie was a highly successful public speaker and author of books on public speaking and confidence development. How to Win Friends and Influence People provides practical advice on the universal challenges of face-to-face communication. As the familiarity of the title proves, the book has had a great impact. The first edition had a print run of a mere 5,000, but the book has since sold over 15 million copies. Carnegie holds it essential to handle people effecticvely, and to make them like you to ensure your own success. His book is littered with illustrative anecdotes from lives of the famous--Clark Gable, Marconi, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mary Pickford--and the not so famous. Carnegie presented the fundamental techniques in handling people: don't criticize, condemn, or complain; give honest and sincere appreciation; arouse in the other person an eager want. He added advice on other ways to make people like you: become genuinely interested in other people; smile; remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most imporatnt sound in any language; be a good listener; encourage others to talk about themselves; talk in term's of the other person's interests; make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely. [Source: Business: the Ultimate Resource, 2nd, ed., 2006]

The author was part of the team conducting the Hawthorne Studies at Western Electric's Chicago plant between 1927 and 1932, early studies into motivation in the workplace. The book shows the important link between workforce morale and organizational performance, and paved the way for policies and management theories based on teamwork and effective communicatiion. [Source: Business: the Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed. 2006, p.1099]

"What are your assumptions (implicit as well as explicit) about the most effective way to manage people?" So began Douglas McGregor in this 1960 management classic. It was a seemingly simple question he asked, yet it led to a fundamental revolution in management. Today, with the rise of the global economy, the information revolution, and the growth of knowledge-driven work, McGregor's simple but provocative question continues to resonate-perhaps more powerfully than ever before. Heralded as one of the most important pieces of management literature ever written, a touchstone for scholars and a handbook for practitioners, The Human Side of Enterprisecontinues to receive the highest accolades nearly half a century after its initial publication. Influencing such major management gurus such as Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, McGregor's revolutionary Theory Y-which contends that individuals are self-motivated and self-directed-and Theory X-in which employees must be commanded and controlled-has been widely taught in business schools, industrial relations schools, psychology departments, and professional development seminars for over four decades.

Originally published in 1961, The Ideologies of Taxation is a classic of taxation—a long-unavailable volume that remains uniquely applicable today. Louis Eisenstein starts from the idea that the tax system in a democracy is shaped by competing factions, each seeking to minimize its burden. Because few people are convinced by appeals to self-interest, factions must give reasons, which are skillfully elaborated into systems of belief or ideologies. Eisenstein’s aim is to examine (and debunk) three major ideologies used to justify various reforms of the tax system. The ideology of ability holds that taxes should be apportioned based on ability to pay and that this is properly measured by income or wealth. The ideology of deterrents is concerned with high taxes on private enterprise—low and flat taxes are desired lest the wealthy reduce their work efforts and savings. The ideology of equity is focused on equal treatment of similarly situated individuals. Eisenstein shows, with sharp wit and an instinct for the jugular, how each of these ideologies is plagued with contradictions, incompleteness, and, in some cases, self-serving claims.

A "New York Times" Bestseller for over three years To discover the secrets of the art of management, Peters and Waterman studied more than 43 successful American companies. The companies specialized in a number of areas: consumer goods, high technology, and services. What he discovered was that regardless of how different each company was, they shared eight basic principles of management that anyone can use on their way to success. Here they are, amply illustrated with anecdotes and examples from the experiences of the best-run companies in the world.

Industrial dynamics nowadays is the study of: innovation, as an economic phenomenon that transforms industries in an endogenous manner. It is at the core of industrial dynamics approaches and at the same time is one of the key challenges for a growing part of the scientific community. The economic analysis captures and measures regularities of the complex processes of industry evolution. The modelling of industrial dynamics, supported by empirical evidence, allows for the existence of heterogeneity in the characteristics of firms within an industry in terms of size, entry/exit, performance, innovation strategies, etc.
The industrial dynamics approaches are uncovering new evidence about how firms compete and how competition should operate. That is in sharp contrast with the results of more basic industrial organization studies.Originally, industrial dynamics encompassed the study of the different variables characterizing industries (such as entry/exit, penetration-rate, innovation rate, R&D expenses, number of patents), and their comparison from one period to another. Though these initial developments included important elements related to the quantitative functioning of industries, it is nowadays largely accepted that the early contributions often neglected the genuine determinants of the evolution of innovative industries. Industrial Dynamics (1961) was the first book Forrester wrote using System Dynamics to analyze industrial business cycles. [Source: Wikipedia]

Leavitt's views on the importance of marketing are highly regarded. His article "Marketing Myopia" (reprinted in the book) was one of the most popular Harvard Business Review articles ever published. Historical forces encouraged the belief that low-cost production was the key to success, but this inevitably leads to narrow perspectives. In the author's view, companies must broaden their view of the nature of their business, and should be marketing-led rather than production-led. The emphasis is on creating customer-creating value satisfactions. There is no such thing as a growth indusrtry: success comes from being perceptive enough to spot where future growth may lie. Companies fail because they assume continued growth, believe that a product cannot be improved, and concentrate on improved production techniques to deliver lower costs. Mass-production industries aim to produce all they can and maketing gets neglected. [Source: Business: The Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed.]

First published in 1776, the year in which the American Revolution officially began, Smith's "Wealth of Nations" sparked a revolution of its own. In it Smith analyzes the major elements of political economy, from market pricing and the division of labour to monetary, tax, trade and other government policies that affect economic behaviour. Throughout he offers seminal arguments for free trade, free markets and limited government. Criticizing mercantilists who sought to use the state to increase their nations' supply of precious metals, Smith points out that a nation's wealth should be measured by the well-being of its people. Prosperity in turn requires voluntary exchange of goods in a peaceful, well-ordered market. How to establish and maintain such markets? For Smith the answer lay in man's social instincts, which government may encourage by upholding social standards of decency, honesty and virtue, but which government undermines when it unduly interferes with the intrinsically private functions of production and exchange. Social and economic order arise from the natural desires to better one's (and one's family's) lot and to gain the praise and avoid the censure of one's neighbours and business associates. Individuals behave decently and honestly because it gives them a clear conscience as well as the good reputation necessary for public approbation and sustained, profitable business relations.

First published in 1972, "Inside the Yield Book underwent more than twenty-five printings and remains a standard among bond market professionals. Used copies sell for more than $100 online. This new edition brings the still-relevant classic back into print with a new introduction by coauthor Martin L. Leibowitz, now chief investment officer at TIAA-CREF, and a new foreword by Henry Kaufman, former vice chairman of Salomon Brothers and one of the financial community's most-successful and most-respected figures. "Inside the Yield Book takes the bond investor behind the scenes and reveals in nontechnical terms the precise nature of bond yields and the ways in which they're often misunderstood and misused. It corrects many misconceptions about bond prices and yields as calculated in the standard Yield Book, and it provides a set of tools to aid in bond investment strategy that have made it the standard reference on bond math within the field of fixed income.

The best book on investing ever written, this classic work offers sound and safe principles for investing - principles that have worked for more than the half century since the first edition was published. This revised edition features a new introduction, appendix and chapter updates. Since its original publication in 1949, Benjamin Graham's book has remained the most respected guide to investing, due to his timeless philosophy of 'value investing', which helps protect investors against areas of possible substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies with which they will be comfortable down the road.

The Dividend Discount Model is also known as the "Gordon model" named after professor Myron J. Gordon who popularized the model. Professor Gordon wrote about the model in a book he authored in 1962 titled The Investment, Financing and Valuation of the Corporation. Since then the model has appeared in virtually every investments textbook. In his book titled Investment Valuation, Aswath Damodaran, a professor at New York University states: "In the long term, undervalued (overvalued) stocks from the dividend discount model outperform (underperform) the market index on a risk-adjusted basis." Although no investment model works for all stocks all of the time, the dividend discount model has proven to be a reliable way of selecting stocks that on average will perform relatively well on a long-term basis. It should be among the tools that investors use to select at least some of the stocks in their portfolio." [Source: David Templeton, Disciplined Investing Blog]

In this timely and prescient update of his celebrated 2000 bestseller, Robert Shiller returns to the topic that gained him international fame: market volatility. Having predicted the stock market collapse that began just one month after the first edition was published, he now expands the book to cover other markets that have become volatile, particularly the recently red-hot housing market. He includes a full chapter on domestic and international housing prices in historical perspective. Shiller amasses impressive evidence to support his argument that the recent housing market boom bears many similarities to the stock market bubble of the late 1990s, and may eventually be followed by declining home prices for years to come. After stocks plummeted when the bubble burst in 2000, investors moved their money into housing. This precipitated the inflated real estate prices not only in America but around the world, Shiller maintains. Hence, irrational exuberance did not disappear—it merely reappeared in other settings. Building on the original edition, Shiller draws out the psychological origins of volatility in financial markets, this time folding real estate into his analysis. He broadens the evidence that investing in capital markets of all kinds in the modern free-market economy is inherently unstable—subject to the profoundly human influences captured in Alan Greenspan’s now-famous phrase, “irrational exuberance.” As was true of its predecessor, the second edition of Irrational Exuberance is destined to be widely read, discussed, and debated.

Juran, like W. Edwards Deming, was one of the key figures in the quality revolution. In this book he stresses that the human aspect of quality management is as important as statistical control. The book underscores the contribution that quality teams and empowerment give to the quality process. [Source: Business: the Ultimate Resource, 2nd. ed., 2006]

Warren Bennis is an academic and regular presidential adviser who brought leadership to a new mass audience. He is regarded as one of the most important contemporary thinkers. Burt Nanus is the founder and director of the Center of Futures Research at the University of Southern California. In this book, the authors use an eclectic selection of U.S. leaders to offer the readers key lessons on how to become successful. Their message is that leadership is open to all. Leaders commit people to action and convert followers into leaders. They are usually ordinary people rather than particularly charismatic, as leadership is all-encompassing and open to all. Successful leaders also have a vision that other people believe in, and communicate it effectively. Instead of being individual problem solvers, they achieve greatness through working with groups. Devising and maintaining an atmosphere in which others can succeed is the leader's creative act. [Source: Business: The Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed., 2006]

In his book Leadership, Burns makes an important contribution to management literature by refocusing interest on the nature of leadership. He brings practical insights from both business and politcics and has used them to identify two key strands--transactional and transformational leadership. Burns believes we know too much about our leaders, but too little about leadership. It is a structure for action. It is not the preserve of the few or the tyranny of the masses. Burns identifies two vital strands of leadership--transformational and transactional leadership. Transactionl leadership is built on reciprocity--the relationship between the leader and his or her followers devlops from the exchange of some reward. The secret of effective leadership appears to lie in combining the two elements so that targets, results, and procedures are developed and shared. [Source: Business: The Ultimate Resource, 2nd. ed, 2006]

Much of what we consider modern economics is the work of British journalist and economist Walter Bagehot, one of the first editors of the influential newspaper The Economist and an early proponent of business cycles. Here, he develops his theory of central banking, much of which continues to impact financial thinking today. First published in 1873, Lombard Street explores the history of London's Lombard Street, from how it came to be the traditional home of banks and moneylenders to how the value of money was determined by the institutions there. Joint stocks, private banking, and the regulation of the banking reserve: Bagehot's discussion of these fundamental economic issues makes this a vital resource for anyone wishing to understand financial history. WALTER BAGEHOT (1826-1877) also wrote The English Constitution (1867), Physics and Politics (1872), and The Postulates of English Political Economy (1885), among other works.

The Hawthorne studies were a series of human relations experiments conducted at the Hawthorne Works plant of the Western Electric Company in Chicago, Illinois, from 1924 to 1933. Major topics included employee productivity, satisfaction, motivation, and work group dynamics. The main findings of the Hawthorne studies as seen by the original researchers can be summarized as follows: (1) Human behavior in the workplace is multiply determined; direct cause-and-effect relationships rarely exist. (2) Work groups will develop norms, and these norms serve to mediate individual needs and the work setting. (3) A social structure exists in informal workgroups and is influenced by prestige and power associated with the job. (4) Employee satisfaction is multiply determined and perhaps best addressed by an attentive supervisor willing to listen to and understand the unique needs of each worker. (5) Resistance to change can be decreased through employee participation.. [Source: International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies, 2007]

Manias, Panics and Crashes, fifth edition, is a scholarly and entertaining account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. Covering such topics as the history and anatomy of crises, speculative manias, and the lender of last resort, this book has been hailed as 'a true classic...both timely and timeless.' In this new, updated Fifth Edition, Kindleberger and Aliber expand upon the ideas presented in the previous edition, and include two new chapters on the real estate price bubble that ocurred in Norway, Sweden and Finland at the end of the 1980s, and the three asset price bubbles that occurred between 1985 and 2000 in Japan and other Asian countries. Selected as one of the best investment books of all time by the Financial Times, Manias, Panics and Crashes puts the turbulence of the financial world in perspective.

Since its publication in 1983, The Marketing Imagination has been widely praised as the classic, all-inclusive "Levitt on Marketing." Now Theodore Levitt -- renowned as the Harvard Business School's "guru of marketing" -- has newly expanded his original work to recap the developing globalization debate and to respond to his critics. He has also added his famed McKinsey Award-winning essay "Marketing Myopia," and included detailed accounts of how to maximize the product life cycle and achieve the delicate balance between innovation and imitation. As before, this new edition of The Marketing Imagination shows Levitt at his best -- sharp, knowledgeable, erudite, and, yes, as imaginative as ever.

Mathematical Optimization and Economic Theory provides a self-contained introduction to and survey of mathematical programming and control techniques and their applications to static and dynamic problems in economics, respectively. It is distinctive in showing the unity of the various approaches to solving problems of constrained optimization that all stem back directly or indirectly to the method of Lagrange multipliers. In the 30 years since its initial publication, there have been many more applications of these mathematical techniques in economics, as well as some advances in the mathematics of programming and control. Nevertheless, the basic techniques remain the same today as when the book was originally published. Thus, it continues to be useful not only to its original audience of advanced undergraduate and graduate students in economics, but also to mathematicians and other researchers who are interested in learning about the applications of the mathematics of optimization to economics.

The Modern Corporation and Private Property is a book written by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means published in 1932. It explores the evolution of big business through a legal and economic lens, and argues that in the modern world those who legally have ownership over companies have been separated from their control. The second, revised edition was released in 1967. It serves as a foundational text in corporate governance, company law (coporations law) and institutional economics. Berle and Means argued that the structure of company law in the United States in the 1930s enforced the separation of ownership and control because the corporate person formally owns a corporate even while shareholders own shares in the corporate entity and elect corporate directors who control the company's activities. Compared to the traditional notion of property, say over one's laptop or bicycle, the functioning of modern company law “has destroyed the unity that we commonly call property”. This occurred for a number of reasons, foremost being the dispersal of shareholding ownership in big corporations: the typical shareholder is uninterested in the day to day affairs of the company, yet thousands of people like him or her make up the majority of owners throughout the economy. The result is that those who are directly interested in day to day affairs, the management and the directors, have the ability to manage the resources of companies to their own advantage without effective shareholder scrutiny. [Source: Wikipedia]

Herzberg's work has had a lasting influence on human resource management. Concepts such as job enrichment, self-development, and job satisfaction have evloved from his insight that motivation comes from within the individual, rather than from a policy imposed by the company. Employee motivation can be improved through greater emphasis on human relations. Research indicates that motivation at work takes two forms--hygiene factors and motivation factors. Hygiene factors, which cover basic needs at work, include working conditions, benefits, and job security. Motivation factors, which meet uniquely human needs, include achievement, personal development, job satisfaction, and recognition. Improvements in hygiene factors remove the barriers to positive attitudes in the workplace, although hygiene factors alone are not sufficient to provide true motivation to work. Employers should aim to motivate people through job satisfaction, rather than reward or pressure. [Source: Business: the Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed., 2006]

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. is one of the very few figures who undoubtedly changed the world of management. He was also one of the first managers to write an important theoretical book. My Years at General Motors is an account of his remarkable career and the creation of a new organizational form that spawned a host of imitators. The main interest of My Years with General Motors for modern management thinkers lies in how Sloan managed to coordinate the [company's] semi-autonomous divisions with the center and balance flexibility with control. [Source: Business: The Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed., 2006)

Mintzberg is regarded by many as a leading contemporary management thinker, and this book was the first to explore what managers actually do at work. It goes behind the myths and the self-perceptions to describe the day-to-day work of a manager. What managers actually do, how they do it, and why, are fundamental questions. Managers believe they deal with big strategic issues--in reality they move from task to task to task dogged by diversions. Managerial work in general is marked by variety, brevity, and fragmentation. Managers have three key roles [interpersonal, informational, decisional] and the prominence of each role varies in different managerial jobs. [Source: Business: the Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed., 2006]

Twenty years ago, he wrote the bible on corporate strategy. Now, Igor Ansoff returns to meet the challenges of today’s changing economy… The New Corporate Strategy. An indispensable guide to identifying, understanding, and adapting to changes in today’s business environment. Here’s how to set your company’s strategy straight and get the hundred percent effort you need from your people to achieve it. What the experts say about Igor Ansoff and The New Corporate Strategy… "Vintage Ansoff, with the kind of updating and currency one would expect from him." —E. Kirby Warren Professor of Management and Vice Dean, Columbia University "Igor Ansoff is the father of strategic management. Corporate Strategy remains the most elaborate model of strategic planning in the literature." —Henry Mintzberg Bronfman Professor, McGill University "Igor Ansoff has been a pioneer in strategic management for over 20 years. He has written a milestone work." —Robert Boyden Lamb Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Business Strategy

The author was a pioneer of attitude surveys and introduced an attitude scale that is now widely used in business research. The book explains how he used his research tools to identify patterns of participative management and organization that would bring success in an increasingly competitive environment. Renis Likert was a pioneer of attitude surveys and poll design, as well as social research as a whole. According to Likert, there are four types of management style: exploitative and authoritarian; benevolent autocracy; consultative; and participative. Participative management is the best option, as increased participation and individualism is essential to meet increased competition. Participative groups can improve management and performance. The greater the loyalty of a group, the greater the motivation to achieve goals. An organization's style can be linked directly to its performance. The route to understanding managerial performance is improved measurement. [Source: Business: The Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed., 20060

With a new introduction by the authorWarren Bennis's formative years, in the 1930s and '40s, were characterized by severe economic hardship and a world war that showcased the extreme depths and heights to which leaders could drive their followers. Today's environment is similarly chaotic, turbulent, and uncertain. On Becoming a Leader has served for nearly fifteen years as a beacon of insight, delving into the qualities that define leadership, the people who exemplify it, and the strategies that anyone can apply to become an effective leader. This new edition features a provocative introduction on the challenges and opportunities facing leaders today, with additional updates and current references throughout.

For the past two decades, Michael Porter's work has towered over the field of competitive strategy. On Competition, Updated and Expanded Edition brings together more than a dozen of Porter's landmark articles from the Harvard Business Review. Five are new to this edition, including the 2008 update to his classic "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy," as well as new work on health care, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and CEO leadership.

Regarded as one of the most important sociological and business commentaries of modern times, "The Organization Man" developed the first thorough description of the impact of mass organization on American society. During the height of the Eisenhower administration, corporations appeared to provide a blissful answer to postwar life with the marketing of new technologies--television, affordable cars, space travel, fast food--and lifestyles, such as carefully planned suburban communities centered around the nuclear family. William H. Whyte found this phenomenon alarming. As an editor for "Fortune" magazine, Whyte was well placed to observe corporate America; it became clear to him that the American belief in the perfectibility of society was shifting from one of individual initiative to one that could be achieved at the expense of the individual. With its clear analysis of contemporary working and living arrangements, "The Organization Man" rapidly achieved bestseller status.

In this third edition of his classic book first published in 1985, Edgar Schein shows how to transform the abstract concept of culture into a practical tool that managers and students can use to understand the dynamics of organizations and change. Organizational pioneer Schein updates his influential understanding of culture--what it is, how it is created, how it evolves, and how it can be changed. Focusing on today's business realities, Schein draws on a wide range of contemporary research to redefine culture, offers new information on the topic of occupational cultures, and demonstrates the crucial role leaders play in successfully applying the principles of culture to achieve organizational goals. He also tackles the complex question of how an existing culture can be changed--one of the toughest challenges of leadership. The result is a vital resource for understanding and practicing organizational effectiveness.

"Organizational Learning II" expands and updates the ideas and concepts of the authors' ground- breaking first book. With new examples and the most up-to-date information on the technical aspects of organizational and management theory, Argyris and Schon demonstrate how the research and practice of organizational learning can be incorporated in today's business environment. Features chapters focused around the Introduction to Organizational Learning; Defensive Reasoning And The Theoretical Framework That Explains It; Inquiry-Enhancing Intervention and Its Theoretical Basis; and Strengths and Weaknesses Of Consultation and Research In The Field Of Organizational Learning.

This book is regarded as a classic of literature on quality management. It reflects Deming's experience in introducing quality to Japan, and its goal was to transform the style of U.S. management. Deming is regarded as the leading figure on quality and this book sets out the methods that taught industry the power of quality. Deming argues that profit comes from repeat customers--and they respond to good quality. Statistical quality control produces spectacular results, so senior managers must take charge of quality, and quality training should begin at the top of the organization. Quality is a way of living, Deming says: it is not the preserve of the few but the responsibility of all. He argued that factory workers already understood the imporatnce of quality but were stymied by managers focused on increasing productivity regardless of quality. Japanese culture is uniquely receptive to the quality message. [Source: Business: The Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed., 2006]

Parkinson's Law states that 'work expands to fill the time available'. While strenuously denied by management consultants, bureaucrats and efficiency experts, the law is borne out by disinterested observation of any organization. The book goes far beyond its famous theorem, though. The author goes on to explain how to meet the most important people at a social gathering and why, as a matter of mathematical certainty, the time spent debating an issue is inversely proportional to its objective importance. Justly famous for more than forty years, Parkinson's Law is at once a bracingly cynical primer on the reality of human organization, and an innoculation against the wilful optimism to which we as a species are prone.

A classic since its publication in 1954, "The Practice of Management" was the first book to look at management as a whole and being a manager as a separate responsibility. "The Practice of Management" created the discipline of modern management practices. Readable, fundamental, and basic, it remains an essential book for students, aspiring managers, and seasoned professionals.

British economist Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) was one of the most prominent thinkers of his age on the philosophy of finance, and this, considered his greatest work, was for years the standard text on the subject. First published in 1890, the 1920 eighth edition serves as an excellent primer on such topics as: . basic economic laws, the purpose of economic studies, fundamental concepts including wealth, production, consumption, labor, income, capital, and others, understanding consumer demand, an introduction to market studies, and much more.

At the time The Principles of Scientific Management was published, "business management as a discrete and identifiable activity had attracted little attention" as Lyndall Urwick, the British Champion of scientific management, said. The book put management on the map, and its influence on working methods and managerial attitudes for most of the 20th century, especially in mass-production industries, was enormous. Taylor's principles have been alternately reviled, rejected, and rediscovered. They remain undeniably significant even today. Frederick Winslow Taylor was a U.S. engineer and inventor, whose fame rests chiefly on this book. He shares with Henry Ford the dubious distinction of founding an "-ism." Taylorism is the practice of the principles of scientific management, which emerged from Taylor's work at the Midvale steel workd. It involves rigorous measurement of work processes, total objectivity in the assessment of which methods work best, and the consequent mechanization of work and elimination of the human element. The objective standards arrived at, however, are as binding on managers, who have to enforce them, as on the workers who have to meet them. Like the assembly line, scientific management imposes its discipline on everyone. To most members of the humanistic school of management it is the enemy. [Source: Business: The Ultimate Resource, 2nd, ed., 2006)

Updated with a new chapter that draws on behavioural finance, the field that studies the psychology of investment decisions, here is the best-selling, authoritative and gimmick-free guide to investing. Burton Malkiel evaluates the full range of investment opportunities, from stocks, bonds and money markets to insurance, home ownership and tangible assets such as gold or collectibles. This edition includes new strategies for rearranging your portfolio for retirement, along with the book's classic life-cycle guide to investing, which matches the needs of investors in any age bracket. "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" long ago established itself as the first book to purchase before starting a portfolio and this "entertaining and informative" ("Financial Times") book remains the best investing guide money can buy.

First published in 1923, Reminiscences is a fictionalized account of the life of the trader Jesse Livermore. The book tells the story of Livermore's progression to day trading in the then so-called New England "bucket shops", from there to market speculator, market maker, and market manipulator, and finally to Wall Street where he made and lost his fortune several times over. Along the way, Livermore learns many lessons, which he happily shares with the reader. Despite the book's age, it continues to offer insights into the art of trading and speculation. In Jack Schwage'rs Market Wizards, Reminiscences was quoted as a major source of stock trading learning material for experienced and new traders by many of the traders who Schwager interviewed. [Source: Wikipedia]

The Road to Serfdom is a book written by Friedrich Hayek (recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974) which had significantly shaped the political ideologies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the concepts of ‘Thatcherism’ and of ‘Reagonomics’.[1][2] The Road to Serfdom is among the most influential and popular expositions of classical liberalism and libertarianism. [Source: Wikipedia]

First published in 1934, "Security Analysis" is one of the most influential financial books ever written. Selling more than one million copies through five editions, it has provided generations of investors with the timeless value investing philosophy and techniques of Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd.. As relevant today as when they first appeared nearly 75 years ago, the teachings of Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, have withstood the test of time across a wide diversity of market conditions, countries, and asset classes.. This new sixth edition, based on the classic 1940 version, is enhanced with 200 additional pages of commentary from some of todays leading Wall Street money managers. These masters of value investing explain why the principles and techniques of Graham and Dodd are still highly relevant even in todays vastly different markets. Featuring a foreword by Warren E. Buffett (in which he reveals that he has read the 1940 masterwork at least four times), this new edition of "Security Analysis" will reacquaint you with the foundations of value investing more relevant than ever in the tumultuous 21st century markets.

Leading anthropologist Hall analyzes the many aspects of non-verbal communication and considers the concepts of space and time as tools for transmission of messages. His stimulating work is of interest to both the intelligent general reader and the sophisticated social scientist.

Chandler's book is regarded by many commentators as a masterpiece. It demonstrate's the critical link between a company's strategy and its structure, and played an influential role in the profitable decentralization of many leading corporations. The book's findings remain relevant to new forms of organization such as the federated organization, the multi-company coalition, and the virtual company. According to the author, structure should be driven by strategy--and if it isn't, inefficiency results. The structure of many corporations is driven by market forces: so a recognition that production had to be market-driven led large organizations to change to a looser divisional structure. Increases in scale also lead to business owners having to recruit a new breed of professional manager, as professional management coordinates the flow of product to customers more efficiently than market forces can ever do. A planned economy is important to long-term organizational success.

This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began more than sixty years ago as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, in 1944, when Princeton University Press published "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific inquiry it yielded--game theory--has since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences.

John Burr Williams (1899 - 1989), one of the first economists to view stock prices as determined by “intrinsic value”, is recognised as a founder and developer of fundamental analysis. He is best known for his 1938 text "The Theory of Investment Value", based on his Ph.D. thesis, which was amongst the first to articulate the theory of Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) based valuation, and in particular, dividend based valuation. [Source: Wikipedia]

Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.

Weber is often incorrectly assumed to be an advocate of bureaucracy and a mechanistic society, rather than someone who described bureaucracy--with at least some degree of correctness--as the most efficient and rationalmeans of organization. In fact, as R.J. Kilcullen puts it, "bureaucracy was for Weber what capitalism was for Marx, the admired enemy." No understanding of the way modern organizations work would be complete without a study of this book. Max Weber was a versatile thinker who was a professor of political economy at the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg in Germany. He is best known today as onne of the founding fathers of modern sociology. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization grew out of his philosophical inquiries into the nature of authority and how it is transmitted. Weber identified three types of authority: the "charismatic," based on the individual qualities of a leader and reverence for them among his or her followers; the "traditional," based on custom and usage; and the "rational-legal" based on the rule of objective law. Bureaucracy is the most efficient way of implementing the rule of law. [Source: Business: The Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed., 2006]

Why do some firms perform better than others? What enables a firm to grow and take advantage of its opportunities? Currently much discussion of these questions pivots around the ideas of competencies and capabilities, and the concept of the learning organization or knowledge-creating company. The Theory of the Growth of the Firm is a rich and pioneering work that addresses these questions and laid the foundation for this approach often referred to as the "resource based view of the firm." Edith Penrose analyzes managerial activities and decisions, organizational routines, and knowledge creation within the company and argues that they are critical to the ability of a firm to grow.

In his best-known work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen appropriated Darwin's theory of evolution to analyze the modern industrial system. While industry itself demanded diligence, efficiency, and cooperation, businesspeople - in opposition to engineers and industrialists - were interested only in making money and displaying their wealth in what Veblen coined "conspicuous consumption." Veblen's keen analysis of the psychological bases of American social and economic institutions laid the foundation for the school of institutional economics.

Although it was first published more than thirty-five years ago, Up the Organization continues to top the lists of best business books by groups as diverse as the American Management Association, Strategy + Business (Booz Allen Hamilton), and The Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management. 1-800-CEO-READ ranks Townsend’s bestseller first among eighty books that “every manager must read.” This commemorative edition offers a new generation the benefit of Robert Townsend’s timeless wisdom as well as reflections on his work and life by those who knew and worked with him. This groundbreaking book continues to remind us not to get mired in all those sacred organizational routines that stifle people and strangle both profits and profitability. He shows a way to humanize business and a way to have fun while making it all work better than it ever worked before.

The role of large-scale business enterprise--big business and its managers--during the formative years of modern capitalism (from the 1850s until the 1920s is delineated in this pathmarking book. Alfred Chandler, Jr., the distinguished business historian, sets forth the reasons for the dominance of big business in American transportation, communications, and the central sectors of production and distribution. The managerial revolution, presented here with force and conviction, is the story of how the visible hand of management replaced what Adam Smith called the invisible hand of market forces. Chandler shows that the fundamental shift toward managers running large enterprises exerted a far greater influence in determining size and concentration in American industry than other factors so often cited as critical: the quality of entrepreneurship, the availability of capital, or public policy.

Marvin Bower is the man who did more than anyone else to create the modern management consulting industry. The book gives a valuable insight into the management practices that made McKinsey and Company such a long-lasting success. Marvin Bower's success grew on his principle that building trust with clients is critical to the consulting firm's success. The interests of the client should precede increasing the company's revenues: if you look after the client, the profits look after themselves. He also believed that using values to help shape and guide an organization is extremely important. One of those values is that regard for the individual is based not on title, but on competence, stature, and leadership. Instead of experienced consultants, McKinsey recruited graduate students who could learn how to be good problem solvers and consultants. The company also developed "virtual" project teams, bringing in the best people in the organization wherever they were based in the world. Clear, simple employemnt policies and change through empowerment helped to maintain high professional standards. [Source: Business: The Ultimate Resource, 2nd ed., 2006]