Book Description
Now in its Sixth Edition, this OB reader continues to both instruct and entertain the current generation of students and professionals about workplace realities.
Going beyond the usual technical/rational analysis of books on organizational behavior, each chapter is a fictionalized account of actual workplace happenings, and involves a continuing cast of characters whom readers come to know. Each account makes a point of its own, or illustrates theoretical material covered in the introductions to parts and sections.
For instance, why would a plant manager call a continuing series of 6:30am meetings about coordination of efforts, and then cancel them after a short while? (He effectively used negative reinforcement to reward the coordination that resulted from imposing the inconvenient meetings – aside from whatever the participants may have discussed.)
The "realness" of this text continues to draw a kind of fan mail from both students and others. As one Vice President of Sales for a nationally known corporation put it: "After 18 years in business life I only wish I had read it much earlier. Your book should be required reading for anyone embarking into any kind of organizational life . . ."
Customer Reviews:
The most inane drivel that I have ever read........2007-08-12
This book is truly the most inane drivel that I have ever read. I am being forced to read it for a class. Unless you must read it at the point of a bayonnet, pass on the opportunity. The authors offer politically-correct socialization, under the guise of an exploration of modern day corporate culture. What else is new? But, this is offered via some of the most poorly-written vignettes that I have ever read. One can only guess that somebody watched a 1960s Doris Day movie, and decided to describe modern corporate culture based on that single viewing. Essentially, the book stereotypes white male "corporate" archetypes as a way of explaining them, and highlighting their many failings, while painting women and minorities as helpless victims. Mercifully, it is writtten in short vignettes, so you can read one, throw up, and read another. Truly awful!
good practical reference.......2007-02-11
This is a great reference for anyone who is first starting out in business or for the seasoned employee or manager who wants to know why crazy, stupid things happen at work. This is an owner's manual for your job, especially if you work for a big company. The book is laid out in a series of small stories or tales. Each tale goes on to describe an event in the life of a fictitious employee and company. The tales will ring true to anyone who has spent time in the trenches. The book then goes on to explain these events from an organizational behaviorists point of view. You will be saying..."ah hah" alot.
speedy delivery - new condition.......2005-09-25
Thank you for a speedy delivery and the nice new condition of the text.
Excellent view of corporate culture.......2001-11-17
Ritti writes an excellent view of corporate culture explaining the "why" decisions are made and "why" people act as they do in corporate America. It really helps to put the discipline of change management into perspective. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in organizational behavior (American companies only). My only criticism is that there is no short and simple explanation for each of the behaviors. The reader is forced to read the entire chapter and all of the short stories in order to get an idea as to what behavior is being described.
Excellent view of coporate culture.......2001-11-17
Ritti writes an excellent view of corporate culture explaining the "why" decisions are made and "why" people act as they do in corporate America. It really helps to put the discipline of change management into perspective. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in organizational behavior (American companies only). My only criticism is that there is no short and simple explanation for each of the behaviors. The reader is forced to read the entire chapter and all of the short stories in order to get an idea as to what behavior is being described.
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Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know (Wiley Series in Management)
Richard R. Ritti , and
G. Ray Funkhouser
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0471817899 |
Customer Reviews:
Organizational Politics.......2004-02-11
This book was recommended by an organizational behavior professor who taught during my MBA. This book is extremely readable - a series of short stories with analysis - and also extremely relevant - the lessons are timeless. It is a perfect read for anyone who is cynical about workplace politics or for newbies who are worried that they might not quite "get it" yet.
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Ritti: A Teacher'S Manual to the Ropes to Skip & the Ropes to Know Etc (Pr Only) 3ed
RR RITTI
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons Inc
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Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: 0471624055 |
Book Description
This book introduces the reader to terms and concepts that are necessary to understand OB and their application to modern organizations. It also offers sufficient grounding in the field that enables the reader to read scholarly publications such as HR, CMR, and AMJ. This edition features new discussions on Virtual Teams and Virtual Organizations, and will emphasize the growing role and influence on technology.
Customer Reviews:
Terrible book........2006-05-25
If you want to learn management, this book is not the way to go. Writing style is boring and the sections in each chapter are non-cohesive. After reading, you are like so what?
Book Description
A wake-up call for CEOs and product managers alike, Delano debunks overwrought strategic planning and loads your bases for the chance at a brand slam hit out of the marketing ballpark. Case studies and personal experience round out this remarkable call to action.
Customer Reviews:
Do you want to create "wow" to your customers?.......2002-03-24
Brand is an important and valuable asset for every company, thus creating a unique image for your brand and differentiating from your competitors are important issues in brand management. This book illustrated with examples the criteria, requirements and tools to build a brand successfully.
This book is easy to read and with suitable examples to help you understand more about the concepts. I found the most useful part is the ¡§brand slam tools¡¨ in which tools and guidelines are introduced for building a brand successfully.
If you want to start to launch a brand, read this book before doing so, I believe that this book helps you a lot.
Frank Delano's New Book "Brand Slam".......2001-06-30
"You're in for a stimulating read!"
Thought provoking.......2001-06-28
This is a book that is very thought provoking but, like all good business books, simple in its message. It all comes down to a great idea, a brand slam. The author talks about marketing by committees, strategic plans and how they are frequently at the heart of brand development. The plan comes first and everything follows from there. He argues that this is totally the wrong approach and his reasoning certainly makes sense. What must come first is THE BIG IDEA. This could be a product idea, an advertising idea, a slogan idea and so on. This forms the core to be able to move forward. If a strategic plan is needed then it follows from the idea.
Brand Slam is divided into section that show how a brand slam can happen in different areas. For example, the slogans section show how the use of different words can contribute towards a brand slam slogan. The advertising section considers how brand slam ads are memorable and, ultimately, more effective than poor advertising. The sections are illustrated with a wealth of examples, some of which have their own dedicated section that goes into detail about how a brand slam business was built. One criticism is that the examples are primarily US brands or international brands in the US and the slogans and advertising may be unknown to an audience outside. However, this does not hide the lessons that are being communicated. The examples still work though.
Brand slam is inspirational and encourages the reader to think of other relevant examples and why they work. Each section concludes with a set of lessons to be learned. These can be applied to your own company or brand and help you towards your own brand slam.
Frank Delano's New Book "Brand Slam".......2001-06-07
"This volume could not be more timely!"
Brand Slam by Frank Delano.......2001-06-07
"A quick glance says it is great!"
Book Description
From 1840 to 1960 the profoundest claim of Americans who fought the institution of segregation was that the government had no business sorting citizens by the color of their skin. During these years the moral and political attractiveness of the antidiscrimination principle made it the ultimate legal objective of the American civil rights movement. Yet, in the contemporary debate over the politics and constitutional law of race, the vital theme of antidiscrimination has been largely suppressed. Thus a strong line of argument laying down one theoretical basis for the constitutional protection of civil rights has been lost.
Andrew Kull provides us with the previously unwritten history of the color-blind idea. From the arguments of Wendell Phillips and the Garrisonian abolitionists, through the framing of the Fourteenth Amendment and Justice Harlan's famous dissent in Plessy, civil rights advocates have consistently attempted to locate the antidiscrimination principle in the Constitution. The real alternative, embraced by the Supreme Court in 1896, was a constitutional guarantee of reasonable classification. The government, it said, had the power to classify persons by race so long as it acted reasonably; the judiciary would decide what was reasonable.
In our own time, in Brown v. Board of Education and the decisions that followed, the Court nearly avowed the rule of color blindness that civil rights lawyers continued to assert; instead, it veered off for political and tactical reasons, deciding racial cases without stating constitutional principle. The impoverishment of the antidiscrimination theme in the Court's decision prefigured the affirmative action shift in the civil rights agenda. The social upheaval of the 1960s put the color-blind Constitution out of reach for a quartercentury or more; but for the hard choices still to be made in racial policy, the colorblind tradition of civil rights retains both historical and practical significance.
Book Description
Small is Beautiful is the perfect antidote to the economics of globalization. As relevant today as when it was first published, this is a landmark set of essays on humanistic economics. This 25th anniversary edition brings Schumacher's ideas into focus for the end-of-the-century by adding commentaries by contemporary thinkers who have been influenced by Schumacher. They analyze the impact of his philosophy on current political and economic thought. Small is Beautiful is the classic of common-sense economics upon which many recent trends in our society are founded. This is economics from the heart rather than from just the bottom line.
Customer Reviews:
Classic.......2007-06-27
A bit outdated but given that it was written in the 70s this book is very inspiring ans still very applicable (if not even more applicable today than in the past). In any event it is truly a classic in ecological economics. There are certainly many critics of this book but its significance is immense. I must say that we economists really need to work on our writing abilities because not all of the works are easy to read for non-economist audience. Yet Schumacher manages just that.
Small IS Beautiful!.......2007-01-26
I've never been all that interested in macroeconomics, but intrigued by the title, I gave Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher a try. It was a long read, but a good one, and I culled interesting insights from every chapter. Schumacher's visionary simplicity with the largest elements of society were radical 30 years ago, but incredibly relevant, then and today.
A fair portion of the book is spent emphasizing the way our economy is unsustainable and how quickly we use up our natural resources. Schumacher also explains how little consideration was put towards pollution until it was too late. In the folksy way of a 60s radical, he speaks about the importance of the land in a way that is neither hollow nor flippant, but full of wisdom and grace.
"The whole point is to determine what constitutes progress." What is progress? What should aid to the third world look like? These questions are where Schumacher particularly shines, explaining a need for intermediate technologies to improve the quality of life for everyone and not just investments which only improve the quality of life for the highest classes and leave the lower ones even more destitute.
"No system or machinery or economic doctrine or theory stands on its own feet: it is invariably built on a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon man's basic outlook on life, its meaning and its purpose. I have talked about the religion of economics, the idol worship of material possessions, of consumption and the so-called standard of living, and the fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact that `what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us.'" wrote Schumacher. What do our economic values say about us?
Let's Get Small.......2006-01-23
This is one of the radical books of the '60s --read: life-changing/ world/ changing. About a million people love this book (I've told you a thousand times to stop exaggerating), and a zillion have reviewed it. I merely refer to a little-known interview in the Christian Century magazine with E.F. Schumacher regarding the chapter in this book, "Buddhist Economics." The author revealed that is was to be called "Catholic Economics," but the anti-Catholic (and anti-ethnic) press of the time was so successful and relentless in its propaganda that he changed the chapter's title.
In another interview he told a story of speaking at the Buddhist Naropa Institute, where he tried to relate the book's principles to Buddhist philosophy. "No, we want you to tell us about Christianity," replied the predominantly Asian audience. All of which underscores Chesterton's dictum that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried. For those interested in tracking down the literature, there was also a significant article in the Whole Earth Review called "Who Cut Down the Sacred Tree?" showing that monks and nuns have long observed ecological practices and made use of what is now called appropriate technology. Schumacher took the title of another of his books, "A Guide for the Perplexed" from the Mediaeval Jewish author Moses Maimonides, again demonstrating that it is not the ancients but we moderns (and post-moderns), mad devotees of the myth of progress, who have forgotten that "small is beautiful."
Fantasy Economics.......2005-02-23
I received this book as a gift, and found it unreadable. For example, EFS says cost/benefit analysis "is a procedure by which the higher is reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless is given a price". This is meaningless rhetoric to me. It also assumes that only economics provides a guide to human behavior. Or that all economic analysis is totally rational. Schumacher questioned every assumption of "economic science" using theories from the anarchist tradition. Schumacher claimed neocolonialism is the result of politics, not economic principles. But doesn't class and sectional interests drive politics? His advocacy of a search for inward spiritual space, and a rejection of the real world of politics and economics, makes this book part of the problem and not part of the solution.
The 'Introduction' says Gandhi wanted to use "labor-intensive manufacture and handicrafts" (p.5). Milovan Djilas said it was important for newly liberated countries to use mass production ("The New Class"). The historical record over the past centuries should tell you who was right or wrong. Liberating revolutions result in more production and other benefits for the people; else they're not liberating. Unlimited economic growth overlooks the availability of basic resources and the capacity of the environment. But there's always some natural problem that causes a correction.
This is a very verbose book whose arguments rest on unquestioned assumptions. Since it was published in 1973 Thatcher's regime destroyed Britain's coal industry to make them dependent on imported oil and gas. We've seen what happened after they divided and privatized the railroads. But who benefited from these political decisions?
Part II Chapter 3 notes that western Europe "deliberately destroyed nearly half of their coal industries". But the economy in neocolonialist countries will always suffer to benefit the imperialist ruling country. American was a net petroleum exporter until 1967, and influenced Saudi Arabia and Iran (just like Great Britain did previously). You can also consider the actions of Jimmy Carter against nuclear reactors. France and Japan use nuclear power, they have no oil. Saudi Arabia uses nuclear power so they can profitably sell their oil abroad. Those who criticized this book showed good judgment and wisdom. You can read this book and judge its worth for yourself.
Many important ideas.......2004-01-26
"The whole point is to determine what constitutes progress." Fritz Schumacher published Small is Beautiful in 1973, but the vast majority of his text is still relevant today, if not more so. This book can be read as a response to the Washington Consensus and Chicago school economist perspectives of metric-based laissez faire economics driven by efficiency, often at the expense of class polarization and increasing inequality, that pervade the shallow "common-sense" understandings of amateur economists and the general United States population: "...growth of GNP must be a good thing, irrespective of what has grown and who, if anyone, has benefited." Schumacher recognizes that "...economists, for all their purported objectivity, are the most narrowly ethnocentric of people. ...since their world view is a cultural by-product of industrialism, they automatically endorse the ecological stupidity of industrial man and his love affair with the terrible simplicities of quantification."
Schumacher responds with a broad, big-picture discussion of our economic culture, noting that sustainability is an impossibility when ever growing demands for increased production, "assuming all the time that a man who consumers more is 'better off' than a man who consumes less", expend an environment with finite resources. He notes that lasting peace is threatened by extraordinarily unequal distributions of power and access to resources, "what else could be the result but an intense struggle for oil supplies, even a violent struggle," and echoes Gandhi's disapproval of "dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good." Schumacher criticizes trump card economic judgments, arguing that "society, or a group or an individual within society, may decide to hang on to an activity or asset for non-economic reasons - social, aesthetic, moral, or political," and further noting that the judgment of modern economics is a fragmentary judgment, caring only "whether a thing yields a money profit to those who undertake it or not.... It is a great error to assume, for instance, that the methodology of economics is normally applied to determine whether an activity carried on by a group within society yields profit to society as a whole." The market, he argues, "is the institutionalization of individualism and non-responsibility.... To be relieved of all responsibility except to oneself means of course an enormous simplification of business. We can recognize that it is practical and need not be surprised that it is highly popular among businessmen." Commenting on this culture of self-interest, he quotes Tolstoy: "I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back."
While economics teaches us that "the ideal from the point of view of the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment," Schumacher believes this perspective fails to understand that a persons acts both as a producer and consumer: "If man-as-producer travels first-class or uses a luxurious car, this is called a waste of money; but if the same man in his other incarnation of man-as-consumer does the same, this is called a sign of a high standard of life." Furthermore, "to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."
Schumacher also comments on science and a set of nineteenth century scientific ideas which have become the lenses through which we have learned to interpret the world. He argues for care in selecting the direction of scientific research, since, "as Einstein himself said, 'almost all scientists are economically completely dependent' and 'the number of scientists who possess a sense of social responsibility is so small' that they cannot determine the direction of research."
In Part III, Schumacher explores third-world economic development. He notes the power dynamic inherent in the non-democratic system of free trade as it exists today: "It is a strange phenomenon indeed that the conventional wisdom of present-day economics can do nothing to help the poor. Invariably it proves that only such policies are viable as have in fact the result of making those already rich and powerful, richer and more powerful." He explores models for third world development, focusing on appropriate technology that can avoid creating a dual-economy, which affects the power structure and causes systemic migration: "It is always possible to create small ultra-modern islands in a pre-industrial society. But such islands will then have to be defended, like fortresses, and provisioned, as it were, by helicopter from far away." He argues instead for distribution of development resources to non-capital-intensive human-scale projects that can be maintained by local people, maximizing the level of useful employment rather than productivity per person. He emphasizes that appropriateness can be assessed only through learning local culture and working with and through local people: "As long as we think we know, when in fact we do not, we shall continue to go to the poor and demonstrate to them all the marvelous things they could do if they were already rich." He also warns against crippling dependence on foreign powers for supply or demand: "the role of the poor is to be gap-fillers fin the requirements of the rich," and focuses instead on small-scale development of local focus.
Overall, while I cannot agree with all of Schumacher's assessments, I doubt that "small is beautiful" can be a true universal claim, I question his assumptions of gender roles and his naïveté about realpolitik, and I also feel that his periodic appeal to religious rhetoric and "beauty" somewhat obstructs his message, I do feel that he makes a great many strong points and encourages the reader to question conventional economic wisdom and look for a deeper understanding of the world.
Average customer rating:
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Food Production in Urban Areas: A Study of Urban Agriculture in Accra, Ghana
Kwaku Obosu-Mensah
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
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| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
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ASIN: 0754610292 |
Books:
- The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work
- Theory-Based Treatment Planning for Marriage and Family Therapists: Integrating Theory and Practice
- There's a Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum's Secrets to Business Success
- Thoughts of Chairman Buffett: Thirty Years of Unconventional Wisdom from the Sage of Omaha
- Trouble in Paradise: Globalization and Environmental Crises in Latin America
- True Work: Doing What You Love and Loving What You Do
- Understanding and Preventing Sexual Harassment: The Complete Guide
- Union Organizing and Public Policy: Failure to Secure 1st Contracts
- Using the Strengths Perspective in Social Work Practice: A Positive Approach for the Helping Professions
- When Smart People Fail: Rebuilding Yourself for Success
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