RESPONSE TO A READER REGARDING MY POST ON GREAT BUSINESS BOOKS

by Charles Snow


A reader responded to my post on Great Business Books by asking, Are there any great books on business ethics? Or is that term an oxymoron?

Yes, I've heard business ethics referred to as an oxymoron, along with jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, and British cuisine. But, oxymorons aside, behaving ethically in business is hugely important. Just look at what happened in the U.S. before the financial crisis in 2008 and the Great Recession that followed when some businesspeople behaved unethically, illegally, and immorally -- often at the same time!

Your comment caused me to chat with a colleague who does research on business ethics as well as conduct some armchair research of my own. I learned that "Ethics books have never been well received in the marketplace," according to HarperBusiness Executive Editor Dave Conti. That probably explains why you couldn't think of a "great" business ethics book. Therefore, given your particular objectives, you might try reading one or more of the following books:

1. Dan Ariely, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty (Harper Collins 2012). Ariely is a behavioral economist and is considered to be one of the best experimentalists in the social sciences. This is an evidence-based book that describes how we all cheat and lie -- but only up to a point where we still feel good about ourselves.

2. Linda Trevino and Katherine Nelson, Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk About How to Do It Right (John Wiley & Sons, 2011). These authors, both business school professors, have done a lot of research on codes of ethics. You can learn about the experiences of various organizations that have formulated and used ethical codes.

3. Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing (Harvard Business School Press, 2002). Another business school professor whose book is targeted towards middle managers.

GREAT BUSINESS BOOKS

by Charles Snow

John Jordan, a colleague of mine at Penn State, writes a periodic newsletter called Early Indicators. It’s about the latest techie stuff and trends, and I find it quite interesting. John’s latest newsletter, however, was entitled What Makes a Great Business Book?

In this post, I’d like to summarize John’s ideas on great business books and then conclude with my own. John’s thought process was kicked off when he finished reading Brad Stone’s book on Jeff Bezos and Amazon entitled The Everything Store. Although he enjoyed the book, he concluded that it lacked “greatness.” After making his own list of great business books (shown below), he began to eliminate the categories of business books that, in his opinion, were not worthy of the label “great.” These are:

• “Self-help” books such as Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
• “Patterns of success” books such as Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence or Jim Collins’ Good to Great. (John points out that successful companies today are often unsuccessful companies tomorrow.)
• “Strategy” books such as Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy, Hamel and Prahalad’s Competing for the Future, or Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy. (These seem like “exercises in hindsight” rather than “scientific discovery.”)
• “First-person tales” (too numerous to mention). 

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: WHY YOUR FIRM SHOULD KNOW HOW TO COLLABORATE

by Charles Snow 

Normally, we think of firms competing against one another; however, a growing number of successful companies are working together to find solutions to common challenges. For instance, Innocentive uses a global network of millions of problem solvers to help companies overcome R&D business challenges that they can’t overcome themselves. Several member firms of Blade.org have together developed an innovative computer server application for the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, California. Along with major research universities and the national governments of six countries, IBM is using its “collaboratories” to develop solutions to such complex problems as electricity distribution on the island of Malta and traffic congestion in Moscow, Russia. Lego helps entrepreneurs start their own businesses by providing a toolkit featuring its famous building blocks. My M&M’s web site enables chocolate lovers to design their own candies just as NIKEiD allows sports enthusiasts to design their own shoes.

All of these firms – and many more around the world – are using some form of collaborative innovation to expand and improve their business. In knowledge-intensive industries like biotechnology or computers, the ability to collaborate is a must because the knowledge base required to innovate is complex, growing, and widely diffused. But even in less dynamic industries, collaboration can be useful to firms for a variety of reasons, including lowering the costs of product development, starting new businesses, retaining customers, and building brand equity.

RUNNING THE COUNTRY AS A BUSINESS

By Charles Snow


In his book The (Mis)management of America, Inc., Lawrence G. Hrebiniak uses the metaphor of a large corporation and applies it to the U.S. economy. He examines how top management -- the White House and Congress -- runs the country and artfully describes a "perfect storm" of irresponsible top executives managing a corporation whose customers (U.S. citizens) are  largely disengaged and misinformed. The consequences are potentially catastrophic. Although the book is five years old, its thesis is still valid -- perhaps even more so given the events that have unfolded over the past few years.

From a management perspective, consider how closely the U.S. resembles a large corporation. America, Inc. is a $3.5 trillion business. It is diversified, operating businesses in defense, health care, banking, science, education, and many other industries. It hires people, fires people, has retirement programs, makes money, loses money, and so on. The company called America, Inc. is larger, more diversified, and more powerful than Wal-Mart, IBM, Exxon Mobil or any other company in the world.