Summer Reading List

Like everyone else, I do a good deal of summer reading on the way to here or there. Or simply waiting for my baby to stop screaming. (Poor GERDy kid!) In addition to the mindless Kindle reading, which I’ll have to list elsewhere simply because I have no idea how to pull off my list from it, I’ve been busy with a bunch of research for a book I’m working on for someone else and some stuff that I’m trying to move off my own plate (finally).

The partial list, in no particular order, after the break.

• Ambler, S. W. & Lines, M. (2011). “Disciplined Agile Delivery : An introduction”. IBM Thought Leadership Papers.

  Always having my hands in managing development projects….

• Drucker, P. F. (1998). Management’s New Paradigms. Forbes, 162(7):152-177.

  Prescient. Although it makes more sense once you’ve read Warren’s stuff.

• Gandolfi, F. (2009). “Executing Downsizing: The Experience of Executioners”. Contemporary Management Research, 5(2), 185-200.

  They really are called “executioners” in the literature. Firing people en masse takes something out of most North American managers.

• Gottfredson, L. S., & Deary, I. J. (2004). “Intelligence Predicts Health and Longevity, but Why?” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(1), 1-4.

  Not sure we got an answer.

• Hackman, J. Richard. “Group Influences on Individuals in Organizations”. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (Vol. 3, 199-). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.

  Really fascinating look at how individuals can move groups, and how groups dominate individuals. Review of literature, mostly.

• Hackman, J. Richard. (1994). “Some players aren’t cut out to be team players”. Harvard Business Review, (November-December), 28-29.

  The idea of work levels and personal level of capability seem to be lacking. He confuses people who are smarter than their bosses with people who do not want to manage.

• Hodson, Randy. (1996). “Dignity in the Workplace Under Participative Management: Alienation and Freedom Revisited”. American Sociological Review, 61(5), 719-738.

  Participative management isn’t all good, as Wilfred Brown found out at Glacier Metal. You have to know what parts to participate, and what parts are managerial authority.

• Hodson, Randy. (2001). “Disorganized, Unilateral, and Participative Organizations: New Insights from the Ethnographic Literature”. Industrial Relations, 40(2), 204-230.

  Really cool look across about 100 different ethnographic studies that they coded with a particular system. It’s really, really fascinating.

• Illia, L., Lurati, F, & La Rocca, A. (2006). “Communication Flow, Channels, Content and Climate in Downsizing. Communication.” Working paper.
• Kraut, R. E., & Lewis, S. H. (1982). “Person perception and self-awareness: Knowledge of influences on one’s own judgments”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(3), 448-460.
• Lansky, M. R. (2009). “Forgiveness as the Working Through of Splitting”. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 29(5), 374-385.

  Always the shame angle.

• Marimuthu, M. (2009). “Corporate Restructuring , Firm Characteristics and Implications on Capital Structure: an Academic View”. International Journal of Business Management, 4(1), 123-131.

  It’s too bad that managers and investors are idiots. We’d all make a whole lot more money if they would let go of the pissing matches.

• Nelson, D. L. & Burke, R. J. (1998). “Lessons Learned [about downsizing]”. Canadian Journal of Administrative Science, 15(4), 372-381.
• Nemeth, C., & Goncalo, J. (2004). “Influence and Persuasion in Small Groups”. The International journal of social psychiatry

  Neat set of findings.

• Nemeth, C., Brown, K., & Rogers, J. (2001). “Devil’s advocate versus authentic dissent: stimulating quantity and quality”. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31(6), 707-720.

  you can’t fake dissent. People sniff it out. You need real disagreers to have things work out for you.

• Orton, J. D. & Weick, K. E. (1990). “Loosely Coupled Systems: A Reconceptualization”. The Academy of Management Review, 15(2), 203-223.
• Osterman, P. (2009). “Recognizing the Value of Middle Management”. Ivey Business Journal, 73(6), 7-

  Middle managers, what we would call Level 3 usually, are vital to knowledge creation and management. They are the pivot point between the abstraction starting at Level 4 and the Real Work that gets done at Level 1. They are the first tri-level manager, someone who has what Jaques called the mutual recognition unit.

• Regan, M. C. (2008). Moral Intuitions and Organizational Culture. Working paper, Georgetown University Law Center.
• Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (1998). “Complex Societies : The Evolutionary Origins of a Crude Superorganism”. Human Nature, 10(3), 253-289.

  So very, very cool.

• Richerson, P. J., Boyd, R. T., & Henrich, J. (2003). “Cultural Evolution of Human Cooperation”. In P. Hammerstein (Ed.), Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation (pp. 357-388). The MIT Press.

  Richerson and Boyd have been hit a lot for hating “memes” but their argument seems to me to be pretty good. If memes were like genes, they would be more “particle-y”. Instead, ideas spread more like waves. Or more like viruses that are constantly mutating.

• Rush, O. (2003). “The Offices of Christ, Lumen Gentium and the People’s Sense of the Faith”. Pacifica, 16(2003), 137-152.
• Shamieh, C. (2011). Systems Engineering for Dummies (IBM Limited Ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing.
• Solnik, C. (2006). “Firms find that breaking up has best practices”. Long Island Business News, March 31 – April 6, 2006, p. 4B.
• Wageman, R., Nunes, D., Burruss, J., & Hackman, J. R. (2008). “Behind the seniors”. People Management Magazine [UK], 2008 January 10, p. 38-41.

  They have a book called Senior Management Teams which is kind of useful. They lack the ability to call out work levels because they are partly Hays people, and Hays would go under if people acknowledged reality about work.