The late Sumantra Ghoshal, one of the greatest management theorists of our time, constantly reiterated that the study, practice and application of management theory must be understood in the context of broader economic and social phenomena. He also believed that management's role is to be a force for good: "The manager," he said, "is a responsible and reflective leader."
This is why a posthumous compilation of key articles by Ghoshal tops the list of the latest good books for executives to take along on holiday: Sumantra Ghoshal on Management - A Force for Good, edited by Julian Birkenshaw and Gita Piramal (Financial Times/Prentice Hall, R299).
The book traces the thinking of Ghoshal as an idealist and an innovative and unconventional intellectual. The publication is essentially the best of Ghoshal, with commentaries on his contribution to the practice of management over the past 50 years.
Key articles of his, previously published in the Harvard Business Review, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan Management Review and others, feature particularly his work on building organisational discipline, embedding support and other pieces analysing corporate maladies.
The next book that comes highly recommended as holiday reading is The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle (Wild Dogs, R279). Such has been the impact of online search engine company Google that "to google" is now a verb and millions of people use Google every day, searching for billions of answers and references on the Internet.
The Search was one of the winners of the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Books of the Year. It would be best read with another book which, says Wonder Chabala, manager of Exclusive Books at The Zone in Rosebank, is selling like no other. This is The Google Story by David Vice (Pan Macmillan, R163) - another account of this remarkable company that changed the intellectual compass of a generation.
There is understandable cynicism about management and business books, but once in a while there comes a book or collection of books that explain a lot and are influential in determining current thinking on a subject. Both the Google books are likely to shape the way you perceive innovation and serendipity.
Less conceptually direct, but perhaps the most quaint and intriguing of the recommended list of holiday books, is Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (Penguin SA, R154). If you enjoyed the same author's The Tipping Point, which changed the way we view marketing, networking and influence, then you are likely to devour this one: "An expert sees a $10m sculpture and in a flash realises it is fake. A fireman makes a split-second decision to get out of a blazing building just before it collapses. A speed date suddenly clicks the right person."
The book unpacks the subconscious mind and how it makes spot decisions that turn out to be appropriate. SA managers are bound to have made a few of these snap decisions. But were these truly spur-of-the-moment, or did numerous complex factors lead to the moment of action? Gladwell opens the door to the secret life of the mind and its decisions and prejudices.
He introduces a test designed by Harvard academics Anthony G Greenwald, Mahzarin Banaji and Brian Nosek. These assess our deepest prejudices about people, race, class and gender. If you wish to test yourself on any of these, as you lie on the beach with your laptop, go to www.implicit.harvard.edu and get on with any of the tests to find out just how sexist and racist you really are. The results are likely to be shocking.
Managers in the public sector, farmers, exporters and trade officials have been looking at the latest round of international trade talks in Asia with much hope and trepidation. To cool their nerves they could take in The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli (Wiley, R240), which chronicles how products are sourced, made and recycled in the modern global world economy. This particular T-shirt apparently travels from Texas, where the cotton is planted, nurtured and harvested; to China, where it is sewn by people who earn a fraction of the SA living wage; to the US, where it is sold and retailed. It ends up in Africa in second-hand form.
Reuel Khoza and Mohamed Adam's book The Power of Governance (Pan Macmillan, R154) is relevant to enhancing the performance of state-owned enterprises. The book is about Eskom and its leadership, the relationship with government and the issues of accountability, governance and the social obligation to uplift society. Khoza's next book, Let Africa Lead, is due to hit the shelves in the new year.
