21 Mar 2010

Recommended

Michael Lewis: The Big Short. Inside the Doomsday Machine. London: Penguin Books, 2010 (UK Hardcover Edition)
“‘The Big Short’ manages to give us the truest picture yet of what went wrong on Wall Street – and why. At times, it reads like a morality play, at other times like a modern-day farce. But as with any good play, its value lies in the way it reveals character and motive and explores the cultural context in which the plot unfolds.” Steven Perlstein, The Washington Post

Michael Power: The Audit Society. Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999 (Paperback Edition)
“Michael Power argues that the new demands and expectations of audits live uneasily with their operational capabilities. Not only is the manner in which they produce assurance and accountability open to question but also, by imposing their own values, audits often have unintended and dysfunctional consequences for the audited organization.” Oxford University Press

Karl E. Weick, Kathleen M. Sutcliffe: Managing the Unexpected. Resilient Performance in an Age of  Uncertainty. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2007 (Second Edition)
“Why are some organizations better able than others to maintain function and structure in the face of unanticipated change? Authors Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe answer this question by pointing to (…) emergency rooms in hospitals, flight operations of aircraft carriers, and firefighting units, as models to follow. These organizations have developed ways of acting and styles of learning that enable them to manage the unexpected better than other organizations.” John Wiley & Sons

David Weinberger: Everything is Miscellaneous. The Power of the New Digital Disorder. New York: Henry Holt, 2008 (Paperback Edition)
“In the past, everything had its one place – the physical world demanded it – but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous. (…) In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, [Weinberger] examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children’s teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry.” Amazon.com

Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, Erik A. Roth: Seeing What’s Next. Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2004
“Seeing What’s Next offers a practical, three-part model that helps decision-makers spot the signals of industry change, determine the outcome of competitive battles, and assess whether a firm’s actions will ensure or threaten future success. Through in-depth case studies of industries from aviation to health care, the authors illustrate the predictive power of innovation theory in action.” Harvard Business School Publishing

Nicholas Ostler: Empires of the Word. A Language History of the World. New York: HarperCollins, 2005 (Hardcover Edition)
“Nicholas Ostler does not adopt a narrowly linguistic approach – based on the structure of languages and their evolution – but instead looks at the history of languages, the reasons for their rise and, as a rule, also their fall. While it is a history of languages, it is at the same time a history of the cultures and civilisations from which they sprang. The book concentrates on those languages that have been – in some form or another – globally influential.” Martin Jacques, The Guardian