Defining Moments

by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
(Harvard Business School Press)

How should you respond if you are offered an opportunity at work solely because of your race or gender? What should you do if a single parent on your staff is falling behind in his or her work? How do you lead the launch of a product you know will be controversial?

Resolving such dilemmas often requires more than simply following the injunction to "do the right thing," says HBS professor Joseph Badaracco in Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right. The book helps managers tackle the more complex and troubling questions of what to do when "doing the right thing" requires doing something else wrong or leaving a right thing undone. It examines choices in work and life and the critical points at which the two become one.

Drawing on philosophy, literature, and three stories that reveal the increasing complexity that today¹s managers face, Defining Moments provides examples, action steps, and a flexible framework that managers at all levels can use to make the choices that will shape not only their careers but their characters.

Games Businesses Play

by Pankaj Ghemawat
(MIT Press)

Whether or not game theory has applications for business strategy remains unclear - to date, empirical studies have been too limited to yield any definitive conclusions. In Games Businesses Play: Cases and Modules, HBS professor Pankaj Ghemawat addresses this knowledge gap, using detailed, longitudinal analyses of competitive interaction to explore the uses and limits of game theory as a tool for students of business strategy.

As a basis for research as well as a source of teaching materials, Ghemawat focuses on individual cases. He pairs each with a customized game-theoretical model, an approach that presents a wide array of commitment decisions. He analyzes the match between case outcomes and model predications both qualitatively and quantitatively.

The case method offers clues about how to refine existing theory. In addition to helping with theory development, the cases also illustrate the ways in which game theory can help explain actual patterns of interaction.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the Frontiers of Management

by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
(Harvard Business School Press)

In a new book that draws on nearly two decades of her writing and commentary, HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter has collected the best of her wit and wisdom on management thinking and practice. Looking back across the changing landscape of business, Kanter helps reveal what has worked, what has not, and what businesses still need to learn. She also offers her assessment of the challenges of leadership and innovation that organizations face today and in the future.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the Frontiers of Management incorporates all the research articles and essays Kanter has written for the Harvard Business Review, including commentaries she wrote as the magazine¹s editor from 1989 to 1992. The book covers many of the most important issues currently facing business - strategy, innovation, customer focus, global trends, leadership for change, strategic alliances, compensation systems, and community responsibility. Kanter¹s enduring message is that rigidity and top-down management must give way to practices that will allow people to flourish - the key to organizational success.

Do Lunch or Be Lunch

by Howard H. Stevenson
(Harvard Business School Press)

According to HBS professor Howard Stevenson, most of human history and much of human behavior have been driven by the need to predict and shape the future.

In Do Lunch or Be Lunch: The Power of Predictability in Creating Your Future, Stevenson (with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank) argues that predictability in the business organization - created by practices such as establishing precise performance guidelines and developing long-term value - helps build trust by allowing employees to know what¹s expected of them. Predictability also enhances the firm¹s stability while leaving room for vitality and creativity, Stevenson asserts.

While technological advances, economic dislocations, and regulatory shifts are putting increased strains on predictability, Stevenson writes, the management fads often invoked in response to these changes actually undermine predictability.

In Do Lunch or Be Lunch, Stevenson discusses techniques for honing predictive power, making decisions, and measuring risk, as well as for understanding conflict and improving human interactions.

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