1. "What Is Business About?" -- David Warsh
One can perceive a long and orderly tradition of thinking about business stretching back through the decades. Most of our contemporary thinking about business comes from Adam Smith, who addressed such topics as prices and taxes, the role of capital and labor, the significance of foreign trade, inflation and unemployment, monopolies and other market failures, sovereignty, and so on. Smith based his approach on self-interest, and government has only a little role. Others tried to reduce business and the analysis of business to the simplest underlying mechanisms. Marginalism was the next big movement, and now value was seen as a subjective, interpersonal thing. John Maynard keynes transformed thinking about economics. The 1950s was a period of growth and prosperity. It unraveled in the 1960s. In the 1970s, acquisitions and takeovers increased. The 1980s saw a rise in new growth economics.
2. "How to Think Like an Executive" -- Leonard A. Schlesinger
Effective management involves more than producing immediate results--it includes creating the potential for creating good results over a long period of time. The ability to predict the future is limited, and change is inevitable. Growth produces even more changes in the organization. The effective manager anticipates change and associated problems. The effective organization produces effective responses to change, but few companies have the characteristics necessary. Seven tasks are offered for the manager to manage over the long term related to building a responsive organization and to foreseeing change.
3. "Managing People: The R Factor" -- Allan R. Cohen
Three-quarters of American business work to improve the quality of their goods and services. Quality improvement is also a preoccupation with European businesses. Being part of an organization means being interconnected with many others. Explaining behavior in ...