Nearly 30 years after a special issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior focused on
the career challenges of black professionals, what has changed for African Americans in the
workplace in the U.S.? This massive volume—edited by Laura Morgan Roberts of Georgetown
University, Anthony J. Mayo of Harvard Business School, and David A. Thomas of Morehouse
College—addresses that question from multiple perspectives that include both personal anecdotes
and historical data. The nearly 50 contributing essayists study the history of Harvard’s
black alumni; examine the role of HBCUs in providing a pipeline of black professionals; identify
disparities in the treatment of black and white business leaders; and report on the lived
experiences of women, entrepreneurs, and teachers who are African American. In one essay,
Lynn Perry Wooten of Cornell and Erika Hayes James of Emory consider the role of African
Americans as crisis leaders—called in to rescue a struggling company or manage organizational
change—often in situations where they aren’t expected to succeed. Is the goal, they ask, to
protect white male leaders from being scapegoats for failed turnarounds? Or are minorities “more willing to accept such leadership
positions because of a fear that they will not be hired for leadership roles otherwise?” The book offers more questions than answers,
in part because much is not known. “Despite the long-standing interconnections between race, work, and leadership,” write Roberts,
Mayo, and Serenity Lee of Harvard, “the explicit discussion of race and organizational leadership is still considered taboo or
irrelevant in many business circles.” It’s an important book on a critical and timely topic. (Harvard Business Review Press, US$45)
The Industrial Revolution brought great
human prosperity and great environmental
harm, with the result that observers were
predicting mass starvation by the late 20th
century as food demand outstripped the
planet’s limited supply. But that’s not what
happened, says Andrew McAfee of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Instead,
we’ve managed to decouple economic
growth from resource consumption. How? McAfee credits “the
four horsemen of the optimist”—tech progress, capitalism,
public awareness, and responsive governments. For instance,
technical progress was greatly enabled by the digital revolution,
but dozens of other inventions—from thinner aluminum
cans to genetically modified crops—have allowed us to maximize
both materials and land. At the same time, capitalism
itself is a driver for optimizing resources, especially in fiercely
competitive markets where essential components are scarce
or expensive, leading innovators to find or invent substitutes.
McAfee tracks the state of human well-being from the minute
the steam engine was invented. “We are no longer at the Malthusian
mercy of the environment as we try to scratch a living
from the ground,” he writes. We still have challenges, but he
seems confident we can overcome them. (Scribner, US$28)
“We do not know of anything in capitalism’s
manifesto that prohibits managers from
treating employees kindly, and vice versa, as
part of a bundle of leadership capabilities,”
write Michael O’Malley, managing director
of the Pearl Meyer consultancy and a lecturer
at Yale, and William F. Baker of Fordham
University and IESE. They demand that
“leaders foster human potential and support
human flourishing as obligations of their role.” The authors
identify six universal human needs—belonging, meaning,
autonomy, self-acceptance, confidence, and personal growth—
then explore ways that 21 companies support these needs. For
instance, N2 Publishing’s CEO bought homes that he could rent
to employees for $1 so they could save money to buy their own
houses. O’Malley and Baker have no patience with critics who
worry such tactics will undermine profits. These “hand-wringers,”
they write, “miss the ultimate point of business, which is to
improve the quality of life.” (Stanford Business Books, US$35)
Organizations that wish to “inspire employees,
serve customers, delight investors, and
exhibit social citizenship” must constantly
reinvent themselves, say Arthur Yeung of
Chinese technology firm Tencent Group and
Dave Ulrich of the University of Michigan.
The authors not only synthesize ideas from
current literature on innovative organizations,
but also study the strategies of eight
dynamic businesses, including Alibaba, Amazon, Facebook,
and Huawei. From this research, they have developed a framework
that invites any business to innovate along six dimensions:
its current market environment, its particular strategy,
its ecosystem capabilities that enable sharing among teams, the
morphology that allows it to be nimble, the governance mechanisms
that shape its culture, and its leadership. While they
know that not all businesses will innovate in all areas, they
believe every firm can choose at least one path toward reinvention.
(Harvard Business Review Press, US$32)
About 70 percent of change initiatives
fail. Why? According to Scott Keller and
Bill Schaninger of McKinsey, most executives
focus only on performance elements,
tracking how well the company is buying,
making, and selling products. They must
give equal weight to the health elements of
change, making sure it aligns employees in
a shared direction, allows them to execute
the work, and renews the organization. Keller and Schaninger
have created a five-step change framework, and each level has
both a performance and a health component. For instance,
when executives implement change, they not only must define
initiatives and allocate resources, they must reshape the work
environment to create shifts in mindsets and behaviors. By
putting equal emphasis on both health and performance, they
write, “change programs improve their odds of success from
30 percent to 79 percent, and on average deliver 1.8 times
more impact.” (Wiley, US$34.95)