Alumni Association

Building Supply Chain Excellence in Emerging
Economies, International Series in Operations
Research & Management Science
Editors Hau L. Lee, and Chung-Yee Lee
Springer-Verlag New York, LLC, 2006

The rapidly developing new economies in China, India, Hungary, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, etc., are at the crossroads of almost all major supply chains. In fact, these emerging economies are growing faster than the established industrial economies of the world, yet their physical, social and cultural characteristics provide some real challenges. The book discusses how to manage supply chains in emerging economies, coordinate information flows with multiple partners, tackle challenges such as unexpected disruptions, diversify the risks and increase flexibilities, be efficient but at the same time contribute to the social and environmental developments of these economies, and use supply chain concepts and practices to improve the economic welfare of these countries.

Built to Last
Jim Collins, MBA '83,  GSB Faculty Emeritus Jerry I. Porras
HarperCollins Publishers, 2002

Among Forbes Magazine's list of 20 most influential business books is "Built to Last" by former GSB faculty member James C. Collins and GSB faculty member emeritus Jerry I. Porras.

Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility
by Sarah Soule
Cambridge Press, 2009

This book examines anti-corporate activism in the United States ranging from the Civil Rights Movement to demands for dolphin-safe tuna. Prior to the 1970s, Soule says, activists generally sought to change government regulation of corporations or appealed for change through organized labor. She traces the shift brought about by deregulation and the decline in organized labor, which prompted activists to target corporations directly, often in combination with targeting the state.

Creating and Capturing Value: Perspective and Cases
on Electronic Commerce
Garth Saloner and A. Michael Spence
John Wiley and Sons, 2001

Included in this book are 22 case studies that contain a wealth of information about technologies, industries, issues, firms, strategies, organizational structures, and the issues electronic commerce poses for students and practitioners. More Details

Credit Risk
Darrell Duffie and Kenneth J. Singleton
Princeton Series on Finance, Princeton University Press, 2003

In this book, two of America's leading economists provide the first integrated treatment of the conceptual, practical, and empirical foundations for credit risk pricing and risk measurement. Darrell Duffie and Kenneth Singleton model credit risk for the purpose of measuring portfolio risk and pricing defaultable bonds, credit derivatives, and other securities exposed to credit risk. Credit Risk is an indispensable resource for risk managers, traders or regulators dealing with financial products with a significant credit risk component, as well as for academic researchers and students.

Culture and Demography in Organizations
J. Richard Harrison and Glenn R. Carroll
Princeton University Press, 2006

How do corporations and other organizations maintain and transmit their cultures over time? Culture and Demography in Organizations uses mathematical tools and computer simulation to explicitly consider the effects of demographic processes of entry, exit, and organizational growth.

The authors model with three components: hiring, socialization, and employee turnover. Topics covered include organizational growth and decline, top management teams, organizational influence networks, terrorist organizations, cultural integration following mergers, and organizational failure. The book serves as an introduction to the increasingly popular use of computer simulation.

Education in the Twenty-First Century
Edward P. Lazear. editor
Hoover Institution Press, 2002

Few issues today are more important in the United States than improving education. In Education in the Twenty-first Century (Hoover Institution Press, 2002), editor and Hoover fellow Edward P. Lazear brings together a range of Hoover scholars to address this crucial issue.

Nine fellows, some of the most respected experts in the field of education reform, contribute their expertise, evidence, and insights. Scholars such as Lazear, Shultz, Thomas Sowell, and Shelby Steele discuss a range of areas that include such widely debated topics as national exams, accountability, performance, and school funding.

Ethics and the Business of Bioscience
Margaret L. Eaton
Stanford University Press, 2004

Businesses that produce bioscience products --gene tests and therapies, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and medical devices-- are regularly confronted with ethical issues concerning these technologies. Conflicts exist between those who support advancements in bioscience and those who fear the consequences of unfettered scientific license. As the debate surrounding bioscience grows, it will be increasingly important for business managers to consider the larger consequences of their work. This groundbreaking book follows industry research, development, and marketing of medical and bioscience products across a variety of fields, including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and bio-agriculture.

Foundations of Stochastic Inventory Theory
Evan Porteus
Stanford University Press, 2002

The book serves as an advanced textbook designed to prepare doctoral students to do research on the mathematical foundations of inventory theory and as a reference work for those already engaged in such research. All chapters conclude with exercises that either solidify or extend the concepts introduced. Details.

Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective
Gerald M. Meier, Joseph E. Stiglitz (Editor), and  Nicholas Sternwith: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2001

Globalization and Labor Conditions Working Conditions
and Worker Rights in a Global Economy
Robert J. Flanagan
Oxford University Press, 2006

Labor economist Robert Flanagan discusses how immigration affects wages globally, a subject in his new book on globalization and working conditions. His new book explains the effects of three key mechanisms of globalization international trade, international migration, and the activities of multinational companies on working conditions and labor rights around the world. More Details

Q & A with the Author

Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton
Harvard Business School Publishing, March 2006

This just-released book identifies and dissects the poor decision practices of corportations based on ingrained, untested beliefs and half-truths that masquerade as sound advice. Hard Fact BookDetails

Interview with Pfeffer and Sutton Video 16:32 minutes

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps
to a Better Health Care System
by R. Glenn Hubbard, John Cogan, and Daniel Kessler
American Enterprise Institute Press, 2005

The authors present their prescription for healing the U.S. healthcare system. Their proposal emphasizing private market competition includes: tax, insurance, and malpractice reform; an upgrade of health information; and greater competition by providers and insurers. Appendices offer estimates of the cost-saving financial impact of these reform policies. The book discusses how several problems including glaring gaps in the quality and efficiency of care, high rates of uninsurance, and out-of-control cost, can be resolved by empowering patients.

Book Discussion Video Video 58:16 minutes

Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary
Results with Ordinary People
Charles A. O'Reilly III, and Jeffrey Pfeffer,
Harvard Business School Press, 2000

In this tight labor market where companies are desperate to find more talent, two Stanford Business School professors suggest a novel approach: find talent in your own backyard, shop floors or office blocks. Too many companies waste the talent they have on staff by using systems like the old command-and-control leaders of Communist countries—they don't really know how to instill shared values and then train and support their people to take on responsibility for success.

The two use case studies of innovative companies to demonstrate how they have created added value by fostering the creativity, motivation, and commitment of their people. The companies profiled are Southwest Airlines, Cisco Systems, The Men's Wearhouse, SAS Institute, PSS World Medical, AES, New United Motors Manufacturing Inc and Cypress Semiconductor.

Highest Goal - The Secret That Sustains You in Every Moment
GSB Faculty Michael Ray, foreword by Jim Collins, MBA '83
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2004

Your highest goal is what gives real meaning to your life, what truly motivates and sustains you. It has nothing to do with worldly success or achievement, but GSB Professor Michael Ray found that all of the successful people who had been through his course ultimately attributed their success to it. Here Ray shares what he learned through decades of teaching his creativity course to help you discover and live by, your own highest goal.

Hot Groups: Seeding Them, Feeding Them, and Using
Them to Ignite Your Organization
Jean Lipman-Blumen and Harold J. Leavitt
Oxford University Press, May 1999

Named the best business book of 1999 by the Association of American Publishers. "A hot group is just what the name is just what the name implies: a lively, overachieving, dedicated group - usually small - whose members are turned on to an exciting and challenging task," say Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt, the Walter Kenneth Kipatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology, emeritus.

Innovation in Medical Technology: Ethical Issues
and Challenges
Margaret Eaton, Lecturer in Management

This thought-provoking study examines the ethical, legal, and social problems that arise with cutting-edge medical technology. Using as examples four powerful and largely unregulated technologies-off-label use of drugs, innovative surgery, assisted reproduction, and neuroimaging-Margaret L. Eaton and Donald Kennedy illustrate the difficult challenges faced by clinicians, researchers, and policy makers who seek to advance the frontiers of medicine safely and responsibly. Supported by medical history and case studies and drawing on reports from dozens of experts, the authors address important practical, ethical, and policy issues. They consider topics such as the responsible introduction of new medical products and services, the importance of patient consent, the extent of the duty to mitigate harm, and the responsibility to facilitate access to new medical therapies. This work's insights into the nature and consequences of medical innovation contribute to the national debate on how best to protect patients while fostering innovation and securing benefits. Details

Intro version (5:28 min.) - A short introduction, intended largely for a medical audience.
Full version (18:34 min.) - This version, including the Intro version, is intended for both medical and business audiences.

Integrating Mission and Strategy for Nonprofit Organizations
James A. Phills, Jr.

In his new book, Professor James A. Phills, Jr. builds on an intimate understanding of the challenges facing nonprofit organizations and a deep knowledge of the business world to offer a 21 st-century approach to nonprofit strategy. A must read for every nonprofit leader.

Investors and Markets: Portfolio Choices, Asset Prices,
and Investment Advice
William F. Sharpe
Princeton University Press, 2006

Nobel Laureate financial economist William Sharpe shows that investment professionals cannot make good portfolio choices unless they understand the determinants of asset prices. But until now asset-price analysis has largely been inaccessible to everyone except PhDs in financial economics. Based on his Princeton lecture in finance, Sharpe details his state-of-the-art approach to asset pricing in a nonmathematical form that will be comprehensible to a broad range of investment professionals. Sharpe makes this technique accessible through his computer program (available for free on his website, at www.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/apsim/index.html) enabling users to create virtual markets, set the starting conditions and then allow trading until equilibrium is reached and trading stops. Details

Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies
Turn Knowledge Into Action
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
Harvard Business School Press, January, 2000

"Did you ever wonder why so much education and training, management consultation, organizational research and so many books and articles produce so few changes in actual management practice?" ask Stanford Business School Professors Pfeffer and Sutton. "We wondered, too, and so we embarked on a quest to explore one of the great mysteries in organizational management: why knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fails to result in action or behavior consistent with that knowledge." The authors describe the most common obstacles to action---such as fear and inertia---and profile successful companies that overcome them.

Logics of Organization Theory: Audiences, Codes, and Ecologies 
by Michael T. Hannan, László Pólos, and Glenn R. Carroll
Princeton University Press

Three leading authorities rethink organization theory , advancing  organizational theory, and it also drawing lessons for theory building elsewhere in the social sciences.

Organizational research typically analyzes organizations in categories such as "bank," "hospital," or "university." These categories have been treated as crisp analytical constructs designed by researchers. But sociologists increasingly view categories as constructed by audiences. This book builds on cognitive psychology and anthropology to develop an audience-based theory of organizational categories. It applies this framework and the new language of theory building to organizational ecology. It reconstructs and integrates four central theory fragments, and in so doing reveals unexpected connections and new insights. 

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Chip Heath, PhD '91 and Dan Heath
Random House, 2007

Mark Twain once observed, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on." His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas-business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others struggle to make their ideas "stick." Authors Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the "human scale principle," using the "Velcro Theory of Memory," and creating "curiosity gaps."

Making Innovation Work: How to Manage It, Measure It,
and Profit From It
Tony Davila, Marc Epstein and Robert Shelton
Wharton School Publishing, September 15, 2005

Innovation is an imperative for growing a business. Yet there are no secret formulas for innovation; it is about good management. The authors present a framework that allows management to harness the power of both business model innovation and technology innovation to create a dominant competitive advantage and profitability. They show how innovation is a management process that requires specific tools, rules and discipline. They describe how standard management tools such as strategy, organizational design and structure, management systems, performance evaluation, people, and rewards can increase the payoffs from innovation investments.

Making IT: the Rise of Asia in High Tech
Henry S. Rowen, Marguerite Gong Hancock, William F. Miller, eds,;
Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship,
Stanford University Press, 2007

In 2003, consumption of information technology goods worldwide was $1.5 trillion, with Asia representing 20 percent of the total.  Even more telling, Asia produced about 40 percent of these goods. The increasing role for Asia in the markets and manufacturing of IT, along with Asian innovation, will pose a challenge to traditional centers, notably Silicon Valley. The book analyzes policies and the results of this trend on nations and centers such as Silicon Valley. Details

Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations
By Hayagreeva Rao
Princeton University Press 2009

Social activists are key players in the creative destruction and rebuilding of markets, says Professor Hayagreeva “Huggy” Rao.

Microeconomics for Managers
David Kreps
Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. 2003

Kreps Publishes New Microeconomics Text
Microeconomics for Managers, a new textbook by Professor David Kreps, tries to motivate and illustrate frameworks and theories with real-world examples: from General Motors trying to settle a class-action lawsuit with coupons to Porsche trying to reorganize how its cars are retailed in the United States; to an explanation for how and why Toyota increases the power of its suppliers.

Top Down: Why Hierarchies Are Here to Stay
and How to Manage Them More Effectively
Harold Leavitt
Harvard Business School Press, November 2004

Pundits have been forecasting the demise of the hierarchical corporation for decades. Organizational behavior expert Harold J. Leavitt argues that alternative to these traditional corporations have not proven viable--or even desirable--and that despite its human failings, hierarchy remains the foundational shape of every large human organization. Why? Because it works. Top Down neither defends nor attacks the much-maligned hierarchy. Rather, this counterintuitive book convincingly shows that even the "flattest" of today's organizations are really just hierarchies in disguise. Leavitt shows how leaders can reshape hierarchies to incorporate the human values and motivations that enable employees to thrive. He then offers middle managers suggestions about how best to negotiate the way through those authoritarian mazes, while maintaining their personal integrity and even finding satisfaction in their work. Harold J. Leavitt is Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior Emeritus at the Stanford GSB.