Book Reviews / March 2013
Prasad Kaipa and Navi Radjou. From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013.
Russ Volckmann
In the spirit of full disclosure, the reader should be aware that I have known one of these authors for decades. Not only have we worked together with corporate clients and professional training groups, but I know his parents, his wife and his children well enough to hold them deep within my heart. He has proved to be a brilliant …
Book Reviews / March 2013
Living Indigenous Leadership: Native Narratives on Building Strong Communities: Edited by Carolyn Kenny and Tina Ngaroimata Fraser.
Julia Buchanan
While pursuing my doctorate, I met a student in a leadership graduate program who was told his understanding of leadership was “incorrect.” When I probed further, I learned that according to him and the teachings of his Indigenous nation, leadership is understood as collective and decentralized—that leadership was an earned recognition through people knowing you and your character. He talked …
Book Reviews / March 2013
Faisal Hoque, F. The Power of Convergence: Linking Business Strategies and Technology Decisions to Create Sustainable Success. New York: AMA, 2011.
Felisa J.Parris
Faisal Hoque, a former executive, is the founder and CEO of BTM Corporation. The BTM Corporation specializes in convergence transformative practices and best practices research. In 2008, Hoque was christened “Mr. Convergence” by CIO Quarterly magazine and named one of the top most influential peopled in technology. In The Power of Convergence: Linking Business Strategies and Technology…
Book Reviews / March 2013
Roger Klev and Morten Levin, Participative Transformation: Learning and Development in Practising Change. England: Gower Publishing Company, 2012
Carlotta S. Walker
Introduction
Klev and Levin began Participative Transformation by making a clear and concise statement of the intent of their work. They stated that the aim of their book was to “build a research-supported foundation for practicing organizational change” and to “provide a theoretical model or organizational change and at the same time practical guidance to assist the practitioner …
Book Reviews / January 2013
King, T. C., & Ferguson, S. A. (2011). Black Womanist Leadership: Tracing the Motherline (Kindle ed.). New York: State University of New York Press.
Adeeba Deterville
The book is an important addition to the field of leadership as it may be the first of its kind to address the concept of leadership development through the lens of the African American mother-daughter relationship. Using the feminist concept of the motherline the book examines the cultural transmission of leadership skills and capacities; …
Book Reviews / January 2013
Integrative, Vedantin, or Neither
Oliver Robinson. Development through Adulthood: An Integrative Sourcebook. Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Gerard Bruitzman
Have you seen any one of the many productions now available featuring Stephen Hawking as he describes on the grounds of mathematical physics the grand design of the universe? As Hawking tells his awesome story with indubitable authority and wonderful eloquence, do you feel uneasy, as I do?
Being one of the most admired scientists alive, Hawking has the permission …
Book Reviews / October 2012
Cindy Wigglesworth. SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual intelligence. New York: Select Books, 2012.
Michael McElhenie
Let’s get one thing straight right from the start. If you scour the planet, I am probably the least objective reviewer of Cindy’s incredible, ground breaking book. I have had the great pleasure of knowing Cindy for over ten years, have shared part of Cindy’s journey as she developed the SQ21 concept and was a member of her research team. And, more importantly, …
Book Reviews / October 2012
Howard Bloom. The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2012.
Call me old or cantankerous or both if you really must, but there are very few books that I get excited about these days. Gone are the days when I scoured the internet looking for new books that I have to have on the day that they are published and read and devour their content in days if not hours. I no …
Book Reviews / August 2012
Graham Mummery
If, for a moment, we accept the economic consensus view that growth is the solution to the current economic crisis, one “growth area” we might observe is the crop of books and articles about that same crisis. As the great economist John Kenneth Galbraith once quipped: “Economics provides gainful employment for economists.”
The books inevitably differ in their approach. Some like Gillian Tett’s Fools Gold (2010) …
Book Reviews / August 2012
Kellerman, Barbara. The End of Leadership. (New York: Harper Business). 2012
Richard A. Couto
“I think it’s the most important leadership book of the past decade.” With that, the editor handed off Barbara Kellerman’s latest book, The End of Leadership for me to review. I was already positively biased towards Kellerman’s work. She has been in the vanguard of leadership scholars since she began writing on the topic. She has pioneered in establishing the field as multidisciplinary[i] and setting …