Ethics Training for Managers: Best Practice Techniques 

Logan L. Watts, Kelsey Medeiros, Tristan McIntosh, and Tyler Mulhearn

Routledge
December 2020, $57.95

Can employees be trained to make more ethical decisions? If so, how? Providing evidence-based and practical answers to these critical questions is the purpose of this book. To answer these questions, the authors—four organizational psychologists who specialize in the study of ethical decision-making—translate insights based on decades of scientific research. Whether you are a student, educator, HR manager, compliance professional, or simply someone interested in the topic of ethics education, this book offers a road map for designing ethics training programs that work.

The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty: Decolonizing Nature, Economy and Society

Franklin Obeng-Odoon

University of Toronto Press
December 2020, $65.00

In the last 200 years, the earth has increasingly become the private property of a few classes, races, transnational corporations, and nations. Repeated claims about the “tragedy of the commons” and the “crisis of capitalism” have done little to explain this concentration of land, encourage solution building to solve resource depletion, or address our current socio-ecological crisis.

The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty presents a new explanation, vision, and action plan based on the idea of commoning the land. The book argues that by commoning the land, rather than privatizing it, we can develop the foundation for prosperity without destructive growth and address both local 

and global challenges. Making the land the most fundamental priority of all commons not only gives hope but also opens the doors to a new world in which economy, environment, and society are decolonised and liberated.

The Behaviourally Informed Organization

Dilip Soman and Catherine Yeung

University of Toronto Press
December 2020, $35.95

Every organization is, fundamentally, in the business of behaviour change. Whether it be a government trying to get business to comply with environmental regulations, a business trying to get its customers to be loyal to their products, or a financial advisor encouraging a client to start saving for retirement, behaviour change is critical to organizational success. Despite its centrality to organizations, we do not have a good scientific framework for behaviour change or a good understanding of how organizations can embed insights from behavioural science into their operations. To fill this void, this book develops an overarching framework for using behavioural science. It shows how behavioural insights (BI) can be embedded in organizations to achieve better outcomes, improve the efficiency of processes, and maximize stakeholder engagement.

This edited volume provides an enterprise-wide strategic perspective of how governments, businesses, and other organizations have embedded BI into their operations. It is based on research by academics and practitioners from the Behaviourally Informed Organizations Partnership and highlights ideas, pragmatic frameworks, and prescriptive outcomes, based on illustrative case studies. Featuring a foreword by Cass Sunstein, this book investigates key findings from BI, with an eye toward how it can be used to solve problems and seize opportunities in diverse organizations.

Opening Doors to Diversity in Leadership

Bobby Siu

University of Toronto Press
April 2021, $38.95

Opening Doors to Diversity in Leadership uses a psychological, organizational, and cultural framework to help businesses integrate a more diverse presence in leadership. Looking carefully at how current leaders view the relationship between leadership and diverse groups, Opening Doors to Diversity in Leadership examines topics including recruitment, selection, performance evaluation, succession management, working conditions, and corporate culture, and how they impact hiring, promotion, and retention of diverse groups.

Emphasizing the interlocking relationships between our thoughts and actions, this book stresses the importance of organizational review and self-reflection, and the pivotal role of removing unconscious biases from the workplace and identifying the systemic biases embedded in many aspects of human resources management practices.

Opening Doors to Diversity in Leadership provides evidence and options for businesses to build a more diverse workforce, leadership team, and corporate culture.

Missing Each Other: How to Cultivate Meaningful Connections

Edward Brodkin and Ashley Pallathra

PublicAffairs
January 2021, $35.00

The ability to connect with another person and truly be in tune with their physical and emotional state is one of the most elusive interpersonal skills to develop. This book shows you how.

In our fast-paced, tech-obsessed lives, rarely do we pay genuine, close attention to one another. With all that’s going on in the world, and the never-ending demands of our daily lives, most of us are too stressed and preoccupied with our own thoughts and worries to be able to really listen to each other for long. Often, we seem to somehow “miss” each other, misunderstand each other, or talk past each other. Our ability to tune in to ourselves and to others seems to be withering. Many of us are left wishing for someone who could really listen, understand, and genuinely connect with us.

In Missing Each Other, researchers and clinicians Edward Brodkin and Ashley Pallathra argue that we must find the ability to be in tune with each other again, and they show us how. Based on years of research that they conducted together in a National Institutes of Mental Health-funded clinical study, the authors take a wide-ranging and surprising journey through fields as diverse as social neuroscience and autism research, music performance, pro basketball, and tai chi. They use these stories to introduce the four principal components of attunement—Relaxed Awareness, Listening, Understanding, and Mutual Responsiveness—explaining the science, research, and biology underlying these pillars of human connection, but also providing readers with exercises through which they can improve their own skills and abilities in each.

The Interaction Field: The Revolutionary New Way to Create Shared Value for Businesses, Customers, and Society 

Erich Joachimsthaler

PublicAffairs
September 2020, $35.00

Most businesses today focus on competition and disruption instead of collaboration, participation, and engagement. They focus on transactions instead of interactions. They seek to optimize or extract value rather than share it. They build assets and thrive on enormous scale, huge distribution networks, and brand recognition. But then along comes a rival that doesn’t care much about their brand and other assets, and the rival either rushes past or mows them down.

In The Interaction Field, management expert and professor Erich Joachimsthaler explains that the only way to thrive in this environment is through the interaction field model. Companies who embrace this model generate, facilitate, and benefit from data exchanges among multiple people and groups—from customers and stakeholders, but also from those you wouldn’t expect to be in the mix, like suppliers, software developers, regulators, and even competitors. And everyone in the field works together to solve big, industry-wide, or complex and unpredictable societal problems.

The future is going to be about creating value for everyone. Businesses that solve the immediate challenges of people today, and also the major social and economic challenges of the future, are the ones that will survive and grow.

Right/Wrong: How Technology Transforms Our Ethics

Juan Enriquez

The MIT Press
October 2020, $33.95

Most people have a strong sense of right and wrong, and many of us are not reluctant to argue with someone who disagrees. But when we take an unyielding stand on something we regard as an eternal truth, we forget that ethics evolve over time. What was once broadly acceptable is now completely unacceptable: burning heretics is no longer considered a just punishment, and child marriage is not applauded as a family value.
Many shifts in the right versus wrong pendulum
are affected by advances in technology. 

In Right/Wrong, Juan Enriquez reflects on the evolution of ethics in a technological age.

Racial Justice: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review Press
December 2020, $29.99

In the wake of widespread anti-racism demonstrations across the world, many companies have spoken out forcefully. They’ve made unprecedented commitments to equity and launched ad campaigns and task forces to counter racism, especially anti-Black racism. But now comes the real test—harnessing the energy of this moment to further and sustain change for the better. Racial Justice: The Insights You Need will help you combat racism and bias throughout your company, revitalize your diversity and inclusion efforts, and lead the conversations necessary to bring your organization a step closer to racial equity.

Warren Buffett: Inside the Ultimate Money Mind

Robert G. Hagstrom

Wiley
March 2021, $35.99

This book provides a solid foundation of Buffett’s principles and his personal background for those who may be new to the Berkshire story and is, in a very real sense, the culmination of years of studying the man so often described as the world’s best investor. Hagstrom’s investigation examines Buffett’s work through the paradigm of business-driven investing, the application of Buffett’s tenets to global investing, a discussion of value investing, Buffett’s rationalism, and what the essence of success looks like (what the author calls “the money mind”). 

From the beginning, Hagstrom was determined not to study Buffett in isolation. No learning can be achieved simply by tallying Berkshire’s wins and losses—rather, greater insight is gained when we take the time to understand how Buffett’s thinking evolved within a broader market environment that was, and still is, constantly shifting. The bedrock principles remain unchanged (“that’s why they call them principles,” Buffett famously quipped) but now Hagstrom takes a fresh look in the context of business-driven investing, while tracking how the asset management industry has morphed into the antithesis of the Warren Buffett philosophy—another reason that understanding business-driven investing is so critical.

For more than 50 years, Buffett’s example and teachings have impacted his family, friends, partners, shareholders, and colleagues; directors, managers, and employees; small business owners and chief executives of Fortune 1000 companies; portfolio managers, analysts, writers, teachers, and students; and literally millions of devoted followers around the world. Even as his company, Berkshire Hathaway, is in transition, its reputation will remain steady, even under new leadership, for Buffett’s principles are important, proven, and timeless.

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere

Tsedal Neeley

Harper Collins
March 2021, $36.99

The rapid and unprecedented changes brought on by COVID-19 have accelerated the transition to remote working, requiring the wholesale migration of nearly entire companies to virtual work in just weeks, and leaving managers and employees scrambling to adjust. This massive transition has forced companies to rapidly expand their digital footprints, using cloud, storage, cybersecurity, and device tools to accommodate their new remote workforces.

Experiencing the benefits of remote working—including nonexistent commute times, lower operational costs, and a larger pool of global job applicants—many companies, including Twitter and Google, plan to permanently incorporate remote 

days or give employees the option to work from home full-time. But virtual work has its challenges: employees feel lost, isolated, out of sync, and out of sight. They want to know how to build trust, maintain connections without in-person interactions, and have a proper work/life balance. Managers want to know how to lead virtually, how to keep their teams motivated, what digital tools they’ll need, and how to keep employees productive.

Providing compelling, evidence-based answers to these and other pressing issues, Remote Work Revolution is essential for navigating the enduring challenges teams and managers face. Filled with specific actionable steps, original illustrations and interactive tools, this timely book will help team members deliver results previously out of reach. Following Neeley’s advice, employees will be able to break through routine norms to successfully use remote work to benefit themselves, their groups, and ultimately their organizations.