A deeply thoughtful book about business management today and the nature of thought itself.
A discussion of the Western obsession with rational deduction and its stranglehold on the business world.
While working in China and trying to understand the country’s culture, Moreau (A Contemporary Tale of Human Connection, 2016, etc.) discovered a remarkable difference between Western and Eastern approaches to comprehending reality. Westerners cling to logical deduction, causal linearity, and binary choices. Eastern thought emphasizes inductive inference, circularity, and a harmony of opposites. Western rationality has, of course, borne considerable fruit, but it’s also often gratuitously limiting and even counterproductive. For example, an overemphasis on scientific deduction leads to false dilemmas, or the misperception that there are only two mutually exclusive choices available, while induction promotes a more holistic interpretation that prioritizes an equilibrium of competing alternatives. “This is the point of equilibrium, the center of balance between yin and yang, productivity and waste, return and loss,” writes Moreau. “It is here that all business should seek to reside, in a position of balance between data and instinct, between expectation and experience, between great innovation and folly.” The author uses this paradigm to diagnose a number of weaknesses with contemporary business management, including its narrow obsession with quantitative assessments of human behavior, a dogmatic attachment to processes that don’t work and tendentious rationalizations of them, and a deficit of intellectual diversity. Also, the insistence on deductive logic ultimately leads to a culture of intolerance and alienation. Moreau recommends his own fusion of induction and deduction—he calls it “indeduction”—which permits the two to operate independently of each other, providing a more synoptic picture than either could on its own. It’s no surprise that the author has more than 40 years of business experience. His observations are consistently nuanced and searching. Moreau adroitly braids a philosophical perspective with a managerial one, discussing Newtonian science and Taoism with as much confidence as employee reviews. The writing is unfailingly clear and avoids precisely the kind of turgid jargon he too often finds in the world of commerce. More than a guidebook for managers, this is a manifesto for an intellectually deeper—and happier—world of business.
A deeply thoughtful book about business management today and the nature of thought itself.Pub Date: June 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5470-7473-0
Page Count: 188
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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