Reading list
Reading list
Here are some books that you might find valuable. I have grouped them into six broad categories:
As you will see, several of these books were published a while ago. This does not affect their validity, especially for non-technical works. Human and organizational behaviour change little over the decades. Also, despite what has been called dot.com die-back, the better ebusiness books from that era are still useful. Some of their case study material may have dated but their general lessons still apply.
If you intend buying any of these books, most online booksellers in English-speaking countries should have the recently published ones. Alternatively, use a bargain-finding service such as DealTime. For secondhand and out-of-print books, try Bookfinder. The publishing details I give apply mainly to British editions.
Some of the authors listed also publish online newsletters from their own Web sites. These are usually free and are delivered to your email in-tray. For other suggested periodicals, see Staying up to date.
Systems thinking  [Top]
Stafford Beer. The Brain of the Firm: the managerial cybernetics of organizations, John Wiley, Chichester, 1994. This is the first of the three books in which Beer expounds his model of the organization as a living being. This is not an overnight read but is packed with insight. Contains some (skippable) mathematics.
Peter Checkland. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, by John Wiley, Chichester, 1999. The primary and original text on 'soft systems' thinking - the kind that's harder to do. Readably combines theoretical explorations with practical examples and advice. Is the antithesis of the painting-by-numbers approach found in many other methods. First published in 1981; now available in paperback, with a '30-year perspective' included.
Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline. The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, Century, 1990. ISBN 0712656871. The book that triggered the Learning Organization movement. Long-winded, self-indulgent and full of trite snippets of Eastern philosophy but still a useful primer on the subject. There is an associated workbook, published separately.
Sir Geoffrey Vickers, Human Systems Are Different, London: Harper & Row, 1984. Vickers was, at various times, a soldier (winning the Victoria Cross), a lawyer and a chairman of the then National Coal Board in Britain. His understanding of systems behaviour reflected this varied and non-technical background and resulted in some of the best writing there has been on the subject. The book deals with the human, organizational and political spheres, and provides a refreshing contrast to the sometimes over-abstract offerings from other authors.
Organizational behaviour [Top]
Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars. The Seven Cultures of Capitalism. Value Systems for Creating Wealth in the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands, Judy Piatkus, 1994. A practical, entertaining and thought-provoking journey around the world's main industrial cultures. Combines the results of extensive surveys with historical sketches, case studies and anecdotes.
Charles Handy. Understanding Organizations, Penguin Books, 1992. This is a classic. Handy covers all the important topics in a balanced but shrewd fashion, with numerous examples in every chapter. It is still the best general introduction to organizational matters available but could do with updating. A chapter on the effects of the Internet would be valuable.
Gareth Morgan. Images of Organization, Sage Publications, 1986. A penetrating analysis of the prevailing mental models of organizations, giving the strengths and weakness of each. Finishes with a less convincing synthesis of the nine metaphors discussed. This scarcely detracts from the mind-opening material that precedes it.
Richard Ritti and Steven Levy. The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know: Studies in Organizational Behavior, John Wiley and Sons, 2002 (sixth edition). Provides vivid and memorable insight to organizational behaviour through a series of fictitious stories, a formula later copied by Goldratt and others. Although based mainly on American manufacturing industry, it points out as clearly as anything more modern the reefs on which a computer strategy might founder.
Business strategy and management [Top]
Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad, Competing for the Future,  Harvard Business School Press, 1996. ISBN 0875847161. Formerly one of the standard texts on corporate strategy. A good, and short, presentation of thinking on, to coin a phrase, managing in turbulent times. Despite an update in 1996, makes no mention of the Internet or World Wide Web.
Ricardo Semler. Maverick!, Random House, 2001 (first published in 1994). Describes how Semler turned upside down the conventional rules in his family's business and succeeded despite it. An ego trip but exciting and refreshing for all that. Semler has written a sequel, Seven-Day Weekend (Century Publishing, 2003), that vindicates the approach. It also deals with matters not covered in the earlier book, such as home working and electronic mail.
Robert Townsend. Up the Organization. How to stop the company stifling people and strangling profits. Coronet Books, 1970. Down to earth advice wittily presented by the man who resurrected Avis. It has dated only in some of the detail. Townsend has no time for flim-flammery or for activities, departments or ideas that don't earn their keep. Speaks more common sense on re-engineering -- but before the word was invented -- than any of his successors, and in far fewer words.
Business case [Top]
Barbara Farbey, Frank Land and David Targett, How to Assess Your IT Investment. A Study of Methods and Practice, Butterworth Heinemann, 1993. A practical handbook, published in association with the magazine Management Today. The authors cover most of the problems in succinct fashion, including grasping the nettle of qualitative benefits.
Paul Strassmann. The Business Value of Computers, The Information Economics Press, USA, 1990. A detailed investigation of various accounting methods for IT investments, leading up to an explanation of Strassmann's notion of management value-added as a robust measure. A big book, only for the committed reader. Strassman has published several other useful books on the theme of the value of IT. He has a Web site with some of his articles on at.
Business process improvement [Top]
Paul Harmon. Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes, Morgan Kauffman, San Francisco, 2003. Mainly an engineering textbook but a good guide to BPM trends and technologies. Gives copious and well-illustrated detail on all the popular methods and taxonomies. You would need to look elsewhere for coverage of divergent viewpoints, different organization models, cultural forces and other aspects of human behaviour.
Gary Rummler and Alan Brache. Improving Performance: Managing the White Space on the Organization Chart, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1990. This is a favourite with many people as a practical guide. The authors present their arguments and guidance clearly and in a logical sequence. Although obviously not covering the possibilities that modern BPM software offers, it is still relevant. Its main defect is that it leaves unchallenged too many asumptions that need testing.
Jon Pyke, John O'Connell and Roger Whitehead. Mastering Your Organization's Processes: A Plain Guide to BPM, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006. A largely non-technical guide to business processes and the internal and external forces that shape them. It explains the kinds of computer software available for improving and managing those processes. Contains some detailed case studies. I'm obviously biased but I like it.
Helpful background [Top]
Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, Basic Books, 1996. ISBN 0465029906. A scholarly narration of the development of computing, from pre-Babbage days to the growth of the World Wide Web. Its one fault is its overemphasis on American activities, minimizing the mid-century contributions of British and German pioneers. This is strange, given that Campbell-Kelly, a Briton, has written an excellent history of ICL.
Robert X. Cringely, Accidental Empires; How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can't Get a Date, Penguin Books, 1993 (updated version in hardback). ISBN 014017138X. An absorbing, funny and, as the sub-title suggests, largely disrespectful account of the rise of the personal computer industry. Cringely knows most the characters involved and tells you more about them than they probably would have wished.
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Witch Doctors: What the management gurus are saying, why it matters and how to make sense of it, Mandarin Paperbacks, 1997. ISBN 074932645X. Not the first book to take a swing at some of the wider illogicalities of management theory but one of the most engaging. Provides a useful pocket guide to the most popular movements as well as helpful, occasionally blunt, critiques of them.
Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's Online Pioneers, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998. ISBN 0297841483. One for those who feel that history casts a helpful light on the present. Standage's journalistic background shows in this lively story of how society and commerce responded to a then revolutionary new communication medium. There are cautionary tales, too, about believing that any such medium could cure society's ills.