Social Situations Books - Page 5

Organizational Theory, Design, and Change, Fourth Edition

Gareth R. Jones

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great Book... 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book was perfect for the class I was taking. It was new, no marks, and very informative.

Review 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Good text book, presents material clearly and simplisticaly but effectively gets the point across and makes it easy to learn and retain.

Great Condition 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Ordered this text book for a master's class I enrolled in. Decided to try a "used" text to save money. Will start to use book in 1 week.

Editorial Review:

This book provides the most current, thorough, and contemporary account of the factors affecting the organizational design process, making important organization theories accessible and interesting. It addresses the many issues and problems that are involved in managing the process of organizational change and transformation, providing direct and clear managerial implications. Topics covered in this comprehensive book are the organization and its environment; organizational design; organizational change; and finally, interesting case studies that illustrate the concepts presented. A useful book that is appropriate for managers in any organization.

Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)

Stanley Wasserman, Katherine Faust

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not for anyone with Mathematics or Computer Science background 2 out of 5 stars.
15 of 20 people found this review helpful.

This book is unbelievably tedious and repetitious. There is very little actual content for the length of the book. It takes nearly 200 pages just to define some very basic terms from graph theory. This might have been fine if the space were taken up by some sort of meaningful discussion on the relevance of these graph theory concepts to sociological studies and theory. The book (possibly the field?) has the flavor of "here's a hammer, now what can we hit with it?".

Would have liked to see a format based on justification of the analytic techniques from sociological principles, or something much much more concise. Nothing much to see here, move on.

Editorial Review:

Social network analysis, which focuses on relationships among social entities, is used widely in the social and behavioral sciences, as well as in economics, marketing, and industrial engineering. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications reviews and discusses methods for the analysis of social networks with a focus on applications of these methods to many substantive examples. As the first book to provide a comprehensive coverage of the methodology and applications of the field, this study is both a reference book and a textbook.

You Are the Message

Roger Ailes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Communication Giant Shares His Speaking Strategies 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Every time I direct a Presentation Skills seminar or provide communication coaching for executives, I recommend this book. I'll explain why.

Roger Ailes has strong credentials for writing a book about giving speeches. Prior to launching Fox News just over a decade ago, he had served as a speech writer and coach for the first President Bush, Ronald Reagan, Rudy Giuliani, and other public figures. Next, he became a talent scout for TV stations, helping them find anchors who could boost ratings.

I recommend You Are the Message for several reasons. First, the author's credentials I cited. Second, the book's straightforward approach, with clear, simple language.Third, Ailes gives readers a number of gems like these to keep in mind as they prepare speeches:

On being yourself: "You don't have to assume a phony posture. You just have to be you at your best. You already have the magic of communication in you, because nobody can play you as well as you can."

On composure: "If you are uncomfortable with who you are,it will make others uncomfortable too."

On style: "The best communicators I've ever known never changed their style of delivery from one situation to another. They're the same whether they're delivering a speech, having an intimate conversation, or being interviewed on a TV talk show."

On choosing your topic: "If you care, they care."

On energy: "I can correct fifteen communication problems with one ounce of energy."

On enthusiasm: "If the audience knows you care about what you're doing, you can forget about most speaking techniques."

If you're going to buy one book about preparing and delivering speeches, I recommend You Are the Message.

The Complete Communicator: Change Your Communication-change Your Life!

Editorial Review:

"You are the message." What does that mean, exactly? It means that when you communicate with someone, it's not just the words you choose to send to the other person that make up the message.  You're also sending signals about what kind of person you are--by your eyes, your facial expression, your body movement, your vocal pitch, tone, volume, and intensity, your commitment to your message, your sense of humor, and many other factors.

The receiving person is bombarded with symbols and signals from you. Everything you do in relation to other people causes them to make judgments about what you stand for and what your message is.  "You are the message" comes down to the fact that unless you identify yourself as a walking, talking message, you miss that critical point.  

The words themselves are meaningless unless the rest of you is in synchronization.  The total you affects how others think of and respond to you.

Words That Change Minds: Mastering the Language of Influence 2nd edition

Shelle Rose Charvet

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The title of this book is decieving 1 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This book is a human resource management book covering different areas in HR management with many boring and tedious examples. The book focuses on interview setting questions, employement and hiring. I was looking for a book on language, word structure and influencing techniques but this book is the complete opposite. In addition, this book does not have a "search inside" option nor a description.

Brilliant 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has studied nlp or interested in the art of influence and wishes to further expand their knowledge. This books describeds meta programs in a very simple and straight forward way and how they are structured to fit the workplace, relationships (personal or professional) or any other context where you need to get yourself across efficiently and effectively.

Believe me when i say this is not a business book..it has a very readable writing style and helpful summary / appendicies section. I would recommend this book to anyone who really want's to use words that will change minds!

Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)

Douglass C. North

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Continuing his groundbreaking analysis of economic structures, Douglass North develops an analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies, both at a given time and over time. Institutions exist, he argues, due to the uncertainties involved in human interaction; they are the constraints devised to structure that interaction. Yet, institutions vary widely in their consequences for economic performance; some economies develop institutions that produce growth and development, while others develop institutions that produce stagnation. North first explores the nature of institutions and explains the role of transaction and production costs in their development. The second part of the book deals with institutional change. Institutions create the incentive structure in an economy, and organizations will be created to take advantage of the opportunities provided within a given institutional framework. North argues that the kinds of skills and knowledge fostered by the structure of an economy will shape the direction of change and gradually alter the institutional framework. He then explains how institutional development may lead to a path-dependent pattern of development. In the final part of the book, North explains the implications of this analysis for economic theory and economic history. He indicates how institutional analysis must be incorporated into neo-classical theory and explores the potential for the construction of a dynamic theory of long-term economic change. Douglass C. North is Director of the Center of Political Economy and Professor of Economics and History at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a past president of the Economic History Association and Western Economics Association and a Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has written over sixty articles for a variety of journals and is the author of The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (CUP, 1973, with R.P. Thomas) and Structure and Change in Economic History (Norton, 1981). Professor North is included in Great Economists Since Keynes edited by M. Blaug (CUP, 1988 paperback ed.)

Media and Culture

Campbell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Why Post A Review For A Textbook? 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Reviews are somewhat superfluous in light of the fact that this is a textbook and thus you probably don't have any choice about buying it, as was the case with me. Nonetheless, as textbooks go, I'd have to say I enjoyed this one quite a bit more than most. It's remarkably up-to-date, which is vital in media studies (there will undoubtedly be a 6th edition very soon), and it's a very fast and engaging read. The author doesn't always keep his liberal agenda well hidden, but that is perhaps forgiveable in an age of increasingly conserative media. On the whole, this stands a better chance than most of being a textbook that you actually keep rather than trying to cash in as soon as the course is over. I kept mine.

Very interesting 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book is very interesting. Is fun to read and not boring at all.
I really enjoy it.

The Power Elite

C. Wright Mills

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

First published in 1956, The Power Elite stands as a contemporary classic of social science and social criticism. C. Wright Mills examines and critiques the organization of power in the United States, calling attention to three firmly interlocked prongs of power: the military, corporate, and political elite. The Power Elite can be read as a good account of what was taking place in America at the time it was written, but its underlying question of whether America is as democratic in practice as it is in theory continues to matter very much today.
What The Power Elite informed readers of in 1956 was how much the organization of power in America had changed during their lifetimes, and Alan Wolfe's astute afterword to this new edition brings us up to date, illustrating how much more has changed since then. Wolfe sorts out what is helpful in Mills' book and which of his predictions have not come to bear, laying out the radical changes in American capitalism, from intense global competition and the collapse of communism to rapid technological transformations and ever changing consumer tastes. The Power Elite has stimulated generations of readers to think about the kind of society they have and the kind of society they might want, and deserves to be read by every new generation.

American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville

Bernard-Henri Levy

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Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

What does it mean to be an American, and what can America be today? To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy spent a year traveling throughout the country in the footsteps of another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America remains the most influential book ever written about our country.
The result is American Vertigo, a fascinating, wholly fresh look at a country we sometimes only think we know. From Rikers Island to Chicago mega-churches, from Muslim communities in Detroit to an Amish enclave in Iowa, Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our democracy: the special nature of American patriotism, the coexistence of freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball), the prison system, the “return of ideology” and the health of our political institutions, and much more. He revisits and updates Tocqueville’s most important beliefs, such as the dangers posed by “the tyranny of the majority,” explores what Europe and America have to learn from each other, and interprets what he sees with a novelist’s eye and a philosopher’s depth.
Through powerful interview-based portraits across the spectrum of the American people, from prison guards to clergymen, from Norman Mailer to Barack Obama, from Sharon Stone to Richard Holbrooke, Lévy fills his book with a tapestry of American voices–some wise, some shocking. Both the grandeur and the hellish dimensions of American life are unflinchingly explored. And big themes emerge throughout, from the crucial choices America
faces today to the underlying reality that, unlike the “Old World,” America remains the fulfillment of the world’s desire to worship, earn, and live as one wishes–a place, despite all, where inclusion remains not just an ideal but an actual practice.
At a time when Americans are anxious about how the world perceives them and, indeed, keen to make sense of themselves, a brilliant and sympathetic foreign observer has arrived to help us begin a new conversation about the meaning of America.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Crowd

Gustave LeBon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A very important book.. Influenced Lenin and Mussolini 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This is a very important book on political theory and tactics. Lebon presents a very incisive study of mass psychology. He's not a popular fellow with some in light of his cynical view of democracy. However, whether or not you agree with his views on this, his views on political tactics are brilliant. For more books on subjects like this including communism and fascism, see my profile.

The Irrationality of Crowds. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

_The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind_ is an English translation of the classic work on crowd psychology of French theorist and social scientist Gustave le Bon first published in 1895. Gustave le Bon (1841 - 1931) was a French social theorist whose works played a prominent part in the understanding of nationality, racialism, herd behavior, and crowd psychology. Le Bon writes from the perspective of a rationalist and a skeptic (though he is also skeptical of the uses to which "reason" is put by crowds, such as occurred during the French revolution) and examines crowd psychology from a scientific perspective. Le Bon's understanding of crowd psychology reveals the irrationalism of crowds and the inadequacies of the democratic process. This work in particular played a prominent role in the formation of such psychoanalytic theorists of the unconscious as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as well as in the leadership principle and crowd control of such figures as Benito Mussolini. As such, le Bon's work offers an important social, psychological, and political understanding of the processes that operate within crowds.

In his Preface, Le Bon lays out his understanding of the role of crowds, particularly as concerns the "present age" (his own time period). Le Bon explains the manner in which the unconscious activity of crowds has replaced the conscious activity of the individual. Le Bon also shows how he belongs to no particular school and thus claims that he is free from the biases of all such schools. Further, le Bon contends that the spirit of reform has guided crowds and that the era of crowds has replaced the divine right of kings. Following this, le Bon turns to "The Era of Crowds" in his Introduction. Le Bon explains how crowds have come to take a prominent place within national thought and that the modern age has become an era of crowds. Le Bon further offers that an understanding of crowds is essential for legislators and statesmen. The first "Book" of this book is entitled "The Mind of Crowds". Le Bon begins by considering the general characteristics of crowds. Le Bon defines the crowd in terms of psychology and distinguishes his definition from that of the commonplace understanding of the crowd. Le Bon further explains the "psychological law of the mental unity of crowds". Le Bon contends that in a crowd brain activity is reduced and there is a prominence of medullar activity, meaning that crowds act largely unconsciously. Following this, le Bon turns to the sentiments and morality of crowds. Le Bon contends that there is an impulsiveness, mobility, and irritability of crowds. Le Bon also contends that there are racial differences among crowds. Further, le Bon argues that crowds are credulous and readily influenced by suggestion. Le Bon also contends that crowds do not admit doubt or uncertainty and always head towards extremes. Further, le Bon contends that there is an intolerance, dictatorialness, and conservativism of crowds. In addition, le Bon contends that while crowds may act in accordance with a lower morality than that of the individual, it is also possible for crowds to have a higher morality than the individual and thus be prone to heroics. Following this, le Bon turns his attention to the ideas, reasoning power, and imagination of crowds. Le Bon contends that lofty ideas must be dumbed down before they can appeal to crowds. Le Bon further argues that crowds cannot be substantially influenced by reasoning and that their level of reasoning is entirely inferior to that of the individual. Finally, le Bon contends that crowds are prone to the imagination and they think in images, and that further the marvelous has always had some influence on crowds which is frequently linked to statesmen. Following this, le Bon turns his attention to the religious shape assumed by all the convictions of crowds. Le Bon argues that popular gods have never completely disappeared and that even atheism may take on a religious shape under the influence of crowds. Le Bon considers the religious shape of such historical occurrences as the Reformation, Saint Bartholomew, and the Terror following the French Revolution. Le Bon also considers the religious role of such great religions as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The second "Book" of this book is entitled "The Opinions and Beliefs of Crowds". Here, le Bon begins by considering remote factors of the opinions and beliefs of crowds. Le Bon considers such factors as race, traditions, time, political and social institutions, and political and social institutions as they relate to instruction and education regarding the opinions and beliefs of crowds. Following this, le Bon turns his attention to the immediate factors of the opinions and beliefs of crowds. Le Bon considers such factors as images, words, and formulae, illusions, experience, and reason. Next, le Bon considers the leaders of crowds and their means of persuasion. Le Bon begins by arguing that there is an instinctive need of all crowds to obey a leader. Le Bon also considers various characteristics of such leaders. Further, le Bon considers the means of action of the leaders, which he classifies as affirmation, repetition, and contagion. Together these principles explain the actions of crowds under a leader. In addition, le Bon considers the prestige of a leader, arguing that a leader must possess a certain prestige. Le Bon defines prestige and argues that there are different kinds of prestige including acquired prestige and personal prestige, as well as showing how prestige is lost. Following this, le Bon considers limitations of the variability of the beliefs and opinions of crowds. Le Bon considers fixed beliefs of crowds, noting how they have formed, as well as the possibility of changeability of beliefs of crowds, arguing that beliefs of crowds have become more and more in flux and that further the beliefs of crowds tend towards indifference. The third "Book" of this book is entitled "The Classification and Description of the Different Kinds of Crowds". Le Bon begins by considering the classification of crowds into heterogeneous and homogeneous crowds. Le Bon argues that there are different races which constitute crowds and examines the effect of race and civilization in contrast to barbarism. Le Bon further argues that there are different kinds of homogeneous crowds including sects, castes, and classes. Following this, le Bon examines criminal crowds. Le Bon considers their psychology and the role of the unconscious. Le Bon further considers the role of crowds in the September massacre as well as other criminal crowds. Following this, le Bon considers criminal juries as crowds. Le Bon examines the role of juries arguing that they serve a useful purpose and should not be replaced by magistrates. Le Bon examines statistics on juries arguing that their decisions are often superior to those of experts or magistrates in that they are frequently more lenient and less prone to personal vendettas. Following this, le Bon considers electoral crowds. Le Bon points out some inferior points of democracy but notes that it also has some strong points as well. Le Bon notes the role of electoral crowds in the committees of the Revolution as well as the role of universal suffrage. Following this, le Bon ends by considering parliamentary assemblies, noting the roles of leaders and the progressive loss of liberties with the increase of state power. Le Bon ends by reflecting upon the rise and fall of civilizations and the passage into barbarism and relating this to his discussion of crowds.

This book offers a classic study of the crowd psychology. It was an important book for many during the early half of the Twentieth century during a period when totalitarianisms were developing and in which crowds arose led by powerful leaders. This book continues to be important though for what it has to say about the role of the crowd and large groups of people. It is recommended to those who want to understand mass psychology and the role that crowds play in society and politics.

Editorial Review:

One of the greatest and most influential books of social psychology ever written, brilliantly instructive on the general characteristics and mental unity of a crowd, its sentiments and morality, ideas, reasoning power, imagination, opinions and much more. A must-read volume  for students of history, sociology, law and psychology.

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

Noam Chomsky

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I love it. If Only I Could Read It! 5 out of 5 stars.
49 of 57 people found this review helpful.

I am influenced by Chomsky more than any other political philosopher (although he seems to encompass much more than a mere career categorization). I've studied him on and off for the past five years, and I find it harder and harder to rely on mass media (TV, radio, movies, increasingly more of the internet) for any information. It's like lost innocence. One can never look at these things the same after reading Chomsky.

In this book, he tackles these themes, but concentrates a great deal on U.S. international relations. The equation is basically this: corporations control the government and own the media. U.S. international relations are directly affected and influenced by the whims of multinationals; namely the desire for [inexpensive] production and [inexpensive] resources, exploiting civilians and foreign lands to achieve these means. The government is in the pocket of the corporations.

The ordinary American has little say. We may vote; but we vote for one party; solely representing the interests of the rich, and the huge corporations.

That's a bit of Chomsky in a nutshell. This book supports these arguments with EXHAUSTIVE research. I admit, I found it exhausting to read, but not from lack of interest. He is detailed; which makes his arguments valid. He uses countless examples, all supported by the contradictory historical actions and propaganda of U.S. foreign relations; where the government lies to the public via the media. There are so many quotes and supportive examples that the bibliography could be 40 pages long!

So, I love Chomsky. However I really don't like reading him; but I try. I find the easiest way to get the big picture of Chomsky's views is by watching the documentary, Manufacturing Consent, reading Z Magazine, and also "The Real Story" series of transcribed interviews with Chomsky.

Perhaps I'm just a lazy reader. However I think this book legitimizes many of Chomsky's views, in a dense, detailed, way. But without these supporting examples and quotes, his views couldn't be seen as valid.