Pre-MBA Business Books: Saïd Business School Recommendations II

John Roberts, an economics professor emeritus at Stanford Graduate School of Business , delivers powerful conceptual frameworks for thinking about the world's evolving corporate structures; their routines and processes, and their organizational cultures.

“John Roberts has developed the notion of complementarities and fit that are now critical to the current construction of platforms and ecosystems. This book describes his thinking and how it can be applied to organizational design for innovation and performance; a fundamental framework that will be of great use to MBA students,” says Samel.

Edgar Schein is a former MIT Sloan professor and is, incidentally, credited for inventing the term 'corporate culture’. In Humble Inquiry, Schein analyzes the importance of effective communication and its value within a healthy organization.

“It’s a leadership classic, but probably more current than ever in a time when we are just too keen to tell everyone what we think, rather than listen actively to what others have to say. In our hyper-connected and complex world, genuine influence is more likely to rest in better questions, rather than louder answers,” says Smets.

Lawrence Freedman is an authority on international politics and war, and has written extensively on the Cold War and nuclear strategy, alongside commentating regularly on modern-day security issues.

“In my view, ‘strategy’ is a word that has become very overused and business schools, as well as consulting firms and executives, all shoulder some of the blame. In this book, Freedman provides the most wide-ranging examination of what strategy means, how it developed historically and what it means in many different areas of human activity.

“MBA students who have the time to read this huge book will be armed with a much wider understanding of this concept than is ever taught in b-school classes and will have a richer appreciation of the context in which they will be asked to think in an MBA course, if they devote the time to read this book,” says Morris.

A lighter bit of pre-MBA reading can often present itself as welcome respite. The Boys in the Boat is a narrative non-fiction story of a young boy called Joe Rantz who is abandoned in childhood and left to fend for himself in the woods of Washington State. He later goes on to use rowing to escape his past, and what follows is an extraordinary journey.  

“It’s a classic underdog story about the University of Washington rowing crew team that wins gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It’s a terrific account of determination, teamwork and the extraordinary things ordinary people can achieve when they pull together,” says Smets.

Steven Pinker, an experimental cognitive psychologist takes a positive stance on the future of our collective culture. In The Better Angels of Our Nature he relays how modernity and our cultural institutions are, contrary to what one might believe, making more people do good.

“Steven Pinker's book takes a huge historical sweep and seeks to explain the apparent decline of violence in everyday life. For MBA students, the key is to understand how culture, at its deepest level, plus the emergence of nation states with monopolies on power, law-making and justice have influenced the way people interact with each other and our fundamental assumptions about how societies should function.

“[The book] offers a wonderful sense of history, and the power of culture and government on the way that individuals, groups and institutions function,” says Morris.   

Images:Thinking, fast and slow; The Prize; An Instance of the Fingerpost; The Modern Firm; Humble Inquiry; Strategy; The Boys in the Boat; The Better Angels of Our Nature