Organizations and Markets

Interesting New Books

15 November 2010 at 4:39 pm Peter G. Klein 5 comments

| Peter Klein |

In place of the “What I’ve Been Reading Lately” posts that show up regularly on certain blogs, I hereby offer something slightly less egocentric, the “What I’ve Been Receiving Lately” post. It contains a list of books I’ve recently received by mail, some by choice, others because publishers sent them (perhaps hoping I’d blog about them — Mission Accomplished!). Not the most scientific sample selection process, but there you go.

• Jesús Huerta de Soto, Socialism, Economic Calculation, and Entrepreneurship (Elgar, 2010). English translation of an important work first published in Spanish in 1992.
• Guinevere Liberty Nell, Rediscovering Fire: Basic Economic Lessons from the Soviet Experiment (Algora, 2010). What the failure of central planning teaches about markets and institutions.
• Koray Çaliskan, Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity (Princeton, 2010). Economic sociology meets global commodity systems. Contains dust-jacket endorsements from Richard Swedberg and Donald MacKenzie, so expect a review from the orgtheory boys soon.
• Peter J. Boettke, ed., Handbook on Contemporary Austrian Economics (Elgar, 2010). Essays by young Austrian economists associated with George Mason University.
• Robert E. Wright, Fubarnomics: A Lighthearted, Serious Look at America’s Economic Ills (Prometheus, 2010). I think the title says it all.
• Ranjay Gulati, Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business (Harvard Business School, 2010). Looks fluffy, but I have a teaching interest in change management so I’ll give it the benefit if the doubt.
• David Stark, The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life (Princeton, 2009). Also deals with organizational change, but in a more serious way. Ethnographic studies of three organizations dealing with large exogenous shocks. Looks interesting.

Entry filed under: - Klein -, Austrian Economics, Entrepreneurship, Food and Agriculture, Management Theory, Recommended Reading, Strategic Management, Teaching, Theory of the Firm.