[Pen-l] BBC | What's your boss reading?

[ravi <ravi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7540649.stm

Recent years have seen a spate of books marketed at managers, often  
from the worlds of "behavioural economics" and pop psychology, and  
yours may be the latest to enthuse about nudges, tipping points,  
wikinomics, or - for those behind the curve - long tails.

Oh wow

These books are easy to spot: they have a simple metaphor, usually  
expressed in a single word that makes for a large-type, grabby cover.  
They relate a string of Bill Bryson-style anecdotes or quirky  
experiments to elicit "oh wow" moments from the reader and to suggest  
that everything you believe is laughably wrong. Words like "secret"  
and "undercover" are likely to appear in the secondary title.

And they tend to insinuate that their central simple metaphor explains  
everything you've ever wondered about, from why people pick their nose  
to how wars start.

Economics getting tough

There's actually nothing new in explaining how people decide or why  
people believe - it's called sociology. But if your boss wouldn't want  
to be caught with a sociology book in their luggage, there is now a  
range of delicious bite-sized chunks in books with titles like The  
Undercover Economist, The Rogue Economist and The Hidden Side Of  
Everything. Economics - once academia's dry "dismal science" - has  
decided to get tough.

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