Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/124472
and Hellwig of the Max Planck Institute. "Today's banking system, even with proposed reforms, is as dangerous and fragile as the system that brought us the recent crisis." The authors are adamant that banking is not a complex, mysterious occupation that only special minds can comprehend. They're convinced that the common taxpayer can easily grasp the concepts behind borrowing, lending, and risk, and they make good on their promise to explain these elements in readily understandable prose. This is important, they believe, because if more people understand what went wrong in the last crisis, more voices will be raised in the next round of debates—and more voters will pressure their governments to put in place the necessary reforms. THE GREAT REBALANCING AUTHOR: Michael Pettis PUBLISHER: Princeton University Press, US$29.95 Peking University's Pettis also Don't Miss In Flux, University of Toronto professors David Soberman and Dilip Soman present 15 essays on the new business landscape for marketing and branding products. The essays, written by the editors and their colleagues at Toronto, examine everything from brand management in a Web 2.0 world to the psychological effects on customers forced to wait in long lines. Soberman and Soman are keenly aware that academic research can improve business's understanding of the customer experience. They write, "Academics, marketers, and other specialists need to learn to work better together to refresh and reshape marketing practice in our ever-changing landscape." (University of Toronto Press, US$35.95) "All human beings are biased," assert Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan in The Inclusion Dividend. Our brains must constantly cope with staggering amounts of information, so we create shortcuts by making decisions based on very little data—such as stereotypes. But while these shortcuts might have saved the caveman's life, they can bring down the modern corporation. Kaplan and Donovan, of the leadership development organization The Dagoba Group, make the business case for diversity and inclusion. Then they share ways that leaders can overcome their unconscious biases to create strong, multicultural, high-functioning enterprises. (Bibliomotion, US$34.95) While lawyers have long relied on storytelling in the courtroom, and doctors are beginning to encourage it in the exam room, businesspeople traditionally have put their faith in numbers instead of narrative, notes Janis Forman in Storytelling in Business. But Forman provides compelling case studies that show why storytelling works in a business setting, whether it's CEO Fred Hassan plotting out the turnaround of ScheringPlough or Chevron recording "Human Energy Stories" by employees and other stakeholders. She writes, "Stories can cut through the busyness to capture attention, engage and influence people, create meaning, exemplify values, and gain trust." Or, more simply, "People are hardwired for stories." (Stanford Business Books, US$29.95) takes on the economic crisis, placing it in a broad historical context and taking the long holistic view. He doesn't blame sophisticated financial tools for the situation, and he rejects "old-fashioned morality" arguments that claim spendthrift citizens can send their countries spiraling into bankruptcy. Instead, he points at the same culprits that have caused financial disruptions for centuries—trade imbalances between countries—and traces these imbalances to the policies that the nations themselves have put in place. But each nation's policy, or changes in policy, will have domino effects around the world, he warns. "Japanese interest rates, Spanish real estate bubbles, American mortgage derivatives, and copper mining in Chile are all part of a single system in which distortions in any one part must have automatic consequences for the other." Pettis discusses the ways trade balances can occur; explores the links among trade, the savings rate, and international capital flows; and examines the role of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. It's complex but fascinating reading. BizEd May/June 2013 69