Sheila M. Puffer's Book Recommendations:

  STORY TOOLS

Printer-Friendly Version

E-Mail This Story

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

  PEOPLE SEARCH

Search for business contacts:

First Name :

Last Name :

Company Name :

PREMIUM SEARCH
Search by job title, geography and build a list of executive contacts

Factory and Manager in the USSR by Joseph S. Berliner
This book resulted from a project in which Berliner and others conducted extensive interviews with managers who had emigrated from the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II. This major undertaking revealed the inner workings of Soviet factories and the experiences of those who ran them at a time when little was known about these things. I was fortunate to have talked for many years with Professor Berliner at Harvard's Russian Research Center with which we both were affiliated.

The Red Executive by David Granick
Granick's work provides in-depth insights into the professional and personal characteristics of this industrial elite, as well as the structure and operations of major Soviet industries and their ruling bureaucracies.

Sheila M. Puffer
Northeastern University

Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration by Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch
This seminal work guided business research and practice for decades on how organizations should be designed to fit their environments.

Business Policy and Strategy by Daniel J. McCarthy, Robert J. Minichiello, and Joseph R. Curran
The integrative material throughout the book provided an excellent framework for interpreting the readings and cases in a strategic context.

Men and Women of the Corporation by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
This award-winning book is based on an in-depth study of power and status in a major U.S. corporation. It raised important issues of relationships and networks and questioned the inequalities in the roles and treatment of women vs. men.

The New Russian Business Leaders by Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, Stanislav Shekshnia, Konstantin Korotov, and Elizabeth Florent-Treacy
This is a fascinating account of six successful Russian business leaders of different-sized private companies that emerged in the 1990s. The book also includes rich insights into Russian culture that aid in understanding the leadership styles and behaviors of these pioneering business leaders.

We the Living by Ayn Rand
This is the first book by the controversial novelist and philosopher, Ayn Rand, who acknowledged that the novel was highly autobiographical. Although the story was fictional, the values and convictions of the protagonist reflected her own. Set in Petrograd in the early 1920s after the Russian revolution, the novel depicts the struggle of individuals fighting for their own happiness in the face of the oppressiveness of the totalitarian state.

The Ambassadors by Henry James
James' novel, which he considered to be his "most perfect" work of art, is a recognized masterpiece depicting the late 19th-century culture and manners of Boston and Paris, two cities I love so well. This elegant novel provides luminous and lyrical historical background on American and European lifestyles and mind-sets.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Woody Allen is said to have quipped after a two-hour speed reading of Tolstoy's War and Peace, "It's about some Russians." So is Pasternak's novel, but its breadth and beauty have led me to read it slowly and thoughtfully more than once. Doctor Zhivago centers on the life of a doctor and poet during the tumultuous times of the 1917 Russian revolution.

The Silent Cradle by Margaret Cuthbert
This suspense novel about an African-American obstetrician in Berkeley, Calif., benefits from the medical expertise of the author, herself an African-American obstetrician from that city. I personally benefited from her expertise, as did my son, as the two of us were Cuthbert's first patients. Beyond the personal relationship, her novel appeals to me because it uses fiction to describe the dynamics of work organizations.



Biographical Info: Sheila M. Puffer is a professor of International Business at Northeastern University. She is also a fellow at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University, and recently served as program director of the Gorbachev Foundation of North America. She has been recognized as the No. 1 scholar internationally in business and management in Russia, the former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, according to a 2005 Journal of International Business Studies article analyzing publications in 13 leading academic journals from 1986 to 2003. She also ranks as the No. 1 most published author (tied) in the Journal of World Business from 1993 to 2003. Puffer has more than 125 publications, including more than 50 refereed articles and 11 books. Puffer earned a degree from the executive management program at the Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy in Moscow, and holds BA (Slavic Studies) and MBA degrees from the University of Ottawa, and a PhD in business administration from the University of California at Berkeley.