Author
Jim Triplett
THE BOOKS
The latest addition to my portfolio is Surviving Introduction to Finance, designed to assist the first-time student in a finance course. My first published book, Organizational Design: A Holistic View, remains the top-selling book and has been adopted for use in classes ranging from organizational behavior to principles of management and organizational change management.
Surviving Introduction to Finance
The idea for this book came from my experiences as a finance instructor and tutor. Repeated observations of learners and areas where they struggle, ask for clarification, or request assistance working problems has led me to the main items I cover in this book. This is meant not to be an introduction to finance text but instead a guidebook that addresses the most common questions and areas of concern. It can be used as a supplement while taking an introduction to finance course or it can be reviewed prior to taking a course. A few individuals interviewed as part of preparation for this text also noted how it serves as a useful review for those who have completed the course in the past (new graduate students, for instance, in an MBA program).
Organizational Design: A Holistic View
Many elements of an organization's structure are clearly visible, such as organizational charts, categorizations such as a partnership or corporation, job descriptions, and various legal documents yet these still fall short of illustrating how an organization is designed, interacts with its environment, learns, and evolves. The analogy of the blind men feeling various parts of an elephant and coming up with different perspectives is a real phenomenon with organizational structure as well given that various stakeholders will interact with the organizational structure and come away with very distinct views of how the organization is structured. A single or few perspectives of organizational structure then are insufficient to describe a given organization. Systems and the view of structure as recurring activities are the underlying themes of this book.
On Ethics, Diversity, and Conflict
The purpose of this book is to provide readers with an understanding of how ethics, diversity, and conflict are interwoven as well as a practical means with which to view situations from these angles. If one is looking for a “How to be ethical … in x easy steps” such as what one would find on the New York Times Business Best Sellers list, complete with the shallowness and laughable bases of the assertions, this is not for you. Rather than providing superficial and ineffective ways to find one’s cheese or be a leader in twelve easy steps I provide some frameworks with which to view the situations. What you do with them is up to you. Frameworks, much like microscopes or the five-step hypothesis model, allow one to analyze and better understand a situation before deciding what to do. Models do not make decisions, people ultimately do. Anyone interested in sparking a heated debate need look no further than the topics of ethics and diversity to spark lively debate.
On Organizational Effectiveness and Change
The second volume in the graduate years series focuses on effective leadership. The topics covered include how to conduct research in an environment that is subjective, leadership styles, followership styles and the environment,and the role of informal structures in a dynamic environment. The measurements tend to, at best, be nominal or ordinal with some occasional higher level data and are better addressed through qualitative research studies, particularly when it comes to measuring leader / follower satisfaction. Once these are better understood, one may have a higher probability of aligning goals and realizing success.
On Leadership, Salad, and the American Revolution
The world of literature surrounding the notion of leadership may be characterized as a sea of potential explanations littered with the debris of academic and professional models – both empirical and conjecture – that may have been useful for a given point in time or situation. One is left wondering whether there is one defining view of leadership that may at least come close to being considered universal. The result of this wondering is a view on leadership that may, or may not, end up like the debris floating on the sea of possibilities previously mentioned. All of this is framed within the context of pre- and post-Revolutionary War America. The efficacy of the result is up to the reader to discern.