EC columnist Mallen Baker suggests some worthy tomes readers may want to delve into for some wisdom over the festive season this Christmas.

There are a lot of books out there about corporate social responsibiity.

You should certainly read some of them. But if you only ever read works produced by people who embrace the concept and the language of CSR, you will only ever follow the received wisdom.

There are a lot of books out there about corporate social responsibiity. You should certainly read some of them.

But if you only ever read works produced by people who embrace the concept and the language of CSR, you will only ever follow the received wisdom.

Received wisdom is often wrong. Or if it isn't, you should be able to see the echoes and the undercurrents of it in all sorts of places.

My own reading is eclectic to say the least.

I am fascinated by books that look at what makes successful businesses work, or ones that question how people make decisions, or ones that just take a completely different perspective.

Because that way, you broaden your resource base of examples, and you better become able to leave behind the ugly jargon of CSR and focus on the broader themes.

That's the theory, in any case. If you agree, I offer a few recent reads that I would actively recommend that anyone interested in CSR should read - and why. None of these are CSR books, although I will try to bring in a few of those in a later piece.

So, my recommended books - in no particular order are:

Small Giants: Companies that choose to be great instead of big - Bo Burlingham

Everybody knows that what start-up businesses aim to do is to grow ... and to grow and then grow some more. At some point, the company may be bought up by a big corporate.

But what if you actively don't want to follow that model - because you believe in the values of the business you have created and what it can achieve?

There are a number of companies like that - and here Bo Burlingham profiles fourteen of them.

The founders of these companies have resisted all sorts of pressures to follow the conventional wisdom - and by so doing they have demonstrated an alternative model for success.

They focus on being the best at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing top class customer service and making a difference to their local community.

These are not social enterprises - they are just examples of the positive power of a certain type of doing business. It's not the only type of business that is positive - the big corporates have a lot going for them.

But anyone interested in the value, and values, of organising successful businesses with find this an interesting read.

http://www.mallenbaker.net/jump.php?Link=70

The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the power of relationships to achieve high performance - Jody Hoffer Gittell

This book about the management approach of Southwest Airlines doesn't use the phrase 'corporate social responsibility' once, but there is no other business that better for me embeds and practices so many of the core principles to devastatingly good business effect.

Here is a company that works overtime to get employees working together, to treat its own people well to the extent of being the only airline to refuse to lay people off in the wake of the September 11th terrorist outrage.

It treats its suppliers as partners, its customers like stakeholders.

You can argue if you like that the entire business model of low-cost airlines has a limited future in the face of climate change, but people will always want to travel and Southwest Airlines has shown itself consistently able to solve some of the most difficult problems that have been thrown in its way.

The values of the business, and how they are implemented, should be studied by everyone wanted to run a responsible and successful business.

This book does a great job in outlining some of the key management practices that have made the company the US's most successful airline. Highly recommended.

http://www.mallenbaker.net/jump.php?Link=71

On Leadership - Allan Leighton

Allan Leighton is one of the UK's premier business leaders, and one who is both passionate and articulate when it comes to values in business, treating employees well, and building a better workplace.

Here, he outlines some of the leadership lessons he has learned through his time at the head of one of the UK's largest retailers, to the current day as chairman of the country's postal operator.

In addition, he brings together the voices of many of the country's foremost business leaders to add their own lessons.

Many of these business leaders have played a leading part in the network of UK CEOs that have promoted workplace diversity or environmental responsibility.

This is not a 'CSR' book, but embedded throughout in looking at what makes great leadership there is a commitment to values and doing the right thing by the people in the business.

For CSR managers or students, the book provides a high quality insight into the mindset of some of those CEOs that have been most receptive to the power of business as a positive force in the world.

http://www.mallenbaker.net/jump.php?Link=72

Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

This book is a masterly treatise of how looking at the facts in a different way - asking the right questions - can give some interesting insights into what really goes on, and how people really behave.

Even though the book doesn't focus heavily on the business context for such questions, there are some interesting insights.

For instance, the bagel salesman, who collected accurate data on how many based in the offices he served cheated the honour system he set up - and the fact that those in senior positions in those companies seemed more inclined to cheat than those lower below.

There are some thoughts around the cheating teachers, and how badly thought out incentives in the workplace can, and almost inevitably do, lead some people to seek to 'game the system'.

I would love to see some of the methodology in this book applied to some basic business ethics cases - of course, the prerequisite is to get the accurate source data in the first place.

But in the meantime I recommend this book to anyone who would like to get a sense of how you move beyond the obvious.

http://www.mallenbaker.net/jump.php?Link=73

The Halo Effect: How managers let themselves be deceived - Phil Rosenzweig

If you're not challenging your preconceptions about how things work at least once a month, you're in danger of getting complacent. This is the book I am reading at the moment, and it's absolutely fascinating stuff.

The central proposition is that a lot of experts post-rationalise why successful companies have succeeded, or failed, and that these rationalisations although the claim to be based on analysis are flaky at best.

In some ways, this plays to my existing beliefs - I have been banging on for years about dodgy arguments made in support of the business case for CSR - anything that pretends you can draw a line of cause and effect between responsible business practice and superior financial results.

This book is a much better articulated version - not specific to CSR in any way, but no less directly relevant for that.

In other ways, it delights me by challenging my beliefs. I am a great fan, for instance, of the Collins & Porras 'Built to Last' book - which is one of the most influential pieces of research about what makes an enduringly successful company.

The assumptions behind that book, and the research, are savaged by Rosenzweig here - and quite convincingly so. Which means that when I've finished reading, I need to review and consider what I think escapes the criticism, and what should be changed in the light of it.

Anyone reading this book should look with a new sceptical eye at the surveys that claim to prove that CSR benefits the bottom line, and the validity of the various Indices, and so on.

That's a good thing, because the worst thing for supporters of corporate social responsibility is to float one's view in an inherently leaky boat.

http://www.mallenbaker.net/jump.php?Link=74

The links given below each review is to the Amazon website where you can read more about the book.

They are affiliate links, so if you then choose to buy one of the books a small contribution will go towards running this newsletter. If you'd rather not do that, just go to your local Amazon and search on the title

Reproduced from Mallen's Business Respect e-newsletter with kind permission.