I believe practitioners and academics should take a look at this book.

My
personal feeling is that the concepts are too obvious and basic and that
surely more is needed. Sometimes, however, it is the basics which elude us.
Geoffrey N, DeLacy, General Manager, John P. Young & Associates (Qld.)
Pty. Ltd.
* * * *

Winning at Work: Your Questions Answered by Paul. Stevens. Edward

Arnold Australia. 1987
This book is aimed at the popular market not at the Human Resources
practitioner.
The book is well written and easy to understand. It has no jargon that
places additional demands on the reader to comprehend the subject mat-
ter. The author has used his training and experience over many years to
present and answer some relevant questions about work. Each answer is set
out in logical detail. In spite of a complete absence of statistics, the answers
are practical and professional.
I have been in a public employment service for over sixteen years and
feel that I and most other workers can benefit from this book, especially if
one is seeking a promotion with one’s present firm or a new job with
another firm. There are numerous methods presented for those presently
employed, such as networking or using a mentor which give valuable prac-
tical advice. For those seeking their first job the book suggests goal setting
as a path to employment. If one is experiencing problems at work, help is
given with stress, delegation, staff development, getting noticed or how to
make the system work for you. It also deals with how to fire someone, what
to do if you are fired yourself and how to create an ’anti-firing kit’.
There are techniques for self improvement and excellent personal evalu-
ation tests. The interview process gets a mention with cues to assist insight
into how it works. There are even a few questions to ask a panel at the end
of an interview.
Included also are recent views on relocation and retirement packages
which could be negotiated with employers in some cases.
There is something practical for everyone in Winning at Work, whether
you are about to enter the workforce, presently working or nearly finished
your working career. The key feature is that the book is not long so the mini-
mum of time will be spent finding what you want to know.

Ellery Teare, Wyong, N.S.W. 2259

* * * *

Motivation and Work Behavior. Fourth Edition, by Richard M. Steers and

Lyman W. Porter (Eds.). McGraw-Hill, New York, 1987. xii & 595pp.
$38.95 (paperback).
This is the fourth edition of this book of readings on motivation and
work behaviour; the others have been published in 1975,1979, and 1983.

106
The aim of the book has in each case been to integrate and synthesize the
major theories of motivation which have emerged over the past two dec-
ades, and to examine their usefulness in understanding some of the main
issues in the field now known as organisational behaviour. It does this by
helping the reader to achieve three things: a general knowledge of the con-
cept of motivation; a knowledge of the major current theories; and an
understanding of how motivational processes relate to other organisational
variables, such as performance, commitment, absenteeism and turnover.
The book consists essentially of sets of readings on various topics, with
integrating remarks by the editors.
The target audiences for the book are students of organisational and
industrial psychology and general management, and managers interested
in the specific topic of work motivation. Whilst the editors don’t dis-
tinguish between graduate and undergraduate students in their target
group, my experience has been that it is appropriate to both.
The book is organised in a number of sections. Apart from the usual
introductory and concluding chapters, there are two major groupings:
theoretical approaches (which cover need, cognitive and reinforcement/
social learning theories), and applied issues in work motivation. This latter
grouping contains separate sections on reward systems, social influences,
careers, absenteeism and turnover, managing marginal performance, job
design and quality of work, and motivation in ’other contexts (covering
public organisations, voluntary organisations, and comparisions between
Japanese and American management styles). Only ten of the 35 readings
were published less recently than in the last ten years, and two were written
specially for this volume. There is an overwhelming preponderance of
American scholars represented, only one reading originating from outside
‘

the U.S.
The changes from the third edition are significant enough to validate the
need for this new edition. Thirteen new readings appear, replacing 16
which appeared in the third edition. Whilst many of these are not funda-
mentally different from those they replaced, the sections on careers in
organisations and managing marginal performance do represent new
directions for this work. The new reading by Richard E. Walton, ’From con-
trol to commitment in organizations’, taken from the Harvard Business
Review of 1985, wins my vote as the most important new offering, and
compensates somewhat for the omission in this edition of a section on com-
mitment and attachment to organisations (the appropriate readings on this
topic do, however, tend to appear elsewhere in the volume).
I have set this book as the text for my undergraduate unit on motivation
for the second successive year, so plainly I think it’s worthwhile. The read-
ings communicate very clearly the issues involved, and the editors’ inte-
grating text is very effective.
I do have some reservations about it, however.
First, the American cultural bias needs to be redressed if it is to reach a
truly international market. At the least, there should be some greater
explicit recognition of the need to take account of cultural differences in
motivation, both internationally and intranationally. Second, since this
edition omits the section which appeared in the last on ’job attitudes, stress
and performance’, there is no reading which deals specifically with either

107
job satisfaction or jc~b involvement. Given the common belief among man-
agers that satisfaction is a cause of performance (a belief which is acknowl-
edged, but in passing, on p. 78) and given the conceptual closeness of jab
involvement to motivation, it is disappointing to note this omission. (I will
continue to refer my students to the paper by Cynthia Fisher, in the third
edition, ’On the dubious idea of expecting job satisfaction to correlate with
performance’, to emphasise that satisfaction and motivation are not
synonymous.)
Third, the book continues to ignore the effect on motivation of interests
and vocational preferences (Holland, 1985). Whilst the introductory
remarks, in discussing the variables which are likely to affect motivation,
do acknowledge the importance of interests, there is no reading dealing
with this issue nor its implications (which include the consequent import-
ance of traditional HRM strategies of effective selection, allocation and
career planning, an importance not fully reflected in the book). Equally,
there is no mention of (~’~ri~n’s critique of the job characteristics model
and his well-founded argument for the inclusion of ’skill utilization’ as a
determinant of job satisfaction (O’Brien, 1986). Fourth, given the aca-
demic importance of the job characteristics model (as evidenced by the
amount of research it has generated and continues to generate) there is
insufficient recognition of the growing doubts about its fundamental val-
idity, including the influence (or lack of it) of individual differences (as
indicated by need differences) on the relationship between job factors and
motivation (ibid).
Given these limitations, the book falls a little short of its aims, but it still
represents good value as a text for an OB unit, for senior undergraduates,
graduate students and managers on long management courses. I would
advise those running such courses, however, to balance its deficiencies by
appropriate references to the points I have enumerated above.
References
Holland, J. L. (1985) Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Vocational Personalities and
Work Environments. 2nd Ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall.
O’Brien, G. E. (1986) Psychology of Work and Unemployment. Chichester, Wiley.
Nick Jans, School of Management, Canberra College of Advanced
Education.

Riding the Waves of Change by Gareth Morgan. Jossey Boss, 1988.

This latest book, from Gareth Morgan in Toronto, Canada, is based on
the results of his recent research studying emerging managerial
competencies those likely to be needed in the 1990s and beyond. The
-

project involved a number of senior Canadian business executives, largely

C.E.O.s, in an action learning mode and focused on exploring likely key
environmental trends which their organisations might conceivably face in
the future. Specifically, the project was directed at identifying significant
fracture lines or points of discontinuity and then speculating on the mana-
gerial skills most likely to be needed either in a reactive or proactive style
of response.

108