Impact: The Recommended List

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Reuters/Miguel Vidal

In the most recent Stanford Business magazine, we explored the idea of impact and how your actions can produce change in life and work, in your local neighborhood, and in the global community.

Our professors offered up their favorite books, articles, and videos on the subject.

Shai Bernstein

• “Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity,” by Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ron Jarmin, Josh Lerner, and Javier Miranda, American Economic Review, 2014
• “Wisdom or Madness? Comparing Crowds with Expert Evaluation in Funding the Arts,” by Ethan Mollick and Ramana Nanda, Management Science (forthcoming)

Elizabeth Blankespoor

• “How the Nixon-Kennedy Debate Changed the World,” by Kayla Webley, Time, Sept. 23, 2010
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, 2005
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, 2011

Pedro Gardete

• Get Off Your “But”: How to End Self-Sabotage and Stand Up for Yourself, by Sean Stephenson, 2009
• Rhetoric, by Aristotle
• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams, 2013

Kristin Laurin

• “Religion and Problem Gambling in the U.S.,” by John P. Hoffmann, Review of Religious Research, 2000
• “Religion as a Meaning-Making Framework in Coping with Life Stress,” by Crystal L. Park, Journal of Social Issues, 2005

William F. Meehan III

• Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder, 2003
• The Road to Character, by David Brooks, 2015
• The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly, 2006

Margaret Neale

• Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, 2008
• Influence, by Robert B. Cialdini, 2009
• The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence, by Steve J. Martin, Noah J. Goldstein, and Robert B. Cialdini, 2014
• Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate – Negotiation: How to Get (More of) What You Want (online course)

Ken Shotts

• “Estimating the Value of Political Connections,” by Raymond Fisman, American Economic Review, 2001
• Nation-States and the Multinational Corporation: A Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment, by Nathan M. Jensen, 2006
• “Analyzing Political Risks in Developing Countries: A Practical Framework for Project Managers,” by Saumitra Jha, Business and Politics, 2013

Ilya Strebulaev

• “Why Software is Eating the World,”by Marc Andreessen, Wall Street Journal

Robb Willer

• The Person and the Situation, by Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett, 1991
• “The Effects of Contracts on Interpersonal Trust,” by Deepak Malhotra and J. Keith Murnighan, Administrative Science Quarterly, 2002