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Jackson Library

 

Featured Faculty Books: The No Asshole Rule

Robert I. Sutton, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business; Professor of Management Science and Engineering, School of Engineering; Co-Director of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization; Co-founder of the Hasso Platner Institute of Design at Stanford; IDEO Fellow

 

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The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't
by Robert I. Sutton. Random House, 2007

• Work Matters-Learn more about the book at Sutton's blog

Video: Professor Sutton's Lesson (4:42 min)- at 50lessons.com

Video: Follow-up Interview (7:28 min. RealPlayer format; Download RealPlayer)

 

Reviews

 

Book Description

Today's deluge of business books exhaustively addresses problems with leadership, corporate strategy, sales, budgeting, incentives, innovation, execution, and on and on. But scant attention is devoted to a problem that plagues every workplace: Assholes. In a landmark Harvard Business Review essay, Stanford Professor Robert Sutton showed how assholes weren't just an office nuisance, but a serious and costly threat to corporate success and employee health. In his new book, Sutton reveals the huge TCA (Total Cost of Assholes) in today's corporations. He shows how to spot an asshole (hint: they are addicted to rude interruptions and subtle putdowns, and enjoy using "sarcastic jokes" and "teasing" as "insult delivery systems"), and provides a "self-test" to determine whether you deserve to be branded as a "certified asshole." And he offers tips that you can use to keep your "inner jerk" from rearing its ugly head.

Sutton then uses in-depth research and analysis to show how managers can eliminate mean-spirited and unproductive behavior (while positively channeling some of the virtues of assholes) to generate an asshole free-and newly productive-workplace. Enlightening case studies include an analysis of how Google's "don't be evil" maxim helped launch the company to unprecedented early growth, how JetBlue and Southwest Airlines "fire" passengers who demean their employees, and how a "belligerent" e-mail from Cerner CEO Neal Patterson made his company's stock plunge 22% in three days (and how his graceful apology helped the stock bounce back).

About Robert I. Sutton

 

Professor Sutton has taught at the Haas Business School and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His honors include the award for the best paper published in the Academy of Management Journal, induction into the Academy of Management Journal's Hall of Fame, the Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching, the McGraw-Hill Innovation in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award, the McCullough Faculty Scholar Chair from Stanford, and selection by Business 2.0 as a leading "management guru" in 2002.

Sutton has published over 100 articles and chapters in scholarly and applied publications, and has published seven books and edited volumes. His most recent book is Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation (The Free Press, 2002), which was selected by the Harvard Business Review as one of the 10 best business books of the year and as a breakthrough business idea. He (and Jeffrey Pfeffer) just published Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (Harvard Business School Press, 2006).
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