Content area
Full Text
Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right. By Joseph L. Badaracco. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. 146 pages. $19.95. Reviewed by Colonel Michael D. Jones, 1998 graduate of the US Army War College.
Joseph Badaracco sheds new light on senior leaders' decisionmaking in his thought-provoking monograph Defining Moments. The subtitle, When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right, strikes at the heart of the most perplexing strategic decisions.
Badaracco skillfully weaves three case studies through his analysis to demonstrate the difficulty of making tough decisions. First, there is Steve Lewis, a secondyear investment analyst at a prestigious New York investment firm. Asked to attend a client presentation for a project which he has not been working on, he discovers he was called because the client, like himself, is black. His attendance will reflect favorably on the firm but misleads the client to believe Lewis is a principal in the project. He must decide whether to enhance his career or refuse to be used as a "token minority."
His personal values are on the line. In the second case study, Peter Adario, a marketing department leader in a very competitive business, has an unmarried female employee who wants to fire one of her subordinates. The...