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The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First. Jeffrey Pfeffer. 1998. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. 368 pages.
The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First by Jeffrey Pfeffer is a management book directed at the leadership of today's organizations. Citing numerous studies, the author's own experience, and individual organizations as evidence, Pfeffer points to a direct correlation between successful financial performance of a company and its management practices that treat its employees more sensibly and humanely. Pfeffer is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He has written several management books and has consulted in the United States as well as other countries.
After publishing Competitive Advantage Through People in 1994, through the course of his work, Pfeffer acquired a better understanding of causes and concerns that affect human resource issues and their effect on the economic well being of an organization. Intrigued and troubled by the trends he observed in management, as well as some reactions to his previous book, Pfeffer wanted to explore some explanations to the discrepancy between theory and research, and what companies were actually doing. He saw a trend in research pointing in one direction-evidence that there is a strong connection between how...