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127 books match the query 'Leadership' and 10 start with p

cover of Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House

Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House

David W. Rohde

University of Chicago Press, 1991

Since the Second World War, congressional parties have been characterized as declining in strength and influence. Research has generally attributed this decline to policy conflicts within parties, to growing electoral independence of members, and to the impact of the congressional reforms of the 1970s. Yet the 1980s witnessed a strong resurgence of parties and party leadership—especially in the House of Representatives.

Offering a concise and compelling explanation of the causes of this resurgence, David W. Rohde argues that a realignment of electoral forces led to a reduction of sectional divisions within the parties—particularly between the northern and southern Democrats—and to increased divergence between the parties on many important issues. He challenges previous findings by asserting that congressional reform contributed to, rather than restrained, the increase of partisanship. Among the Democrats, reforms siphoned power away from conservative and autocratic committee chairs and put control of those committees in the hands of Democratic committee caucuses, strengthening party leaders and making both party and committee leaders responsible to rank-and-file Democrats. Electoral changes increased the homogeneity of House Democrats while institutional reforms reduced the influence of dissident members on a consensus in the majority party. Rohde's accessible analysis provides a detailed discussion of the goals of the congressional reformers, the increased consensus among Democrats and its reinforcement by their caucus, the Democratic leadership's use of expanded powers to shape the legislative agenda, and the responses of House Republicans. He also addresses the changes in the relationship between the House majority and the president during the Carter and Reagan administrations and analyzes the legislative consequences of the partisan resurgence.

A readable, systematic synthesis of the many complex factors that fueled the recent resurgence of partisanship, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House is ideal for course use.
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cover of Passing the Torch: Planning for the Next Generation of Leaders in Public Service

Passing the Torch

Planning for the Next Generation of Leaders in Public Service

Karl Besel

University of Arkansas Press, 2016

Public-service executives, both elected and appointed within the public and nonprofit sectors, are retiring at record levels, and the number of Americans reaching age sixty-five annually will continue to rise over the next decade and is expected to surpass four million in 2020. Finding qualified, motivated leaders to fill vital public-service positions will challenge the public and nonprofit sectors.

Unfortunately, recent studies show that few proactive steps are being taken by public-service organizations to plan for the next generation. Passing the Torch: Planning for the Next Generation of Public-Service Leaders provides an outline for those who will be facing and managing these looming changes.

In this valuable guide, the factors that influence selection of a career in public service are explored through the authors’ years of experience as leaders in public-service organizations and through interviews with other public-service professionals. Passing the Torch will be essential for leaders of nonprofit organizations, university faculty, researchers in the field of nonprofit management, and students in nonprofit management courses.
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cover of Patton's Shadow: The Making of a Hero in Modern Memory

Patton's Shadow

The Making of a Hero in Modern Memory

Nathan C. Jones

University of Alabama Press, 2024

An engrossing account of the myth and legend of George S. Patton and what his reputation illuminates about American culture and hero worship

Patton’s Shadow by Nathan C. Jones, a leading authority on George S. Patton, offers a definitive account of the creation of the Patton legend and what it illuminates about American culture and the worship of heroes. Jones traces how the persona of Patton, a brash and brilliant general in the European theater of World War II, transcended the individual man and became a cultural icon and byword for triumphal American might.

Patton was a hero lionized and celebrated in his own time. Patton as well as the US Army cultivated his persona during and after the war. His image was used to promote patriotism, commercial goods, and military recruitment. The 1970 Academy Award–winning film starring George C. Scott cemented his iconic image for millions of Americans, further embellishing Patton’s persona and introducing him to entirely new generations of young Americans.

Patton’s Shadow is an intellectually omnivorous tour de force that draws on ideas about heroes from sources as timeless as ancient mythology and as contemporary as Abraham Maslow, Max Weber, and Carl Jung. Jones artfully locates the honored altar that heroes occupy in the human heart and then answers insightful questions about what America’s embrace of Patton in particular as a military hero illuminates about the United States, about Patton’s generation, and about our own.

Jones’s engrossing work will fascinate readers interested in American history, military history, and the psychology of heroism.

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cover of Political Standards: Corporate Interest, Ideology, and Leadership in the Shaping of Accounting Rules for the Market Economy

Political Standards

Corporate Interest, Ideology, and Leadership in the Shaping of Accounting Rules for the Market Economy

Karthik Ramanna

University of Chicago Press, 2015

Prudent, verifiable, and timely corporate accounting is a bedrock of our modern capitalist system. In recent years, however, the rules that govern corporate accounting have been subtly changed in ways that compromise these core principles, to the detriment of the economy at large. These changes have been driven by the private agendas of certain corporate special interests, aided selectively—and sometimes unwittingly—by arguments from business academia
           
With Political Standards, Karthik Ramanna develops the notion of “thin political markets” to describe a key problem facing technical rule-making in corporate accounting and beyond. When standard-setting boards attempt to regulate the accounting practices of corporations, they must draw on a small pool of qualified experts—but those experts almost always have strong commercial interests in the outcome. Meanwhile, standard setting rarely enjoys much attention from the general public. This absence of accountability, Ramanna argues, allows corporate managers to game the system. In the profit-maximization framework of modern capitalism, the only practicable solution is to reframe managerial norms when participating in thin political markets. Political Standards will be an essential resource for understanding how the rules of the game are set, whom they inevitably favor, and how the process can be changed for a better capitalism.
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cover of Politics as Leadership: Revised Edition

Politics as Leadership

Revised Edition

Robert C. Tucker

University of Missouri Press, 1995

Robert C. Tucker begins this invaluable book with an analytical look at politics, leadership, and the effect each has on the other. Aligning himself with Plato's view of politics as leadership, Tucker argues that politics is more usefully defined from this perspective than from the more familiar stance of the exercise of power. He maintains leaders must define collective problems, prescribe actions or policies, and finally seek support for their diagnoses and policy prescriptions.

Tucker contends that political science must take account not only of leadership by those in state authority, but also of sociopolitical movements for change as vehicles of attempted leadership of political communities. Dividing such movements into those for reform and those for revolution, he illustrates this distinction with examples, including Martin Luther King Jr. as a reform leader and Lenin as a revolutionary one.

Finally, Tucker raises a central question of his study: how can leadership save humankind from itself in the troubled world of today? In an insightful and moving discussion of what he calls the "crisis syndrome," Tucker analyzes problems such as population growth, resource depletion, and environmental degradation with respect to leadership. He argues that the current political process has focused on the immediate present while ignoring crises with far-reaching implications that require tough solutions.

In the epilogue to this revised edition, Tucker draws on his expertise as a Russian specialist, extending the book's discussion of leadership by viewing Mikhail Gorbachev as a reform leader in Soviet Russia and Boris Yeltsin as a post-Soviet Russian leader. Tucker also readdresses the "crisis syndrome" by examining leaders' responses in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Tucker's incisive reasoning, original insights, and commentary on the theory and practice of politics should make this revised edition of Politics as Leadership equally valuable and fascinating for experts in the field of political science and for concerned citizens.

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cover of Post-Crisis Leadership: Resilience, Renewal, and Reinvention in the Aftermath of Disruption

Post-Crisis Leadership

Resilience, Renewal, and Reinvention in the Aftermath of Disruption

Ralph A. Gigliotti

Rutgers University Press, 2025

Given the many pressures facing leaders across higher education, the work of crisis leadership remains an imperative for leaders at all levels. Attention tends to center on strategies for engaging in leadership both prior to and during crisis, often leaving the post-crisis period as an afterthought. This book introduces a research-informed framework for this critical, and often neglected, phase of crisis leadership. With an underlying commitment to values-based, principle-oriented, and people-centered practices, this framework consists of five leadership practices that are recognized as especially critical in the aftermath of crisis: (a) encourage learning, (b) inspire growth, (c) stimulate meaning-making, (d) pursue reinvention, and (e) advance renewal. Communication serves a critical role in each of the various dimensions of post-crisis leadership, and it is a communication orientation that can help to inform the paradoxes, processes, and patterns that arise during these periods of immense tension and, at times, transcendence.
 
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cover of Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire

Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire

Peter Brown

Brandeis University Press, 2001

In three magisterial essays, Peter Brown, one of the world's foremost scholars of the society and culture of late antiquity, explores the emergence in late Roman society of "the poor" as a distinct social class, one for which the Christian church claimed a special responsibility. It is the story of how a society came to see itself as responsible for the care of a particular class of people -- a class that had not previously been cared for -- and of who benefited from that shift in interests. In his characteristically elegant and lucid prose, Brown seeks to recover the pre-Christian status of poor people, the actual nature of the relations between the Christian church and the poor, and the true motivations -- sometimes sincere, sometimes self-serving -- behind Christian rhetoric of love for the poor. He draws not only on the standard Greek and Latin sources for the later Roman Empire, but also on Jewish sources to document the interactions between Middle Eastern provincial societies and classical Roman traditions. Brown gracefully illuminates a crucial transition from classical to Christian culture: the emergence of a new understanding of what society -- and the Church -- owes to the poor that continues to resonate.
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cover of Power, Institutions, and Leadership in War and Peace: Lessons from Peru and Ecuador, 1995–1998

Power, Institutions, and Leadership in War and Peace

Lessons from Peru and Ecuador, 1995–1998

By David R. Mares and David Scott Palmer

University of Texas Press, 2012

In January 1995, fighting broke out between Ecuadorian and Peruvian military forces in a remote section of the Amazon. It took more than three years and the interplay of multiple actors and factors to achieve a definitive peace agreement, thus ending what had been the region's oldest unresolved border dispute. This conflict and its resolution provide insights about other unresolved and/or disputed land and sea boundaries which involve almost every country in the Western Hemisphere.

Drawing on extensive field research at the time of the dispute and during its aftermath, including interviews with high-ranking diplomats and military officials, Power, Institutions, and Leadership in War and Peace is the first book-length study to relate this complex border dispute and its resolution to broader theories of conflict. The findings emphasize an emerging leadership approach in which individuals are not mere captives of power and institutions. In addition, the authors illuminate an overlap in national and international arenas in shaping effective articulation, perception, and selection of policy.

In the “new” democratic Latin America that emerged in the late 1970s through the early 1990s, historical memory remains influential in shaping the context of disputes, in spite of presumed U.S. post–Cold War influence. This study offers important, broader perspectives on a hemisphere still rife with boundary disputes as a rising number of people and products (including arms) pass through these borderlands.

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cover of Practice Dialogues: Listening to the Wisdom of Care Work

Practice Dialogues

Listening to the Wisdom of Care Work

Edited by Alice Lesnick

Lever Press, 2026

Attending to the wisdom that emerges through care work, Practice Dialogues uplifts the complexity, creativity, and interconnection of care across fields of endeavor. Written by a collective of practitioners, Practice Dialogues calls readers to learn from, not simply about, care work and those dedicated to it. Recognizing the need to understand care work as practice that furthers people’s survival and thriving, this volume advances a method of research rooted in radical presence, mutual listening, and collaborative writing. Centering care work as and through co-authorship, the essays spotlight fields including medicine, somatic practice, teaching and school leadership, martial arts, organizing, the arts, and family caregiving. In the framing chapters, Practice Dialogues draws on scholarship from education, postcolonial cultural studies, Black studies, Indigenous studies, social work, trauma studies, and critical feminist studies. The volume creates an exchange among scholarship, questions of research methodology, and the ecosystems of care work, pushing the limits of what is possible within and beyond conventional boundaries.
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cover of Purple on the Inside: How J.B. Hunt Transport Set Itself Apart in a Field Full of Brown Cows

Purple on the Inside

How J.B. Hunt Transport Set Itself Apart in a Field Full of Brown Cows

Kirk Thompson

Epic Books, 2019

J.B. Hunt Transport hit the national business scene as a trucking company led by a dynamic founder known for his boundless optimism, untamed vision, and salesmanship. The company has since transformed into a multi-billion-dollar business by balancing business savvy and execution with an enduring entrepreneurial spirit—a rare feat in any industry.

J.B. Hunt’s triumphs and struggles provide a fascinating case study of how business theory, leadership, culture, and organizational best-practices have combined to create one of the most successful companies in American history. Kirk Thompson, with more than forty years of experience inside the company, gives a CEO’s account of the company’s evolution, while Matt Waller connects the leadership decisions to business theories that are transferrable to other leaders and industries.

Purple on the Inside is more than a corporate history or business management primer. It’s a practical case study that illustrates what Seth Godin described in Purple Cow, his best-selling book that considers what characteristics make for a remarkable business. It’s the story of leaders and team members who tap into their founder’s spirit for innovation while maintaining the focus and high level of performance needed to grow. It’s a story about developing partnerships, technologies, and expertise that others can’t easily duplicate. And it’s a story of overcoming disheartening setbacks and cultivating the purple cows that have allowed J.B. Hunt Transport to do what many experts said was impossible—stand out from its competition in an industry full of brown cows.
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