Organizational Behavior: A Diagnostic Approach (7th Edition),   ISBN:9780130328472

Customer Rating: 

As a former colleague of Dr. Gordon's, I used the third and fourth editions of the book. Today I'm working with an executive doctoral student on a work-family question, which Dr. Gordon has published research on in 2000, and hoped to see if there were a few pages devoted to this topic in this book. Unfortunately, now I'm stuck because the publishers have not activated the "Search within the Book" function. How in 2006 can the publishers not have signed up for that function in Amazon? So I'm sure the book is solidly researched, but I guess I won't get to see it for a few weeks, by which time I will have moved on to other topics.

Customer Rating: 

The book provides useful diagnostic tools and challenging activities and case studies. However, the writing style of the author is poor and very choppy, making it difficult to follow the material. The author uses an excessive amount of real-world examples, but does little justice to covering and explaining the theory and concepts of the subject material.

I purchased a used 7th edition of this text book through Amazon.com. The pervious owner of my book (a student, I assume) noted several errors in the book. For example, in Chapter 3, "The Diverse Workforce:...", page 81, heading "INDIVIDUAL VALUES AND ATTITUDES", subheading "Values", paragraph 2, sentence 1, the published text states:

"Core values are more susceptible to change, and peripheral values are less susceptible (to change)."

However, the sentence in my text book was manually corrected by the previous owner (at the direction of an instructor at another educational institution, I assume) to read:

"Core values are less susceptible to change, and peripheral values are more susceptible (to change)."

When I first read the sentence, I could not agree with what the author had stated. So I did a search on Google.com and verified from other sources that the author had incorrectly stated this premise.

In Chapter 9, Activity 9-5 Behavior Description Questionnaire, page 319, the book provides a table for scoring a 30 statement behavior questionnaire. The activity requires one to select between an A or B statement which is characteristic of their own behavior. However, item number 6 in the scoring table shows two A answers, and item number 7 in the scoring table shows two B answers, making it impossible to obtain an accurate assessment of one's behavior pattern, unless one is able to clearly understand the subject material and correct the scoring table.

These are just a few of the errors noted in the 7th edition of this publication. It appears the author has not adequately proofread the final product.

Customer Rating: 

This book is required reading for a Masters level course, which is the only way it will ever get read. In a subject area bulging at the seams with real-life, practical hindsight, this book truely shows the difference between academia and those working stiffs who are just trying to make a living.
I will say one thing however - the teacher made the class enjoyable. I was sitting there in class one evening, enjoying the reparte between student and teacher, when I realized:
"Hey! I'm actually learning something here."

Customer Rating: 

It's not a book that makes you want to read it, I find myself just skimming through it. The author can barely go a page without mentioning "the dot-com global workplace", I find that very annoying. There are some interesting case studies but she doesn't give any suggested outcomes so the reader is left wondering what is the best course of action.

Customer Rating: 

I uses this book on Master degree and is really what I'm waiting. One of the most indicated book for people that is taking Oranizational Behavior.