


Our selection of leadership books that every grown-up leader should start reading

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How we are selecting books
“We need to think not only about what is the right, but about what is good. How can business build something that is actually good. We need to understand how the right and the good can work together.” – Ed Freeman
Welcome to the Best Books for Leadership
There are already many selections of best business or management or leadership books available. So, why does it require another one? The answer is simple: because we did not like the other selections!
In fact, it is not always clear what criteria are being adopted to develop specific selections of titles, nor is it clear who is influencing such selections and for what reasons. Either way, we do not like the outcomes.
Leadership requires professional development and is, by its very nature, multi-faceted. Good leaders must develop a wide understanding, through both practice and theoretical learning, about domains like philosophy, psychology, management science, economics, history, political science, sociology - to name just a few. In addition, most leaders have already got a basic understanding of relevant areas, so the focus must be on writings that can provoke new and critical insights, and go beyond traditional wisdom. Finally, much of the prevalent literature is not sufficiently underpinned by credible academic research - and much of academic literature is obscure and unreadable.
So our intention is to provide a set of texts that we - and our invited leaders for humanity - have carefully curated.
Classics
The top 100
NEW
the 12 Best For 2022
How we are selecting books
What is a good leadership book: Our selection criteria
There are already many selections of best business or management or leadership books available. So, why does it require another one? The answer is simple: because we did not like the other selections!
In fact, it is not always clear what criteria are being adopted to develop specific selections of titles, nor is it clear who is influencing such selections and for what reasons. Either way, we do not like the outcomes.
Leadership requires professional development and is, by its very nature, multi-faceted. Good leaders must develop a wide understanding, through both practice and theoretical learning, about domains like philosophy, psychology, management science, economics, history, political science, sociology - to name just a few. In addition, most leaders have already got a basic understanding of relevant areas, so the focus must be on writings that can provoke new and critical insights, and go beyond traditional wisdom. Finally, much of the prevalent literature is not sufficiently underpinned by credible academic research - and much of academic literature is obscure and unreadable.
So our intention is to provide a set of texts that we - and our invited experts - have found:
- Breaking new grounds: promoting or offering critical thinking on important leadership topics
- Credible: based on academic research or well-rounded theories
- Well-written: ideas are expressed in a way that the truly interested and curious reader can follow
- Caring: authors do not only offer a critical perspective, but a genuine desire to do good
Top 100 Leadership Books - Updated Q1 2023
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Moral Philosophy and Ethics in Business

Rebalancing Society: Radical Renewal Beyond Left, Right, and Center

Managing the Myths of Health Care: Bridging the Separations between Care, Cure, Control, and Community

Bedtime Stories for Managers: Farewell to Lofty Leadership. . . Welcome Engaging Management

The Structuring of Organizations (Theory of Management Policy) - New edition coming soon

Mintzberg on Management

Strategy Bites Back: Strategy in Far More, and Less Than You Ever Imagined

The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning:
Mintzberg concludes that the term is an oxymoron.

Handbook Strategy as Practice:
This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of an
Alternative View on Strategy.

Virtues and Virtue Education in Theory and in Practice

Virtues and Vices

Friendship for Virtue

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

The Morality of War

Aristotle and the Virtues

Just and Unjust Wars

Virtue Ethics - A Contemporary Introduction

Teaching and Learning the Westpoint Way

Character Strengths and Virtues

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Kohlberg Revisited (Moral Development and Citizenship Education)

Moral Development & Reality: Beyond the Theories of Kohlberg and Hoffman

Moral Development: Guide to Piaget and Kohlberg

Personality, Identity, and Character: Explorations in Moral Psychology

Agency and Ethics: The Politics of Military Intervention (SUNY series in Global Politics)

Shooting to Kill: The Ethics of Police and Military Use of Lethal Force

Military Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know

Introduction to Military Ethics, An: A Reference Handbook

The Moral Dimension of Asymmetrical Warfare: Counter-terrorism, Democratic Values and Military Ethics

Military Ethics and Virtues

the-moral-warrior

Making the Military Moral: Contemporary Challenges and Responses in Military Ethics Education (Military and Defence Ethics)

Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War: Just War Theory in the 21st Century

The Ethics of Armed Conflict: A Cosmopolitan Just War Theory

Ethics and War in the 21st Century (LSE International Studies Series

Rethinking the Just War Tradition (Suny Series, Ethics and the Military Profession)

The Cambridge Handbook of the Just War (Cambridge Handbooks in Philosophy)

Comparative Just War Theory: An Introduction to International Perspectives

Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind

Virtuous Emotions

Virtue Ethics and Moral Education

Education for Values: Morals, Ethics and Citizenship in Contemporary Teaching

Just War Theory (Studies in Moral Philosophy)

Wonderful Life. Insights on Finding a Meaningful Existence.

The Meaning of Life. A Reader.

Beyond Realism and Antirealism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists.

The Social Construction of Reality.

Man's Search for Meaning

Dialogues of Plato

The Morality of Happiness

Systems Intelligence – A New Lens on Human Engagement and Action

Narcissus and Goldmund is contrasting the careers of two friends, one of whom goes on the road, tangled in the extremes of life, the other staying in the monastery and struggling to lead a life of spiritual denial.

Every weekend, in basements and parking lots across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded for as long as they have to.

Willpower - 12 Tools For Doing The Right Thing

Escape from Freedom

How to lead in a world where leadership extends to a whole range of stakeholders inside and outside an organization

The Power of And offers a new narrative about the nature of business, revealing the focus on responsibility and ethics that unites today’s most influential ideas and companies.

Business can be understood as a system of how we create value for stakeholders. This worldview connects business and capitalism with ethics once and for all.

This book examines the body of research related to Stakeholder Theory and assesses its relevance for our understanding of modern business.

This book offers a case-study approach to stakeholder theory that moves beyond theoretical analysis to the applied.

This book presents a number of tools that managers can use to implement stakeholder thinking, better understand stakeholders and create value with and for them.

This book presents a method that might be called an Aristotelian common-sense approach to ethical decision making.

The Blackwell Guide to Business Ethics acquaints the reader with theoretical and pedagogical ethical issues in the practice of business

Managing for Stakeholders helps leaders develop a mindset that asks the Value Creation Question: How can we create as much value as possible for all of our stakeholders?

Although it is on occasion useful to distinguish between factual claims and value judgments, it positively harmful when identified with a dichotomy between objective and purely "subjective."

In A Theory of Justice Rawls assumed a "well-ordered society". Now Rawls asks how a just society can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines?

Marking a new stage in the evolution of his thought, Rorty’s final masterwork identifies anti-authoritarianism as the principal impulse and virtue of pragmatism.

The best professionals rely less on formulas learned in graduate school than on the kind of improvisation learned in practice.

Plato brought a richness and complexity to common ideas about the nature and purpose of leadership. Rather than attempting to give a single 'one-size-fits-all' definition, his strategy was to break it into its different strands.

In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence millions of people living in the Third World are still unfree.

This book is about humanizing business. The volume travels outside the world of business to explore what Humanities – such as Philosophy, History, Literature, Creative Arts, and Cultural Studies – can offer to business.

Standing at the crossroads of psychology and religion, this catalyzing work applied the scientific method to a field abounding in abstract theory.

If you have philosophical inclinations and want a good workout, this conscientious scrutiny of moral assumptions and expressions will be most rewarding.

The 99 Percent Economy: How Democratic Socialism Can Overcome the Crises of Capitalism

The Oxford Handbook of Sociology, Social Theory, and Organization Studies: Contemporary Currents

The Firm as a Collaborative Community: The Reconstruction of Trust in the Knowledge Economy

The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Organization Studies: Classical Foundations

Healing Together: The Labor-Management Partnership at Kaiser Permanente

How to be anAnti-capitalist for the 21st Century

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, Organizations, and Social Science

Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership

Personal and Organisational Transformations: Through Action Inquiry

Creating a Community of Inquiry: Conflict, Collaboration, Transformation [Download]

Learning from Experience: Toward Consciousness [Download]

Managing the Corporate Dream: Restructuring for Longterm Success [Download]

The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society and Scientific Inquiry [Download]

Eros/Power: Love in the Spirit of Inquiry

Being for the Most Part Puppets [Download]

Street Smart Awareness and Inquiry-in-Action

Credo

The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin, Volumes One and Two: The Riverside Years

The Fourth Way: Teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff

The Social Contract

A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition

Critique of Pure Reason

Philosophical Organization Theory

Institutions and Organizations: A Process View (Perspectives on Process Organization Studies)

Organizational Routines: How They Are Created, Maintained, and Changed

Constructing Identity in and around Organizations

The SAGE Handbook of Process Organization Studies

Philosophy and Organization Theory

Complex Knowledge: Studies in Organizational Epistemology

The Oxford Handbook Of Organization Theory: Meta-theoretical Perspectives

Being and Time

Organisational Learning -An integrated HR and knowledge management perspective

Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach

Development as Freedom

The Road to Serfdom

Sensemaking in Organizations

Philosophical Investigations

Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Heart of Enterprise
Good Economy and Management

Successful Management by Motivation -Balancing Intrinsic and Extrinsic Incentives

Incentives and Performance - Governance of Research Organizations

Prozessmanagement als Kernkompetenz: Wie Sie Business Reengineering strategisch nutzen können

Investition Vertrauen -Prozesse der Vertrauensentwicklung in Organisationen

The Future of the Commons: Beyond Market Failure & Government Regulations

Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society

Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being

Industrial Organization (The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics series)

The Economics of Transaction Costs

Alternatives to Neoliberalism: Towards Equality and Democracy

Crises and Popular Dissent: The Divided West

Radicalism and Social Movement Activism

The Power Elite

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy

Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump

Liberalism: The Classical Tradition

The Road to Serfdom

Anthropologies of Modernity: Foucault, Governmentality, and Life Politics

Envisioning Real Utopias

The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism

The Common Good

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Selection from the Prison Notebooks

Turbulent and Mighty Continent

Thather and Thatcherism

Deliberation and Democracy: Innovative Processes and Institutions

Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory and Issues

Liberalism and its Discontents

The Wound and the Blessing

Thomas Aquinas and the Civil Economy Tradition

Civil Economy and Organisation

The Economy of Salvation

Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice

Commodities and Capabilities

Corporate Social Responsibility Across Europe

The German Chambers of Commerce and Industry: Self-governance, Service,...[Download]

Corporate Citizenship: Gesellschaftliches Engagement von Unternehmen in Deutschland (Unternehmen und Gesellschaft) (German Edition)

Cultural Roots of Sustainable Management: Practical Wisdom and Corporate Social Responsibility

Tradition und Erneuerung der christlichen Sozialethik in Zeiten der Modernisierung

Erfolgsfaktor Verantwortung: Corporate Social Responsibility professionell managen (German Edition)

Handbuch Corporate Citizenship: Corporate Social Responsibility für Manager (German Edition)

Practical Wisdom and Diversity: Aligning Insights, Virtues and Values

Christliche Unternehmer (Deutsche Führungsschichten in der Neuzeit, Band 19)

Léon Harmel: Entrepreneur as Catholic Social Reformer (Catholic Social Tradition)

The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations

Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond

The Evolution of Ethics: Human Sociality and the Emergence of Ethical Mindedness

Frailty, Suffering, and Vice: Flourishing in the Face of Human Limitations

Virtue and Psychology: Pursuing Excellence in Ordinary Practices

Beyond the Myth of Marital Happiness: How Embracing the Virtues of Loyalty, Generosity, Justice, and Courage Can Strengthen Your Relationship

Re-envisioning Psychology: Ethics and Values in Modern Practice

The Will to Power

Spiritual Capital
Good Organisations and Business Transformation

Civil Economy: Another Idea of the Market

Cooperative Enterprise – Facing the Challenge of Globalization

Handbook on the Economics of Reciprocity and Social Enterprise

Lezioni di storia del pensiero economico: Un percorso dall'antichità al Novecento

Responsabili: Come civilizzare il mercato

Prosperità inclusiva. Saggi di economia civile

La logica del bene comune. Coscienza, memoria, responsabilità, dialogo.

Economia civile e sviluppo sostenibile. Progettare e misurare un nuovo modello di benessere

Economia civile. Efficienza, equità, felicità pubblica

The Microeconomics of Wellbeing and Sustainability: Recasting the Economic Process

Incivilire la finanza. Una bussola per leggere una forma di «amore intelligente». Dalla «Caritas in veritate╗ di Benedetto XVI alla «Laudato si’» di Francesco

L'arte della gratuità. Come il capitalismo è nato dal cristianesimo e come lo ha tradito

The Invisible Hand?: How Market Economies have Emerged and Declined Since AD 500

Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home

Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy

The Price of Inequality

Finance and the Good Society

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

La Déraison de la raison économique: Du délire d'efficacité au principe de précaution

Bowling Alone

An Economist’s Lessons on Happiness: Farewell Dismal Science!

The Reluctant Economist: Perspectives on Economics, Economic History, and Demography

Economia ed etica. La crisi e la sfida dell'economia civile

The Upswing: How We Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves

Awakening Compassion at Work

Energize Your Workplace

How to be a positive leader

Positive Organizational Scholarship. Foundations of a New Discipline

The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship

Emotion in Organizations

Relational Being

Homo Ludens

Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within

Tales of The Filed. On Writing Ethnography

The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory

Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

Dialogic Organization Development: The Theory and Practice of Transformational Change

Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing Through Other Patterns

Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity

Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them

MANY VOICES ONE SONG: SHARED POWER WITH SOCIOCRACY

Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness [Pay what feels right]

Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy

Open Strategy: Mastering Disruption from Outside the C-Suite (Management on the Cutting Edge)
Good Leadership

Handbook of Eudaimonic Well-Being

The Tasks of Philosophy, Volume 1: Selected Essays

After Virtue

The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology

Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business and Management

The Oxford Handbook of Virtue

The Nicomachean Ethics

The Analects

Dao De Jing: The Book of the Way

Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business and Management

The Moral Capital of Leaders: Why Virtue Matters

Business Ethics: A Virtue Ethics and Common Good Approach

Corporate Governance and Ethics: An Aristotelian Perspective

Happiness and Virtue Ethics in Business: The Ultimate Value Proposition

The Challenges of Capitalism for Virtue Ethics and the Common Good: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

La virtud, sintesis de tiempo y eternidad: la etica en la escuela de Atenas

After Virtue

Virtue Ethics and Human Enhancement

The Regenerative Life: Transform any organization, our society, and your destiny

The Regenerative Business: Redesign Work, Cultivate Human Potential, Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes

No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work

The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success

The Responsible Entrepreneur: Four Game Changing Archetypes for Founders, Leaders, and Impact Investors

Indirect Work: The Oldest and Best Researched Way to Create Real Change

Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being

Honours versus Money: The Economics of Awards

Not Just for the Money: An Economic Theory of Personal Motivation

Dealing with Terrorism – Stick or Carrot?

21st Century Economics: Economic Ideas You Should Read and Remember

Happiness: A Revolution in Economics

Ökonomische Theorie der Politik

Economics as a Science of Human Behaviour

Leadership: A Critical Text

Coaching and Mentoring: A Critical Text

Global Leadership Perspectives: Insights and Analysis

Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Experimental Futures)

Ecrits: A Selection

The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development

Power: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984

Experiences in Groups: and Other Papers

We need to change our view of change and see it for the opportunity it really is. Step Change: The Leader’s Journey helps leaders to become gifted and skilful at moving through the change process

Wicked & Wise is the compelling launch title in a groundbreaking new series exploring hotly debated issues facing the planet and its people, and offering unique ways to tackle seemingly intractable social and cultural challenges.

Most leaders are operating nowhere near their optimal level of performance. In this book, Dr Alan Watkins helps leaders at every level understand how they can transform their output and unlock their true potential.

Crowdocracy: The End of Politics discusses one of the world’s most debated and critical issues – who decides our futureand how should we be governed?

Businesses spend billions on innovation with very little to show for their investment or effort. This book challenges some of the ‘ingrained truths’ of innovation and suggests a different approach.

The HR (R)Evolution describes the "Seven Great Waves" of change and explains how each wave impacted business. It’s for leaders who recognise that people issues are the central challenge of our time.

Today's leaders need to change radically to meet the challenge of complex organizations. This requires a step-change in development in three fundamental dimensions: how you do things, who you are, and how you relate to other people.

Spiral Dynamics (SD) is a model of the evolutionary development of individuals, organizations, and societies. It was initially developed by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan based on the emergent cyclical theory of Clare W. Graves,

Spiral Dynamics in Action explores the evolution of modern business, and provides a model for moving forward amidst ever-increasing complexity and change.

Business success depends on the ability to build trust. Trusted leaders inspire followers, grow companies, revenues, and futures. Sadly, deceit has infected business and become widespread.

A provocative examination of how the great religious traditions can remain relevant in modern times by incorporating scientific truths learned about human nature over the last century.

An edifying view of Buddhism from one of today's leading philosophers: a look at its history and foundational teachings, how it fits into modern society, and how it (and other world religions) will evolve.

A provocative and balanced examination of our current social and political situation -- by a cutting-edge philosopher of our times.

Wilber traces human development from infancy into adulthood and beyond, into those states described by mystics and spiritual adepts.

A leader in transpersonal psychology presents the first truly integrative model of spiritual consciousness and Western developmental psychology

A concise, comprehensive overview of the "M Theory" and its application in today's world, by a renowned American philosopher

Ken Wilber explores the ways science, which seeks truth, and religion, which seeks meaning, might be reconciled to further human happiness.

This masterfully crafted book interweaves conversations between Campbell and some of the people he inspired

Arguing that mature masculinity is not abusive or domineering, Moore and Gillette provide a Jungian introduction to the psychological foundations of a mature, authentic, and revitalized masculinity.

In most organizations nearly everyone is doing a second job no one is paying them for--namely, covering their weaknesses, trying to look their best, and managing other people's impressions of them.

Using ancient self-care techniques rediscovered by Herbert Benson, M.D., a pioneer in mind/body medicine for health and wellness, you can relieve your stress, anxiety, and depression

ecisions taken by a large group, even if the individuals within the group aren't smart, are always better than decisions made by small numbers of 'experts'.

This book asks why it is that the things we value most – from the environment to frontline workers to keeping children well fed and educated – are so often neglected by the market.

Margaret Heffernan shows in this eye-opening look at competition, that it regularly produces just what we don't want: rising levels of fraud, cheating, stress, inequality and political stalemate.

This practical guide offers an approach to organizational change based on the possibility of a more desirable future, experience with the whole system, and activities that signal ""something different is happening this time."

Upswing is Robert Putnam's brilliant analysis of economic, social, cultural and political trends, showing how America went from an individualistic ‘I’ society to a more communitarian ‘We’ society and back again

If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful.

Understanding Organizational Culture

Constructing Research Questions

The Stupidity Paradox

Reflexive Leadership

Reflexive Methodology

The Triumph of Emptiness

The Return to Meaning

Critical Theory Today

Explaining Postmodernism

The Frankfurt School Critique of Capitalist Culture: A Critical Theory for Post-Democratic Society and Its Re-Education

Making Sense of Management

Leadership: Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Re-imagining the Research Process: Conventional and Alternative Metaphors

Critical Management Studies

Changing Organizational Culture: Cultural change work in progress

Metaphors We Lead By: Understanding Leadership in the Real World

Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers

World-Centred Education: A View for the Present

Educational Research: An Unorthodox Introduction

Beautiful Risk of Education: (Interventions Education, Philosophy, and Culture)

The Rediscovery of Teaching

Teacher Agency: An Ecological Approach

Jacques Ranciere: Education, Truth, Emancipation

Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy (Interventions: Education, Philosophy, and Culture)

Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future (Interventions: Education, Philosophy, and Culture)

Derrida, Deconstruction, and the Politics of Pedagogy (323) (Counterpoints: Studies in Criticality)

Improving Learning through the Lifecourse: Learning Lives

Obstinate Education: Reconnecting School and Society: 72 (Educational Futures)

Learning Democracy in School and Society: Education, Lifelong Learning, and the Politics of Citizenship

The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory

The Pragmatic Turn

Democracy And Education

Philosophy of Education

Mind, Self, and Society: The Definitive Edition

The Philosophy of the Present the Paul Carus Lectures Third Series

Humanism of the Other

The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

Heidegger: The Question of Being and History (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida)

The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society

Existential Flourishing: A Phenomenology of the Virtues

Power: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault

The Portable Hannah Arendt (Penquin Classics)

Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, And Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives)
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