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    Book Review (Zoo Managment)

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    Ahmed Elmeligy
    1) Evolutionary Psychology (EP) has not had much impact in business previously but a new book by Nigel Nicholson promises to transform EP into a practical management tool. 2) Nicholson argues that decades of utopian management education have been misleading and that enduring human nature must be accounted for. 3) The book constructs a new approach to management based on EP to work with human nature rather than against it, using emotions as an example of how EP provides a scientific basis for incorporating them into decision making.

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    Book Review (Zoo Managment)

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    Ahmed Elmeligy
    62 views2 pages
    1) Evolutionary Psychology (EP) has not had much impact in business previously but a new book by Nigel Nicholson promises to transform EP into a practical management tool. 2) Nicholson argues that decades of utopian management education have been misleading and that enduring human nature must be accounted for. 3) The book constructs a new approach to management based on EP to work with human nature rather than against it, using emotions as an example of how EP provides a scientific basis for incorporating them into decision making.

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    Book Review (zoo managment)

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    1) Evolutionary Psychology (EP) has not had much impact in business previously but a new book by Nigel Nicholson promises to transform EP into a practical management tool. 2) Nicholson argues that decades of utopian management education have been misleading and that enduring human nature must be accounted for. 3) The book constructs a new approach to management based on EP to work with human nature rather than against it, using emotions as an example of how EP provides a scientific basis for incorporating them into decision making.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    62 views2 pages

    Book Review (Zoo Managment)

    Uploaded by

    Ahmed Elmeligy
    1) Evolutionary Psychology (EP) has not had much impact in business previously but a new book by Nigel Nicholson promises to transform EP into a practical management tool. 2) Nicholson argues that decades of utopian management education have been misleading and that enduring human nature must be accounted for. 3) The book constructs a new approach to management based on EP to work with human nature rather than against it, using emotions as an example of how EP provides a scientific basis for incorporating them into decision making.

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    A successful business

    Zoo management
    Dylan Evans finds business to be a jungle in managing the human animal
    by Nigel Nicholson
    In the past few years, Evolutionary Psychology (or EP as it is known )
    hasn’t had much impact in the world of business. However, that maybe
    about to change. A new book by Nigel Nicholson, professor of
    organizational behavior at London Business school, promises to transform
    EP from an academic theory into a practical tool for management.
    According to Nicholson, executives have been misled by decades of utopian
    management education. They have been encouraged to believe that they
    can re-engineer their companies in any way they want, eliminating turf
    wars and sexism along the way. Such fantasies; however, take no account
    of enduring features of human nature, which stubbornly resists the new
    visions imposed upon it. No wonder so many great new management ideas
    fail as soon as they move from the business school to the boardroom.
    The solution, argues Nicholson, is to construct a new approach to
    management, based on EP. As the first truly scientific account of human
    nature, EP can teach managers how to work with the grain rather than
    against it.
    Take emotions, for example. A lot of previous management thinking
    downplayed the role of emotions in decision-making. In the line with Plato
    and a whole host of western thinkers since, emotions were seen as at best
    harmless luxuries, and at worst, outright obstacles to rational action. Only
    recently have managers begun to realize emotional intelligence is vital to
    business success. EP provides a firm scientific basis to this new trend in
    management thinking, seeing emotions as complex mechanisms that can
    enhance rationality in the right circumstances. As Nicholson explains in a
    fascinating chapter on playing the rationality game, managers who view
    emotions_ in themselves or in their workforce_ as mere obstacles are
    wasting one of their greatest potential resources.
    Nicholson’s prose is Pacy and down-to-earth, and he illustrates the main
    ideas of EP and their relevance to the business world with well-chosen
    examples, such as risk-taking and context biology. As Nicholson’s notes,
    zoologists have often observed that the closer an animal gets to the
    survival boundary, the more chances it will take to secure vital resources.
    Such comparisons with animal behaviour will no doubt enrage those who
    think that all scientific claims should be hedged with multiple caveats and
    disclaimers. On the other hand, for those who are fed up with repeated
    calls for “safe science” and other forms of political correctness, Nicholson’s
    pragmatic view is refreshing. He takes a theory that has been neither
    effectively established nor conclusively refuted, and advises managers try
    out. A theory may sometimes be tested more decisively in the crucible of
    business than in the science laboratory.
    EP may not get tested at all any more, unless it used shape policy and
    corporate strategy. There is currently a small but vociferous group of
    academics who proclaim that EP is so fundamentally flawed that further
    testing is superfluous. It can moreover, lead you to become a genetic
    determinist and, even worse, a reductionist. The very possibility of such a
    terrible fate is enough to strike fear into minds of many liberal intellectuals,
    and dissuade them from putting EP to further scientific tests. Thankfully,
    however these philosophical worries are not usually uppermost in the
    average manager’s mind. Executives are more often worried about more
    mundane matters, such as the figures on the bottom line. And so, even if
    EP is denied a fair hearing in the dining rooms of the intelligentsia, it may
    get a better chance in the boardroom.
    It would be premature, then, and most unscientific, to prejudge Nicholson’s
    hypothesis. Whether he is right, or whether his own brand in management
    thinking will go the same way as those he decries, only time will tell. If the
    managers who take on board the ideas of EP perform better than those
    who don’t Nicholson’s gambit will have paid off.
    BY: Reman Salah

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