War Stories: Fighting, Competing, Imagining, Leading - Paperback

by Leigh Hafrey (Author)

War Stories: Fighting, Competing, Imagining, Leading advances a leadership model for business that takes Americans beyond combat and competition as the default setting for our daily enterprise. The book draws on feature and documentary films, TV, social science, and journalism to show that, in the 21st century, the United States is reaping the fruit of a long-standing and deep-rooted faith in one take on business practice. Rooted in the history of World War II and the Vietnam era, War Stories traces an arc of military American self-perception on the screen, the printed page, and in public conversation over the past 20 years. It juxtaposes to that arc a different, potentially more liberating and productive story, linking personal and professional commitments to organizational culture and, finally, systems thinking. Ethical, sustainable business practice depends on leaders who can tell that story of business in society, integrating public, private, and civil sector imperatives for an audience eager to engage them.

Author Biography

Leigh Hafrey has served as senior lecturer in behavioral and policy sciences at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He taught at Harvard Business School and served as co-master of Mather House, one of the undergraduate residences in Harvard College. Hafrey is a senior moderator for the Aspen Institute, an international educational and policy studies organization focused on values-driven leadership. A former staff editor at The New York Times Book Review, he has published translations from French and German and reporting, essays, reviews, and interviews in The New York Times and other periodicals, as well as blogs and cases for MIT Sloan and various on-line media.