New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

By New Books NetworkBusiness Management

New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing episodes

August 21 A. J. Murphy, "Pentagon Capitalism: How the Cold War US Military Modeled Itself on Private Business" (Harvard UP, 2026)
The strategic landscape of the Cold War generated political support for a permanent US military force of unprecedented scale. Faced with the problem of managing this behemoth, leaders of the defense bureaucracy looked to private industry for inspiration: since the military now resembled a huge industrial conglomerate, they reasoned, it should be run like a business. In Pentagon Capitalism: How the Cold War US Military Modeled Itself on Private Business (Harvard UP, 2026), Dr. A. J. Murphy explores the profound consequences of translating military structures of command, logistics, and warfare into capitalist terms.
In the realm of budgeting and finance, defense reformers refashioned the supply process as a buy-and-sell transaction between units, requiring officers to express their need for equipment and labor in dollar terms. Bureaucrats embraced Taylorist work measurement to supervise everything from clerical filing to the production of massive weapons systems. The services even engaged management consultants to establish officer-training academies modeled on the Harvard Business School.
After the Vietnam War, many military leaders pushed back, questioning “managerialism” and calling for a return to traditional concepts of command. Civilian critics also chimed in, protesting the callousness of the business-minded secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, who famously measured success and failure in body counts. By this time, however, the language and values of management had thoroughly infiltrated the military’s institutional structure and daily operations. As Pentagon Capitalism makes clear, the reorganization of the defense bureaucracy along the lines of a for-profit firm durably altered the experience of military work and facilitated the lasting privatization of US national security.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
38 min
August 20 A Succinct View of How AI is Changing Business and Work Right Now
Does it seem like the business world is in its own version of an arms race to figure out AI?
It’s a moment when even a little wisdom, grounded in experience and expertise, provides relief.
But how do you get that wisdom?
If you’re KPMG, you turn to your own secret weapon, Stephanie Kim, who leads Signals & Strategy, to combine the firm’s intelligence AND the steady stream of data from the outside INTO a cogent worldview. Tracking, distilling, and interpreting signals has been Kim’s focus for years. If this were a superhero movie, her code name would be The SYNTHESIZER. In our interview, she outlines the implications of how AI is changing and will change the world of business, neatly bundled into the firm’s 2026 Frontiers Report. Its goal is to help leaders navigate uncertainty, identify opportunity, and make more informed decisions about growth, resilience, and competitive advantage.
To hear a singular perspective on the forces driving transformation and the connections between them, tune into this episode and get ready for the future barreling toward us at warp speed. You can download the KPMG Frontiers Report here.

Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops, and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
27 min
August 16 Máximo Badaró, "Pedagogies of Value: Marketing Foreign Goods in China" (Berghahn, 2026)
Pedagogies of Value: Marketing Foreign Goods in China (Berghahn,
2026) by Dr. Máximo Badaró explores how China is reshaping global
hierarchies of worth. Through ethnographic research among marketers,
consultants, and brokers who promote foreign goods in Shanghai, Beijing,
and beyond, this book investigates how value is taught, contested, and
transformed in everyday encounters. From luxury brands and consumer
ethnography to real estate, wine, and organic food, the book reveals how
foreign intermediaries attempt
to ‘educate’ Chinese consumers, only to confront shifting power
dynamics that challenge Western authority. Blending vivid narratives
with sharp analysis, this study argues that China has become a central
arena for reimagining the very meaning of value. 
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
47 min
August 06 On Behalf of HR Realizing Its Necessary Potential - Not as a Complaint Department
Pat Garland is an HR leader, author, consultant and Adjunct Instructor at Loyola University’s Quinlan School of Business (in Chicago). Her career has spanned senior posts at Jim Beam, Anixter Intl, where she played a leading role in the company’s success over several decades. Pat is also an equestrian who finds dealing with horses easier than dealing with people (whose motivations often aren’t as clear, even to themselves).
Too often the Human Resources (HR) function at a company gets reduced to being a “hall monitor” or “complaint department” in the words of today’s spirited and pragmatic guest: Pat Garland. HR, when it realizes its potential, should function not as some quasi-clerical payroll and benefits-focused operation (though those functions are vital) but as an enabler of business growth through respecting talent. Most importantly for HR, Garland observes, is starting by understanding the actual business, and then helping to design the flow of people and ideas that enhance its success. Note she doesn’t mention policies. Because she’s anti-policy. So she fit in beautifully at Anixter, which was high on accountability but allergic to running a business on policies. The Anixter culture understood, as Pat clearly does, that everything starts with trusting people. And building talent starts with getting people into roles where the work comes naturally because its a fit. For what kind of tasks are they best suited? Ultimately, the HR bottom line is pretty simple: back to “trust your people.” Enable them to grow, rather than creating rules that allow leaders and managers to cast the blame on HR when things don’t work. The real need in any business is for leaders to lead and coach people well. A great HR leader is part psychologist, part lawyer, part actuary, part accountant, and 100% a humanist. Pat clearly is the latter. And her book, 33 Ways Not to Screw Up HR (NetWorlding Publishing, 2022), proves it.
Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
26 min
August 04 Nozomi Naoi, "The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life" (MIT Press, 2026)
The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life
(MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese
department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously
illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department
stores modeled
“the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and
design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these
spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject
enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider
sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality.
The
book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department
store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional
magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the
Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early
department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their
walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which
included dining spaces with children’s menus, new technology such as
elevators and escalators, and more.
Although
the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian
experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely
grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media
environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the
everyday.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
40 min
July 31 Devin Kennedy, "Coding Capitalism: Computers and the Remaking of the Postwar US Economy" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Long before Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, computer technology shaped how people worked, how markets operated,
and how businesses became big. After World War II, military officials
and their partners in industry looked to the newly invented electronic
computer as they sought to cut costs, speed up labor,
manage supply chains, and—they hoped—bring stability to the postwar
economy. Their efforts would shape early computer science and the first
applications of computer technology in manufacturing and business, with
profound consequences for workers and managers alike. By the 1960s,
practices originally developed to improve industrial efficiency were
being used by Wall Street, influencing how markets worked and even how
traders thought. Digital technology became central to finance, tying
together far-flung trading floors and automating decision making—with
alarming consequences, including the 1987 Black Monday crash.
In Coding Capitalism: Computers and the Remaking of the Postwar US Economy
(Columbia University Press, 2026), Dr. Devin Kennedy offers a new
history of the digital economy, showing how the computer emerged
from—and transformed—capitalism in the United States. He traces how
computer science and technology were made by industry, which molded
computation to manage factories, financial markets, and entire firms.
Drawing on the archives of businesses, computer researchers, regulators,
and financial institutions, Coding Capitalism retells the story of the postwar economy and the computer, revealing how mid-century
business laid the foundations of the digital world. Bridging business
and economic history with the history of science and technology, this
book uncovers the prehistory of big tech and demonstrates how capitalism has shaped computing since its invention.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
57 min
July 30 Re-Evaluating CX in the AI Era
Michael Brand is a CX strategist and trainer, based in Switzerland, who has been named a Thinkers 360 Top 50 Global Thought Leader on Customer Loyalty. Dr. Vincent Covello directs the Center for Risk Communications, and is a nationally and internationally recognized trainer, researcher, consultant, and expert in emergency, crisis, risk, and change communications. Deanna Leonard is a futurist, executive coach, and AI transformation leader. Her career has spanned senior leadership posts across a wide range of Fortune 500 companies.
In this freewheeling, one-hour roundtable discussion, the focus is on the Customer Experience through the lens of both the opportunities and misuses that AI involves. The topics addressed include the following: 1) the importance of active listening, 2) the 20 words that can make or break an exchange with a customer, 3) how front-line CX employees can be enabled to do their jobs better, and 4) the need for training budgets to be protected, if not increased. In emotional terms, two feelings rise to prominence in this session: fear (of not being heard and responded to) and trust (rooted in the demonstration of caring before knowledge gets shared or an action-step taken). The answers as to who people trust, and why, when experiencing stress will be sure to surprise you.
Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
42 min
July 26 David J. Teece and Sohvi Heaton, "Dynamic Universities: How Strategic, Entrepreneurial Leaders Can Strengthen Higher Education" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
In times of deep uncertainty, the university needs to transform
itself into an entrepreneurial entity to maintain long-term evolutionary
fitness. Dynamic Universities (Cambridge University Press, 2026) explores
how strategic, entrepreneurial leadership can help US higher education
institutions thrive amid unprecedented challenges. Drawing on the
dynamic capabilities’ framework, David J. Teece and Sohvi Heaton provide a strategic roadmap to help university leaders identify
emerging opportunities and threats, take decisive action, and sustain
competitiveness. Through compelling case studies including Stanford and
Berkeley and interviews with global university leaders, this book offers
practical insights into managing complexity, fostering innovation, and
building resilient academic ecosystems.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
1 hr 4 min
July 25Amy Brann, "Make Your Brain Work: Perform at a Higher Level" (Kogan Page, 2025)
Make Your Brain Work
By Amy Brann
Neuroscience expert, author, consultant and global speaker
Make Your Brain Work: Perform at a Higher Level (Kogan Page, 2025) is a practical, science-backed guide to improving focus, performance
and mental energy without burning out. Written for people balancing
multiple responsibilities, the book explains how to stay productive,
mentally sharp and in control, even when demands and pressure are high.
The
book also explores the neuroscience of smarter leadership,
high-performing teams and innovation. Brann examines working memory,
what the mind needs to achieve goals and how to help the brain perform
at an optimal level.
Drawing from current neuroscience, Amy Brann translates complex research about the brain into clear
strategies readers can apply in everyday work and life. She explores
why attention fades, distractions take over and decision-making becomes
more difficult when the brain is tired or under stress.
The
book emphasizes that high performance is not simply about pushing
harder. It is about understanding what the brain needs to function well
and creating habits that support focus, creativity, resilience, clear thinking and sustainable success.
Key Ideas:
The brain performs best when its limited attention and energy are managed intentionally.

Understanding working memory can help us process information, solve problems and pursue goals more effectively.

Mental
rehearsal can activate neurons and strengthen neural circuits even when
an action is only imagined. For example, imagining your finger
contracting can prepare your brain and muscles to perform the movement
more effectively.

Neuroscience can help leaders make smarter decisions and create the conditions for high-performing teams.

Brain-aware leadership can encourage collaboration, creativity, innovation and meaningful change.

Mental fatigue can weaken focus, self-control and the quality of our decisions.

Working
with the brain, rather than continually forcing it beyond its limits,
can support greater success while helping to prevent burnout.
Key Takeaway from the Conversation:
One of the strongest ideas from the conversation is recognizing that
our brain can help us become smarter leaders, more creative thinkers and
stronger performers. Brann’s insights about working memory and
high-performing teams show that success is not only about effort. If you
read the book, you’ll learn how to think clearly, innovate, collaborate
and achieve meaningful goals.
Brann does not focus only on
managing fatigue or avoiding burnout. She also demonstrates how
understanding the brain can help people lead more effectively, develop
innovative ideas, make smarter choices and perform at a higher level.
About Podcast Host
Angela Marie Hutchinson is the author of “Create Your Yes! When You
Keep Hearing No,” named a Forbes No. 4 book to advance your career. She
is a podcast host for New Books Network, where she leads conversations
for the neuroscience and Christianity channels. Hutchinson is also a
talent and intellectual property executive, former social media
professor and BBC commentator. She resides in Los Angeles with her
husband and three children.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
49 min
July 24 Max H. Bazerman, "Negotiation: The Game Has Changed" (Princeton UP, 2025)
The world has changed dramatically in just the past few years and so has negotiation. Traditional negotiating tactics, while still effective, need to be
tailored to vastly different situations and circumstances. In Negotiation: The Game Has Changed (Princeton University Press, 2025), Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman,
a legendary pioneer in the field of negotiation, shows how to negotiate
effectively today by adapting proven negotiation principles and
strategies to challenging new contexts. Negotiation is a fundamentally new way of thinking about the importance of context in negotiation.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
1 hr 5 min

About New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

From the publisher's feed

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.

Share New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

Sign up to save your podcasts

New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing episodes

About New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

More shows like New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

HBR IdeaCast

The Story of Money