Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2024 -

Content Marketing Strategy is a wonderful contribution to marketing as a field of study and practice. Though one might wonder what more can be added to the extensive literature on marketing strategy, the need for a content management framework has never been more evident. Rose (independent practitioner) observes that brands have saturated physical and digital landscapes with content of varying formats. Additionally, the evolution of algorithm-driven technology and social media has transformed consumer engagement, highlighting the need for crafted content marketing strategies. To illustrate his purpose, Rose pinpoints numerous examples of companies with excellent content management. He ultimately presents a strategic process detailing clear, actionable steps to foster business growth and success. Rose's lax but effective and engaging writing style provides readers with a comfortable, easy-to-follow reading experience. Even those without much exposure to marketing in general will quickly be able to understand the book's themes and ideas. As such, Content Marketing Strategy would be a good choice for those studying or interested in working in marketing.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

Armed with a pleasant narrative style, a deeply historical perspective, and 45 pages of notes, Cross (emer., history, Pennsylvania State Univ.) offers a masterful account and analysis of chiefly American and British attitudes and practices around the use of time and how these peoples have arrived at their varied, but similar, patterns of work time and free time. The volume begins with a brief description of several approaches to evaluating terminologies and of the narrowness of recent efforts to understand and resolve the discontents and uncertainties of today's Westerners about their lives. Cross then dives into early modern centuries and their "slow culture" ways of life, and surfaces at the break point of capital's creation of the Industrial Revolution and the sociopathic pursuit of profits that has persisted since then. Cross does not move very far Left in suggesting approaches to curing the malady. He suspects that capitalism will preside over such efforts for the foreseeable future in the West, and he declines to set forth an imagined system of his own. He does identify possibilities for alleviation, but he leaves a cure to the somewhat distant future. A stimulating challenge.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty.

Fusion Strategy identifies and details a business world where accumulated real-time data will transform how business is done. The ability to make decisions in the moment regarding pricing, staffing, customer service, and design will change how the company faces and serves each individual customer at different times of the day. Businesses and customers are already familiar with this world through "surge" and "demand" pricing, but this is only the beginning of the next wave of change, which will unlock new sources of value creation throughout the corporate organization. Agile control of costs, revenue, customer service, and product design and modifications will become considerations that are evaluated, reviewed and responded to in the moment of every business day. Fusion Strategy describes what will probably be the greatest change in corporate structure and decision-making since the introduction of scientific management principles. The authors describe these complex processes and interactions in clear, concise, and compelling language with ample examples and precedents. They have accomplished the daunting task of illustrating a full-scale operational business model for the next wave of innovation.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

High-Impact Content Marketing offers an accessible look at content strategies in the digital age. Virji's experience, including her tenure at Microsoft and her current role at LinkedIn, lends credibility to her insights. Virji's book blends practical techniques with theory. She navigates the content marketing landscape with finesse, offering actionable advice backed by data-driven methodologies. High-Impact Content Marketing emphasizes human-centered storytelling, which Virji argues is the cornerstone of successful content strategies. Drawing on case studies and real-world examples, Virji illustrates how brands can forge genuine connections with their audience, driving engagement and, ultimately, conversions. There is no shortage of books on this topic, including Pulizzi's Epic Content Marketing (2013) and Content, Inc. (2015) and Schaefer's The Content Code (2015). For marketers seeking to elevate their content game and academics interested in the intersection of psychology and marketing, Virji's holistic approach, along with her authoritative voice and professional standing, makes High-Impact Content Marketing a standout in the realm of content marketing literature.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Clark (organizational psychology, Univ. of Georgia) analyzes the phenomenon of workaholism, with a particular focus on workaholism's negative effects on companies, universities, and other work settings. Based in part on numerous interviews, she defines and describes workaholism, starting with its manifestations in individual workers. Unlike many other books on this subject and the related problem of burnout, this one stresses the deleterious effects of employee workaholism on the workplace, an approach intended to motivate employers to make needed changes. In Clark's view, addressing workaholism on the individual level is a necessary but insufficient approach to this pervasive problem. In addition to quantitative data, Clark supports her argument with many personal anecdotes from her interviewees, particularly members of Workaholics Anonymous. She argues that "the research conclusively strikes down the myth that workaholism is a good thing--for individuals, for their families, and in particular, for their organizations." Though heavily referenced and indexed, the work is nevertheless highly readable and appropriate for both general audiences and students of business administration and psychology.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

Workers, especially lower-income workers, have faced deteriorating job conditions, despite economic and stock market advancements, since 1981. Wages have stagnated, jobs are less secure, white-collar workers work longer hours, and retirement income is less certain. The decline in job quality has been attributed to various factors, including international competition, outsourcing, technological evolution, weakened unions, and the shareholder value movement. Cappelli (Univ. of Pennsylvania) adds another factor: financial accounting principles. A compelling example is the different treatments of investments in machinery (counted as assets) and investments in personnel (counted as immediate expenses), even though both provide value over time. Management's embrace of optimization models that seek to minimize costs worsened the problem. Wages and salaries are current expenses that directly reduce profits. Cappelli's book is based on decades of research and experience in human resource management. He draws on a wealth of empirical evidence and case studies to illustrate his points. Cappelli provides a historical perspective on how financial accounting became the dominant logic of management and influenced the evolution of organizational structures and practices.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

In this timely book, Ravenelle (sociology, Univ. of North Carolina) thoroughly documents the consequences of COVID--as well as governmental assistance policies enacted during the outbreak--on the fragile and often "polyemployed" workforce. From April 2020 to June 2021, she and a team of researchers surveyed and interviewed 199 gig, low-wage, and freelance workers in the NYC metropolitan area to understand how they responded to the pandemic. She focuses on workers' experiences with the socioeconomic safety net, which expanded greatly during this period, noting how governmental policy was able to fundamentally--and longitudinally--change the lives of some "precarious" workers for the better while simultaneously doing very little to alter the economic status of other "vulnerable" workers. The difference, she concludes, is rooted in how "official" unemployment status is defined and obtained--or not. Throughout the book, she poignantly captures the economic insecurity and instability that so many Americans faced during that time. Nonetheless, she leaves the reader hopeful, offering several policy recommendations to consider for the future to reduce the negative impact of job loss on individuals, families, and the US economy as a whole--whatever the circumstances may be.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; general readers.