Cover to cover | A roundup of recent business and economic books published by Maine authors

Recent months have brought a fresh crop of business-related books from Maine authors. The scribes range from University of Maine professors to business executives to the directors of nonprofit institutions, writing about subjects from term limits to career development. The publishers are equally diverse, encompassing a self-published e-book as well as William Morrow, an imprint of industry heavyweight HarperCollins.

The books offer discussions about building positive corporate culture, tools to help job-seekers define the perfect job, analysis of the Maine Legislature and personal budgeting worksheets ˆ— in all, a wide array of insights for Maine people and businesses.

Moral Courage
Rushworth Kidder
William Morrow
$24.95

Why didn't anyone at Enron or WorldCom stand up to Ken Lay or Bernard Ebbers? Ethicist Rush Kidder has an answer: insufficient moral courage.

Kidder, founder of the Institute for Global Ethics in Camden and London, defines moral courage as "the recognition of danger and willingness to endure it for the sake of principle." He uses this decade's corporate scandals, as well as failures at NASA and elsewhere, to examine the interplay between personal values and institutional cultures.

Kidder suggests that each of the scandal-plagued entities had established a culture that in some way repressed basic moral values. Those cultures required employees to summon vast amounts of moral courage to perform what should have been routine exercises, tasks such as forthright accounting, fact-checking or open sharing of information.

Although his book doesn't focus solely on corporations, Kidder argues that companies should look to hire and promote people who demonstrate moral courage: Such employees are the most likely to make necessary but unpopular decisions. Meanwhile, he writes, institutional leaders should try to construct cultures in which moral courage is required as infrequently as possible. Expressing moral courage is hard; if employees need to screw up their courage to perform everyday duties, they're likely either to quit or to accept the kind of groupthink that contributed to the corporate failures of recent years.

It's up to company leaders to construct such a culture, Kidder says. He suggests that executives focus intently on the ways core values such as honesty and responsibility might manifest themselves in varying parts of their businesses. For example, honesty in accounting might require diligence, technical expertise and attention to detail, whereas the communications department might need to concern itself with issues of plagiarism and spin. "Once you look at the different ways core values play out within a company, you begin to deepen your understanding of what constitutes the ethical climate of an organization," says Kidder in a recent phone interview.

Too often, Kidder says, corporations create environments built on ego and selfishness. "A culture that says everyone should act only in their own self-interest makes it almost impossible to be an ethical actor," he says. He argues that such self-interest not only is ethically wrong, but can have major negative effects on a company's effectiveness.
"Imagine two companies: one filled with back-biting, ladder-climbing individuals who are all suspicious of each other, and another in which that's not the case," he says. "Which group will make decisions better and faster?"

But what about "greed is good" ˆ— the notion that economies and corporations run entirely on self-interest? "That used to be a strong argument," says Kidder. "But the notion that people make decisions only by self-interest misstates the human character. People increasingly are recognizing the bottom-line value of ethics."

That bottom-line value, Kidder says, stems from increased efficiency ˆ— think about the two hypothetical corporations above ˆ— as well as from the brand cachet and employee satisfaction that result from ethical behavior. Kidder argues that a good reputation can add real value in an economy that increasingly levels out the differences that traditionally have driven consumer purchasing decisions: price, quality, convenience and service. He also cites longtime client Smuckers, which Fortune recently named the best U.S. corporation to work for. "People want to come to work there," he says. "That produces enormous benefits to a company's bottom line."

Changing Members: The Maine Legislature in the Era of Term Limits
Richard Powell, Kenneth Palmer and Matthew Moen
Lexington Books
$23.95 paperback
$70 hardcover

Mainers in 1993 overwhelmingly approved a referendum imposing a four-term limit on state legislators ˆ— a law that made Maine the first state in the nation in which term limits forced out members of both chambers of the Legislature. In Changing Members, one former and two current University of Maine political science professors examine the effects the rules have had on Maine's House and Senate.

Among their most important findings: Term limits have diminished the Legislature's political power. The loss of seasoned legislators ˆ— along with the corresponding rise in the number of legislative greenhorns ˆ— effectively increases the power of the executive branch, from the governor through the directors of various departments. "The executive branch now has a significant advantage in experience and institutional memory over the Legislature," says author Richard Powell. Meanwhile, term limits have increased the influence of legislative staff, who now serve as keepers of the body's institutional memory.

The authors also found that the term-limits law has complicated leadership in the Legislature. Legislators today rarely spend more than one term in leadership positions, giving them little time to generate the experience and influence necessary to organize and mobilize their base. Leaders as a result find it difficult to organize coalitions and maintain party loyalty, leading to a more fractured caucus.

What's more, legislators' inexperience has led to a dramatic increase in their workload. The book's authors found that House and Senate members introduced 43% more bills in 2000 than in 1995. One reason: "New members have introduced a lot of bills that were considered in previous sessions," says Powell. "Those legislators usually don't know that the bills already were considered."

The increased workload also may stem from the prolific output of ambitious new legislators, who realize that they have a short time frame to accomplish what they came to Augusta to do. That's especially true for new members with leadership ambitions: "With term limits, you have to jump on the leadership ladder right from the beginning," says Powell.

Changing Members applauds the Legislature's attempts to overcome these problems, including efforts to limit bill introductions and improve legislative oversight. And Powell emphasizes that the book takes no position on term limits' merits. But he acknowledges that many people in Augusta privately believe the limits should be lengthened or removed. He says that Mainers' overwhelming poll support makes the issue a non-starter, however, meaning the changes term limits have wrought are likely to be with us for quite some time.

Core Themes: Discover Your Own Unique Roadmap to Greater Career Satisfaction
Raymond Inglesi
Self-published e-book, available at www.corethemes.com
$19.95

"You're going to spend most of your waking life in a place called work," says Ray Inglesi, a partner at Portland human resources firm Drake Inglesi Milardo. "Whatever you do, you ought to be happy doing it." That's the central theme behind Inglesi's new e-book, which aims to help people find career satisfaction by identifying their primary work-related values, or core themes.

Inglesi defines core themes as "strongly held personal values, themes and interests." He argues that people unnecessarily stay in jobs that don't meet those core needs: We develop expensive lifestyles that keep us in good-paying but unsatisfying jobs; we stick with a crummy position because we don't want to relocate; we stay in a job that has become dull and stagnant just because we like the people we work with.

Inglesi lumps these and other distractions from our core themes under the heading of "clutter." He offers numerous anecdotes of clients who stayed in jobs they detested, including this poignant example from his book: "I once had a client, a lawyer, who grew to hate trying cases so much that he would sit in his parked car before work, trying to talk himself into just one more day on the job."

Inglesi, whose 33-year career began in clinical therapy, points out that job-hating can have profoundly negative effects. He relates several stories of clients whose job-induced anxiety and ennui led to serious health problems, including hypertension and depression. For some of these clients, changing careers was the only way to avoid near-certain cardiac arrest.

What's more, Inglesi argues that an epidemic of job dissatisfaction undermines the performance of individual firms and the overall economy. He has conducted an informal (and unscientific) survey throughout his career, in which he asks people how much of a typical work day they spend on company business. The average answer: about two-thirds ˆ— in large part because they aren't happy doing the work their job entails. "When workers are dissatisfied, the company and individual both lose," he says.

The solution, he says, is for unhappy workers to get "unstuck," to shake off the clutter that prevents them from finding a job in which they're happy. His book suggests that the way to begin the process of finding that job is to identify your core themes, those principles that a job must meet in order to satisfy you. They might include values like integrity, service, honesty or pride, or factors such as career development or continuing education. Creating that list is no small task ˆ— Inglesi in his practice often works with clients for 25 hours or longer on developing the core themes that will shape their career direction.

Inglesi says he began thinking about writing his book 14 years ago, inspired by memories of a father who hated his factory job and by a belief that far too many people waste much of their lives miserable in the wrong job. He thinks the subject has become more timely than ever, citing pressures including wild economic fluctuations, decreasing job security and increasingly demanding schedules.

Inglesi, who is looking for a print publisher, wants his book to show people strategies they can use to develop careers that meet all of their needs. "Most people who are stuck in jobs they hate think they don't have options," Inglesi says. "But they do. Once they realize that, it's all downhill."

Budget! It's Not a Four-Letter Word
Leslie Linfield
FLA Publishing
$14.95

Leslie Linfield is on a mission. "Financial illiteracy is at an all-time high," she insists. She points out that the number of personal bankruptcies recently hit record levels, while savings rates languish at an all-time low. Linfield, executive director of Portland's Institute for Financial Literacy, wrote Budget! to fight that trend. "Americans are struggling with personal financial management," she says. "Education is a tool to combat that problem."

Linfield's 20-year career has spanned the personal finance industry, and includes tenures as a banker, stock broker, housing counselor, credit counselor and lawyer. She repeatedly has found herself frustrated with publications that exhort their readership to budget without explaining the nuts and bolts of the budgeting process. "Authors always tell readers that they need a budget ˆ— but they never tell them how to do one," she says. "Someone needed to create a how-to manual."

Budget! fits that description. The book details a simple, methodical process for tracking and projecting expenditures and income, and then adjusting as needed. Linfield also offers scores of money-saving suggestions designed to help readers get their budgets in balance. And she provides context with information about average American expenditures: Did you know the typical American family spends roughly $175 per person on food every month? Or that you can expect to spend an average of 5.2 cents on auto maintenance per mile driven? Budget! dovetails with a website, budget4.com, from which readers can download budgeting forms and obtain other information.

The book's final two chapters explain how and why to calculate your net worth, and how to go about setting positive financial goals. "I want folks to learn how to use their budget and net-worth analysis as a tool to accomplish whatever goals are important to them," says Linfield.

She thinks helping people get a handle on their finances can have far-reaching repercussions. "Financial conflict is the number-one cause of divorce," she notes. "And personal financial problems typically spill into all sorts of other areas. They cause emotional, psychological and health issues ˆ— things that don't just hurt individuals and families, but also cost employers money in productivity and time."

Linfield hopes her book can spread the message of the benefits of financial prudence to a far broader audience than she can reach through the Institute for Financial Literacy. She realizes that any book on budgeting runs the risk of preaching exclusively to the converted, however. She writes in the book's introduction, "[P]eople find the word 'budget' offensive, and few words create the same sense of dread. We've come to associate 'budget' with sacrifice, denial of gratification, and burdensome attention to detail."

Linfield thus goes to great pains to make the book user-friendly. She writes conversationally, sprinkling the manual with liberal doses of humor and personal anecdotes. The book's clean layout is approachable almost to the point of being elementary, with wide margins, numerous bullet points and generous type size.

Ultimately, Linfield hopes to show people that they're on a budget whether they know it or not ˆ— and that it's in their best interest to start paying attention. "Budgets are like diets," she says. "We all have them. Budgeting is just the process of understanding what's coming in and what's going out."