The Great Struggle

Name: The Great Struggle
ISBN: 9787213072925

小约瑟夫·巴达拉克 / 孙莹莹Zhejiang People's Publishing House · ChinaJun 2024

4.0

Word count: 95K words
Chapters: 44
ISBN: 9787213072925

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Summary

What are the new rules of a market-dominant world? How can leaders recognize them? In this new world, to whom should leaders be accountable? How should leaders make key decisions? What are the right core values for a company today? Why do leaders choose this life of "struggle"? Today's world is a market-dominant world, and compared with the twentieth century, "modules" and "markets" are its essential elements. Our economic and social life is largely divided into modules that are constantly recombined in markets, making today's world full of opportunity, complexity, fragility, and uncertainty. To be a responsible and successful leader today, the "great struggle"—responsible leadership—is essential. In The Great Struggle, Badaracco sets out five questions leaders must ask themselves, and these questions capture the core of responsible leadership.

In The Great Struggle, Badaracco examines the challenges facing today's leaders from a distinctive angle. Addressing five key questions at the hard start of a venture, the book draws on research and interviews with entrepreneurs past and present to offer valuable, practical lessons on how to struggle and succeed in a volatile, uncertain environment.

Editor's review

This book pulls leadership away from the checklist of techniques and back to the terrain of morality and judgment. Badaracco uses the phrase "market-dominant world" to describe a present in which the economy and society are modularized and continually recombined, where opportunity coexists with fragility, and where leaders face a series of questions with no standard answers: to whom one is accountable, how to weigh trade-offs, and why one chooses this life of "struggle." Built around five core questions and drawing on interviews with entrepreneurs and research subjects, the book grounds abstract ethics of responsibility in concrete decision situations. Its value lies not in offering a universal formula but in providing a framework of repeated self-questioning that helps readers discern the boundaries of their responsibility amid uncertainty. It is suited to slow reading at a career turning point, during team expansion, or when values are under strain, and also works as a shared text for managers to discuss together. The prose is reflective, and the cases serve the questions rather than storytelling; readers need to bring their own situations into the reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Mid- and senior-level managers who hold managerial responsibility and need to clarify the boundaries of accountability
Founders and operators in the startup or team-expansion phase facing pressure on values and decisions
Business school students and researchers interested in responsible leadership
Professionals at a career turning point who want to reflect on why they struggle

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting ready-to-use management tools and operational checklists
Casual readers who prefer light narrative and story-dense cases
Beginners with no managerial or organizational experience and little personal feel for leadership issues

Reading tips

Start with the chapters containing the five core questions and enter the reading with the hardest decision currently on your desk
After each question, write one page on the corresponding case and answer in your own organization
Read alongside colleagues or a book club and exchange judgments of responsibility on the same questions
Return to your notes after some time and check whether your decisions match the principles you wrote down

About the publisher

Zhejiang People's Publishing House China · Founded in 1951

Zhejiang People's Publishing House is a comprehensive publisher known for its social science, history and foreign literature titles, covering philosophy, politics, law, economics, culture and history. Among the books in the library catalogue, its foreign literature list includes Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country and The Old Capital in well-known translations, as well as Wuthering Heights; its history list is represented by Dangnian Mingyue's Ming Dynasty series, and its politics list by Zhejiang New Discourse. Authors represented include Yasunari Kawabata, Ye Weiqu, Tang Yuemei, Dangnian Mingyue, Emily Brontë and René Wellek, with Wellek's Theory of Literature (newly revised edition) among its titles in literary theory. Beyond these areas, the press also publishes works on literary appreciation and social culture, giving it a profile that combines classic translations, popular history and academic works. As publicly available information is limited, other details are not covered here.

版权信息
Chapter01 永恒的问题新兴的答案
责任型领导力，关乎挣扎、承诺与勇气
无处不在的市场
企业政治家时代的湮灭
永恒的问题
新兴的答案
Chapter02 我真的抓住基本原则了吗
智识责任
大机器时代的旧规则
市场主导型世界的新规则
一切都是模块
新看不见的手
智识上的诚实与野心
Chapter03 我到底应该对谁负责
纵向问责制：无聊又高明
基于市场的横向问责制
挣扎和勇气定义责任型领导力
打造富足的组织
Chapter04 我如何制定关键决策
20世纪决策制定模板
知识经济时代的挑战
不断进化的承诺
正确的下一步
信念、谦逊和克制
等待“新自明之理”
Chapter05 我们拥有正确的核心价值观吗
华丽大教堂和伟大缔造者
“大教堂”价值观的危机
共识价值观和核心价值观
核心价值观1：透明度
核心价值观2：有意义的项目
核心价值观3：清晰的道德准则
恪守承诺的勇气
Chapter06 我为什么选择了这种生活
令人畏惧的挑战
伟大的挣扎，现在的工作全是波峰
拥抱挣扎，而不是厌恶挣扎
存在的乐趣在于奋斗
创造组织的同时，也创造了崭新的自我
自由的代价
本书缘起
致谢
译者后记

FAQ

Is this book suitable for people with no management experience?

It can be read, but the payoff will be smaller. The book discusses leaders' judgments of responsibility under real pressure, and without organizational experience it is easy to stay at an abstract level. It is better to gain some experience in team collaboration or project leadership first, then return to the book, so the five questions can be matched more easily to your own situation.

Are the five questions in the book specific management techniques?

They are not operational techniques but a thinking framework for responsible leadership. They point to fundamental questions such as to whom leaders are accountable, how to make key decisions, and what a company's core values should be. The book's value lies in training the habit of repeated self-questioning, not in providing processes or templates to copy.

How should the phrase "market-dominant world" be understood?

The author uses it to describe a present in which the economy and society are divided into modules and continually recombined in markets. This structure brings opportunity but also complexity, fragility, and uncertainty. Understanding this background helps explain why leaders need to keep asking questions of responsibility in the mode of "struggle."

How long does it take to read this book?

It is not long, but the thinking is dense. Reading it in three or four sessions is recommended, focusing on one or two core questions each time and leaving time for notes. For shared reading and discussion, it can be stretched over two or three weeks so that each question has a chance to be digested in light of practice.

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About the author

小约瑟夫·巴达拉克 Author

Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. is a management scholar and writer. Public information about him is limited: his dates of birth and death, nationality, and full career record are not reliably documented, and the available information comes mainly from Chinese editions of his works. Three of his books are included here, falling chiefly in the fields of management and social science: Gray Decisions: How to Handle Complex, Thorny, High-Risk Problems; The Great Struggle; and Learning to Reflect: Using Reflection to Improve Insight, Creativity, and Leadership. Judging from their titles and themes, his writing focuses on how managers make judgments and choices in real situations, emphasizing ways of thinking when facing ambiguity, conflict, and pressure, and treating reflection as a path to greater insight, creativity, and leadership. His work is practice-oriented, specific in its concerns, and suited to readers interested in management decisions and personal growth.

孙莹莹 Author

Sun Yingying is an author about whom limited public information is available. Four works are currently known, spanning a notably wide range of subjects. The Great Struggle and Simple Methods lean toward social science and management—the former likely concerning how people make choices and cope in difficult circumstances, the latter approaching practical methods through the idea of simplicity. Proverbs Collection and Wondrous Stories turn to folk literature, one gathering proverbs and the other presenting narratives, reflecting an interest in oral tradition and storytelling. With these four works crossing management, social observation and folk literature, and with divination also appearing among the classification tags, her writing is clearly not confined to a single field. As basic details such as dates, nationality and education cannot be confirmed, this introduction sketches her writing profile solely from the works and categories on record, without speculating about personal experience; readers may regard her as a writer of broad interests who moves among different subjects.