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Creating a logical and consistent picture of the state of leadership theory and research is a difficult task (Hernandez, Eberly, Avolio, & Johnson, 2011). Attempts to describe leadership studies occasionally include words such as “paradox,” “inconsistencies,” “contradictions,” and “messy” (Brungardt, 1996; Klenke, 1993). These adjectives flow from many diverse ways of thinking about leadership (Bass, 2008; Grint, 2000; Northouse, 2015; Ruben, 2012). This paper presents an alternative view of leadership theory providing practitioners, educators, and students with an additional-and perhaps a singular-conceptual framework for their toolbox. It also provides leadership studies students with a unifying perspective of leadership theory without taking anything away from individual theories.

Many investors view maximizing shareholder wealth as the only obvious and defensible, corporate objective function. But to contradict this view, the paper aims to consider the shortcomings of the “shareholder first” view and offer an alternative.

To make strategic tradeoffs effectively the whole organization needs a clear sense of what it is trying to achieve, and how choosing between specified alternatives serves its highest goal. Organizations need a “best metric” for the corporate strategy. The paper considers what ultimate end should corporations – that is, the managers who run them – refer to when making these difficult and sometimes painful tradeoffs?

The widely held shareholder‐value view holds that every choice should be made with an eye to creating as much financial wealth as possible for the providers of equity capital. But none of the familiar justifications for this view stand up to scrutiny. It is not true that: shareholders are owners; shareholders bear the most risk; maximizing shareholder value is a clear goal; and maximizing shareholder value is a legal requirement.

The corporation‐first view is a better alternative principle. It is that the ultimate purpose of the corporation is the survival of corporation itself. The corporation should not seek to maximize the interests of shareholders, or employees, or suppliers, or the environment, or anyone or anything else. The Costco model is examined.

This paper provokes some serious soul‐searching about the largely unquestioned primacy of shareholder interests as the objective function of the corporation and makes the case for a better alternative.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Analyses the Bureau of Municipal Research′s (BMR) role in the 1912 New York City School Inquiry to show the democratic orientation of key people trying to transfer scientific management to government. Because much modern public administration literature portrays scientific management as authoritarian, some people assume its proponents wanted to shut the populace out of public‐sector decision making by transfering power from elected officials to experts. The School Inquiry case shows how important reformers committed to scientific management sought to maximize the control that elected officials had over a key administrative function. The BMR stressed this democratic point of view until threats from its principal financial backer forced it to downplay its voice on educational issues and its innovative concept of efficient citizenship.

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

Provides direction for researchers, collections developers, and other interested people to locate sources of information on The Beat Generation. Focussing on the primary period of Beat Generation productivity, 1951‐1960, and on the Beat Generation’s two principal milieux, San Francisco’s North Beach and New York City’s Greenwich Village, this pathfinder gives prominence to the works of the two defining figures of the Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, whose seminal works, respectively Howl and On the Road, inspired a generation of “beatniks” and paved the way for the Hippie flowering and Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Emphasis is placed on the background, context, and impact of the Beat Movement, rather than on a critical analysis of their work.

Recently, members of our cataloging department decided to enter the university's theses into the OCLC Online Union Catalog as part of a retrospect conversion project. Since several fields are similar in all these records, we felt we could save time and eliminate the chance of some typing errors if these fields could be put on user‐defined function keys.