The Best HR and Organizational Behavior Books, and What Stands Behind Them

How I chose these

These are books for people in HR, people operations and organization development who hire, develop and lead others, chosen from the books reviewed in full on this site. A book is listed only if I could confirm its publisher and date from a publisher page or library record, and the publisher details below come from the sources in each full review. Each book has an evidence note, and its review says what the research supports, where the evidence is thin, and how it maps to the Unfrozen Loop. There are no affiliate links, and the books are grouped by topic, not ranked.

What the evidence notes mean

Research-based means the book is by a researcher or reports the author's own studies. Draws on research means the publisher says it is built on published research, without the book being a study itself. Practitioner experience means the ideas come mainly from the author's work. Fable means a story that carries a model without reporting evidence. Books whose note does not use one of these four labels say in their own words what stands behind them.

The list

Culture and learning

• Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar H. Schein, with Peter A. Schein on the fifth edition. Wiley, 2016 (fifth edition). Best for understanding culture as the assumptions under what an organization does. Evidence base: research-based; a textbook by an MIT Sloan professor emeritus whom his publisher calls the father of organizational culture.
• The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge. Doubleday/Currency, 1990; revised edition, Currency, 2006. Best for seeing why organizational problems keep coming back. Evidence base: a synthesis of ideas and practice by an MIT senior lecturer; systems thinking itself is not tested in the evidence I use.
• The Fearless Organization by Amy C. Edmondson. Wiley, 2018. Best for making it safe to raise problems and mistakes. Evidence base: research-based.
• Humble Inquiry by Edgar H. Schein. Berrett-Koehler, 2013. Best for leaders who tell when they should ask. Evidence base: a short practical book by a researcher, Edgar Schein of MIT.

Motivation and development

• Drive by Daniel H. Pink. Riverhead Books, 2009. Best for rethinking how rewards and autonomy work. Evidence base: draws on research, according to the publisher.
• Becoming a Manager by Linda A. Hill. Harvard Business School Press, 1992; Harvard Business Review Press edition, 2019. Best for supporting people in their first year as managers. Evidence base: research-based; it follows nineteen new managers through their first year.
• Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. Harvard Business Press, 2009. Best for understanding why people who want to change still do not. Evidence base: the authors' own framework and case studies; I found no independent test of the method.

Hiring, feedback and hard conversations

• The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni. Jossey-Bass, 2016. Best for making hiring criteria for teamwork explicit. Evidence base: fable with a framework.
• Radical Candor by Kim Scott. St. Martin's Press, 2017. Best for managers who find direct feedback hard. Evidence base: practitioner experience.
• Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. Viking, 1999. Best for preparing for a hard talk. Evidence base: practitioner guide that, according to Publishers Weekly, draws on law, organizational behavior, psychology and dialogue studies.
• Good Boss, Bad Boss by Robert I. Sutton. Business Plus, 2010. Best for managers who want to see how their behavior lands. Evidence base: draws on research, according to the publisher.
• Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute. Berrett-Koehler, 2000. Best for conflicts where each side is sure the other is the problem. Evidence base: fable.

What the research says about HR practices

These books are about practices, and some HR practices have better evidence than others.

Job control, feedback and participation. Patterson and colleagues (2010), in a review written for the UK National Health Service, reviewed longitudinal and intervention studies of HR practices and performance. Work design that gave people more control over their jobs had consistent positive links with satisfaction, absence and health. Feedback on performance and participative goal setting were also supported, and a small number of studies supported involving employees in designing changes that affect their work. The review's search ended in 2006, so the evidence is dated, but it points to practices of the kind that books like Drive and Radical Candor write about, in a health care setting.

Feedback can backfire. Kluger and DeNisi (1996) pooled studies of feedback interventions. According to their abstract, feedback improved performance on average (d = .41), but more than a third of the interventions made performance worse, and feedback became less effective as it drew attention away from the task and toward the self. That is a caution for any book that recommends more feedback.

HR practices for middle managers. The Atlas records a survey of 463 firms operating in China in which HR practices aimed at middle managers' performance went with better firm results, through managers' emotional attachment to the firm, while practices aimed only at keeping them did not (Gong et al., 2009). It is one correlational survey, so it shows association, not that the practices caused the results.

Where the evidence is thin

The research above tests practices, not books, and most of it is correlational or dated. I found no study of what happens when HR teams adopt a book's model across an organization. Each full review says which of its book's specific claims have support.

How the books map to the Unfrozen Loop

This mapping is my judgment. The culture and learning books describe the culture ring of the Unfrozen Loop: safe to speak, and speaking changes something. Involving employees in designing changes that affect them is Start it close to the work. And HR practices for middle managers bear on The middle's own weather, the workload and strain on the people who carry a change.

How to use this list

Pick the group that matches the problem you are trying to solve, and read the full review before the book, so you know which of its claims to lean on. For leadership more broadly, see the best leadership books, and for people managing for the first time, the best books for new managers.