An Examination of Differences between the Most Influential Management Books of the 20th Century and Amazon Best Sellers

Abstract

This study tested empirically the efficacy of Bedeian and Wren’s (2001) list of the 25 most influential management books of the 20th century. Google Scholar was used to collect the data, and the 25 most influential books, as cited in Bedeian and Wren (2001), were predicted to have a significantly larger number of Google documents citations than the 25 other popular management books, most on the Amazon Best seller list, used as a comparison group. The main effect was significant for the 25 most influential management books of the 20th century (p< .05) when the mean for this group was compared to the mean of Amazon Best Sellers, most listed as best sellers on Amazon. There was, however, no interaction effect when the two groups of books were compared across two-quarter centuries, at p> .05. The book, Organizations (1958), by James G. March and Herbert A. Simon (with the assistance of Harold Guetzkow) was the most influential management book, in terms of articles found on Google Scholar, who referenced that book from 1963-2012.

Keywords: Great Books; Influence; Management Theory; Google Scholar

JEL Classification: A00