| Summary: | The surge of motivational titles flooding bookstore shelves amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression is evidence of our society's growing obsession with self-improvement. Recently two areas of growing interest among academics have been positive organizational behavior and psychological capital. While books on these subjects have led to a new understanding of motivation, they have limited their focus to two ends of a continuum. On one side a plethora of empirical data support the academic literature, while at the other extreme is a tidal wave of self-help books, almost all of which lack academic rigor. The popular volumes ignore rich veins of research, while the academic books pay scant attention to bestseller lists. Both markets seem content with what they get. Scholars read their colleagues' books, while self-help gurus rehash the same old themes and programs. This book gives equal time to both sides. It heeds to the extensive research and careful conclusions of academicians, and then crosses into the realm of self-help and mass-market literature.
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