[This Week's Books] The 12 Conditions of Great Management and More

The 12 Conditions of Great Management

Does a good company mean one that offers generous welfare benefits or substantial performance bonuses? The authors, including Gallup and Jim Harter, take these questions further. Do employees know what is expected of them? Do they have the equipment and resources needed to do their work well? Have they received recognition or praise in the past week? The 12 conditions listed in this book are not lofty management slogans but rather the everyday questions that linger in the office. The book's merit lies not in moving tales of leadership, but in its relentless pursuit of data, as it tracks the relationship between employee engagement and performance based on Gallup’s survey of 12 million people in more than 80 countries.

After reading, the word "engagement" may seem less romantic than before. Engagement is not a technique for squeezing passion or loyalty from employees, but rather the effort to create a psychological environment where people can work. Questions such as whether one’s job is connected to the company's mission, whether there is someone to discuss personal growth with, or whether there is someone at work who cares for you as an individual, ultimately serve as small dashboards indicating the quality of an organization. What lingers even longer than the publisher’s claims of a 21% increase in profitability, a 17% increase in productivity, and up to a 59% decrease in turnover, is the assertion that outstanding managers support not just employees’ "work life," but their "whole life." Even in the age of AI, the final difference in organizations lies in the ability to ask why people want to keep doing their work, rather than in technology. (Written by Gallup, Jim Harter, Koh Hyunsook, Park Wonsub, Lee Haesook, Kim Kwangsoo | Published by Cheonglim Publishing)

The Thank You Economy

Gary Vaynerchuk does not see social media simply as a marketing channel. For him, every incident—a single customer’s bad experience, a small request to apply a belated $5 discount coupon, or even a brief comment left on a brand’s Facebook page—becomes a scene of meaningful interaction. The market shifts described in "The Thank You Economy" are more about attitude than technology. Customers are no longer passive recipients of advertisements; instead, they share their experiences and actively help shape the brand’s reputation. The author’s background in merging online wine sales with social media early on brings a real-world sensibility to these arguments, rather than making them sound like abstract marketing theory.

The book prioritizes building relationships with followers over merely increasing follower counts. As in the Reebok case, what matters more than the number of new followers is whether those followers can be engaged in ongoing conversations. Sections of the book such as "Intent: Quality Over Quantity," "Surprise and Awe," or "Attention to All Things Big and Small" all ultimately point in the same direction: company culture precedes customer experience, and the way a business treats its employees shapes the tone of its brand communication. However, it is difficult to entirely trust this book in an era where the word "authenticity" is so casually thrown around in marketing. Nonetheless, in a market where speed and low prices are usually prioritized, the book reminds us that what customers remember is often not the product itself but how they were treated. (Written by Gary Vaynerchuk | Translated by Park Sunju | Published by The Butterfly’s Runway)

Low Birthrate and Eugenics Society

If we view low birthrates purely as statistics, the questions always look the same: Why aren’t people having children? How much more support is needed? When will the nation disappear? Juhee Lee changes the direction of these questions, asking: Who is allowed to have children? The book argues that Korean society has gradually raised the bar for "normal parents" through income, housing, care resources, marriage systems, and gender discrimination. Although childbirth appears to be a matter of personal choice, in reality, a structure exists that separates those who are free to choose from those for whom choice only increases risk. The author’s concept of "structural eugenics" does not involve overt violence such as forced sterilization, but describes a society that leaves the possibility of childbirth and parenting only to those who meet specific conditions.

The sharpest insight of the book is its skepticism toward the familiar tendency to label low birthrates as a national emergency. The question, "Will a child be happy in a world this tough?" is not simply pessimistic, but rather a social judgment accumulated from competition, gender discrimination, and the individualization of care. The book follows the paths of income inequality and low birthrates, gender inequality, and the imbalance in caregiving responsibilities and family-centrism, while proposing gradual adoption of universal basic income, a gender equality revolution, and possibilities beyond marriage-centered family structures. The statement "Poor children do not even have the chance to be born" may seem provocative, but it addresses a crucial blind spot in the Korean debate on low birthrates. The real problem is not simply that fewer children are born, but that some lives are erased from possibility before they even begin. (Written by Juhee Lee | Published by Eunhaengnamu)

The Scent of Animals, the Landscape of Humans

Wild animals are not just symbols of distant nature; they are neighbors living and dying alongside us at the edges of our roads and cities. Mammalian field biologist Tae-Young Choi draws on over 30 years of exploration and research to portray the lives of rabbits, raccoon dogs, wildcats, water deer, wolves, goats, and scops owls. Stories of rabbits that lived on Dokdo, the wildcat named "Palpali" on Highway 88, goats in Seoraksan and the cable car controversy, cranes in the DMZ, and records of roadkills all become records of how Korean society has interacted with nature. The book moves away from viewing animals as cute or pitiful and instead invites readers to see them as beings entangled in history, geography, and the conflict between development and preservation.

From the middle, the focus shifts more deeply toward humans. In the second part, the author analyzes diet, anxiety, instinct, leadership, the #MeToo movement, the sense of safety, and the conditions for happiness through the lenses of evolutionary biology and psychology. Although there are moments where it risks veering into excessive anthropocentrism, the field ecologist’s concrete insights keep the narrative grounded. Ultimately, the book does not ask how mysterious animals are, but rather what humans with lingering traces of the wild have forgotten or expelled while living under the name of civilization. (Written by Tae-Young Choi | Published by Dolbegae)

Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution

The term "Anthropocene" is often used to imply that all humans have ruined the planet. John Bellamy Foster pushes back on this nonchalance. He argues that it was not all of humanity, but rather the logic of capitalist accumulation over the past 200 years that spiked CO2 levels, dried up the Aral Sea, and led to mass extinction. As editor of "Monthly Review" and a leading Eco-Marxist, Foster expands Marx’s theory of the "metabolic rift" to address issues of climate crisis, pandemics, and biodiversity collapse. True to its scale as the 200th volume of the Hangil Great Books series, this book raises environmental issues not as matters of personal practice, but as systemic problems.

The book’s 796 pages are less about theoretical excess and more a counterattack against wishful solutions that treat the climate crisis as a "mistake" or "side effect." For Foster, a green transition is not a future attainable through cleaner consumption or technological improvement alone. Marx’s insight that cities drain nutrients from rural areas and do not return them serves as an uncomfortable tool for understanding today’s carbon economy and global supply chains. Ultimately, the book forces readers to choose: Will we manage ecological ruin, or fundamentally transform the principles of accumulation? (Written by John Bellamy Foster | Translated by Park Jongil | Published by Hangilsa)

Thinking on the Brink of Extinction

Generative AI now goes beyond writing, creating images, and supporting decision-making—it has entered the core domain of human thought. Eric Sadin does not merely accept this change as part of a narrative of efficiency and innovation. When the AI Summit convenes at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2025, at a theater just 300 meters away, teachers, actors, voice actors, translators, and journalists will testify to the crises that education, the arts, labor, and creativity have faced since the spread of AI. The "Anti-AI Summit" led by the author serves as the opening scene and sets the tone of the book. He traces how people have come to accept the erosion of their own thinking powers after ChatGPT.

The language of the table of contents packs a punch. Terms like "Thanatologos," "Linguistic Capitalism," "Total Automation of Labor," "Dehumanization," and "AI Fundamentalism" are closer to civilizational critique than to simple technological criticism. Thus, the book often sounds definitive and is more concerned with risks than potentials. Yet its intensity is not entirely misplaced. Given the rate at which generative AI is transforming language, images, education, and labor, society’s public discussions about what we are losing have been woefully insufficient. Sadin’s warning is not a moralist plea to abandon AI, but rather a protest: Will we hand over the uniquely human faculties of thought and expression to the automaticity of markets and machines? (Written by Eric Sadin | Translated by Lee Seonju | Published by Heybooks)

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.