A touchstone for understanding how we behave on the job

"This is a stimulating and provocative book in bringing together important ideas from different fields, and, thereby, giving us a whole new slant on 'human nature.'" --Edgar H. Schein, Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and Senior Lecturer, MIT

In this astonishing, provocative, and solidly researched book, two Harvard Business School professors synthesize 200 years of thought along with the latest research drawn from the biological and social sciences to propose a new theory, a unified synthesis of human nature. Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria have studied the way people behave in that most fascinating arena of human behavior-the workplace-and from their work they produce a book that examines the four separate and distinct emotive drives that guide human behavior and influence the choices people make: the drives to acquire, bond, learn, and defend. They ultimately show that, just as advances in information technology have spurred the New Economy in the last quarter of the twentieth century, current advances in biology will be the key to understanding humans and organizations in the new millennium.

"...an interesting book which explores and integrates findings from several disciplines and which contributes further to the field of evolutionary psychology in a readable manner..." (The Occupational Psychologist, April 2002)

Paul R. Lawrence is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Organizational Behavior Emeritus at Harvard Business School. His research, published in twenty-four books and numerous articles, has centered on the human aspects of management, organizational change, and organization design.

Nitin Nohria is Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration and chairman of the Organizational Behavior Unit at the Harvard Business School.
He is the author of more than seventy-five professional articles and the coauthor or editor of seven books, including the award-winning The Differentiated Network.