Book Review
3 Nov 08
The Ape in the Corner Office by Richard Conniff (Marshall Cavendish, £12.99)
There’s an ape in the corner office because we are all apes, up to a point. Richard Conniff believes it’s a jungle in here and he aims to teach us employees the lessons of animal behaviour.
From his book, you will learn about the approach/inhibition theory, which “seems to provide a coherent explanation of the behaviour of creatures from flatworms to corporate CEOs”.
You will discover that studies show that a better job title is preferable to a pay rise for 70 per cent of British office workers, which is to say that the pecking order is more important than the grains of corn to peck. But in the end, Conniff comes down on the side
of gesture and expression. As he puts it: “Whether it’s 50,000 or 250,000 years old, language is basically a new product put on the market without adequate beta testing.””