Important New Book Applies Business Principles to Marriage
People have more options and less guidance when making decisions about marriage. The high divorce rate provides evidence of their frustration. Allen Parkman, a business school economist, provides valuable insights from business to help people improve their decision making before and during marriage.
Albuquerque, NM, April 30, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Allen M. Parkman, Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Management at the University of New Mexico, has just published an important new book, Smart Marriage: Using Your (Business) Head as Well as Your Heart to Find Wedded Bliss (Praeger, 2007): http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/C9455.aspx. This innovative book uses business principles to help people make better decisions about all phases of marriage. It suggests, for example, that people should be evaluating prospective spouses as a business partner as well as a lover and that a successful family is similar to a profitable business as it converts inputs into outputs.
Having a successful marriage is the most important goal in most people’s lives and yet many people fail in their attempt to establish it. Why? Too many people are just concluding that times have changed and marital failure is just one of the changes with which we have to live.
He doesn’t buy that. He sees one of the major problems facing people who want a successful marriage is a lack of guidance about the types of decisions that will accomplish that goal. Most people do not appreciate how much more complicated those decisions have become. During most of the past, people had few choices when considering marriage. Married couples were better off than single adults in very tangible ways such as better homes and meals, so most people wanted to marry. When considering prospective spouses, adults were often constrained to a limited geographic and socioeconomic pool. Having married, necessity had a strong influence on the roles that they assumed.
Few of these constraints still exist and, so people have to make choices—and they have many more than their ancestors. Where can they look for guidance? Certainly, there is a large marital advice literature usually based on a psychological foundation that exposed people to valuable communication and problem solving skills. But, communication about what? Smart Marriage addresses that question by exposing people to a framework for determining the “what.” A business perspective helps in identifying the preferred characteristics of a spouse, how to find that person and sell yourself to him or her, the roles within marriage that will increase a family’s welfare, how parents can produce quality children, etc. Not all marriages—or businesses—are successful, so it helps to identify how to avoid divorce—bankruptcy, but also the conditions under which it may be the best choice. It uses insights from business mergers to assist people considering remarriage.
Here are some endorsements for Smart Marriage.
David Popenoe Founder and Co-Director, the National Marriage Project Rutgers University
Today's high divorce rate is due largely to the fact that marriage itself is so different from what it was in the past; new strategies are needed if the institution is to survive. Pragmatic thinking within a business framework, the strategy promoted by this wise and informative book, may be just what many people need to make their marriages a success.
David Blankenhorn, President, The Institute for American Values and Author, The Future of Marriage
Practical wisdom mixed with economic insights--an excellent guide for level-headed dreamers who want love to last.
Glenn T. Stanton, Author of Why Marriage Matters
Professor Parkman speaks authoritatively from two things he knows very well: business management and happy marriage. He learned the first in his day job as a long-time professor of business management and the second in his 30+ years of happy marriage to his wife, Amy. Allen takes the wisdom learned from both of these rich lives and offers his reader keen and practical insight on how to make your marriage a success, doing so through pages that flow with the ease of a good novelist, not your typical business school professor. This book overflows with must-have wisdom and insight for any married or engaged couple.
Praeger’s Description of the Book:
It might seem too practical, at first, to apply a business strategy to such an intimate and emotional quest as love and marriage. But a front page article in the Wall Street Journal in 2006 summed it up this way: "In their rush down the aisle, couples often think love will overcome any disagreements about savings and spending. It doesn't. So even among the most compatible couples, the pre-wedding vow of personal-finance silence leads to frustration, fights, and power struggles." And divorce, adds economist Allen Parkman. So look--and talk--before you leap.
In this eye-opening book, Parkman shows how we can use our heads--in addition to our hearts--to find wedded bliss and avoid a failed marriage. Smart Marriage provides a framework Parkman claims will increase the chance of long-term success in marriage and help couples to weather the storms that come with all marriages. This framework will enable couples to jointly make good decisions, avoid financial stress and the other traps that bring so many into divorce court, and do right by the most important outcome of most marriages: the children.
You can contact Allen Parkman at 505-277-5222 or by e-mail at parkman@unm.edu. Of course, he is available for interviews.
Allen M. Parkman, Ph.D., J.D.
Regents' Professor Emeritus of Management
Anderson Schools of Management
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
###
Having a successful marriage is the most important goal in most people’s lives and yet many people fail in their attempt to establish it. Why? Too many people are just concluding that times have changed and marital failure is just one of the changes with which we have to live.
He doesn’t buy that. He sees one of the major problems facing people who want a successful marriage is a lack of guidance about the types of decisions that will accomplish that goal. Most people do not appreciate how much more complicated those decisions have become. During most of the past, people had few choices when considering marriage. Married couples were better off than single adults in very tangible ways such as better homes and meals, so most people wanted to marry. When considering prospective spouses, adults were often constrained to a limited geographic and socioeconomic pool. Having married, necessity had a strong influence on the roles that they assumed.
Few of these constraints still exist and, so people have to make choices—and they have many more than their ancestors. Where can they look for guidance? Certainly, there is a large marital advice literature usually based on a psychological foundation that exposed people to valuable communication and problem solving skills. But, communication about what? Smart Marriage addresses that question by exposing people to a framework for determining the “what.” A business perspective helps in identifying the preferred characteristics of a spouse, how to find that person and sell yourself to him or her, the roles within marriage that will increase a family’s welfare, how parents can produce quality children, etc. Not all marriages—or businesses—are successful, so it helps to identify how to avoid divorce—bankruptcy, but also the conditions under which it may be the best choice. It uses insights from business mergers to assist people considering remarriage.
Here are some endorsements for Smart Marriage.
David Popenoe Founder and Co-Director, the National Marriage Project Rutgers University
Today's high divorce rate is due largely to the fact that marriage itself is so different from what it was in the past; new strategies are needed if the institution is to survive. Pragmatic thinking within a business framework, the strategy promoted by this wise and informative book, may be just what many people need to make their marriages a success.
David Blankenhorn, President, The Institute for American Values and Author, The Future of Marriage
Practical wisdom mixed with economic insights--an excellent guide for level-headed dreamers who want love to last.
Glenn T. Stanton, Author of Why Marriage Matters
Professor Parkman speaks authoritatively from two things he knows very well: business management and happy marriage. He learned the first in his day job as a long-time professor of business management and the second in his 30+ years of happy marriage to his wife, Amy. Allen takes the wisdom learned from both of these rich lives and offers his reader keen and practical insight on how to make your marriage a success, doing so through pages that flow with the ease of a good novelist, not your typical business school professor. This book overflows with must-have wisdom and insight for any married or engaged couple.
Praeger’s Description of the Book:
It might seem too practical, at first, to apply a business strategy to such an intimate and emotional quest as love and marriage. But a front page article in the Wall Street Journal in 2006 summed it up this way: "In their rush down the aisle, couples often think love will overcome any disagreements about savings and spending. It doesn't. So even among the most compatible couples, the pre-wedding vow of personal-finance silence leads to frustration, fights, and power struggles." And divorce, adds economist Allen Parkman. So look--and talk--before you leap.
In this eye-opening book, Parkman shows how we can use our heads--in addition to our hearts--to find wedded bliss and avoid a failed marriage. Smart Marriage provides a framework Parkman claims will increase the chance of long-term success in marriage and help couples to weather the storms that come with all marriages. This framework will enable couples to jointly make good decisions, avoid financial stress and the other traps that bring so many into divorce court, and do right by the most important outcome of most marriages: the children.
You can contact Allen Parkman at 505-277-5222 or by e-mail at parkman@unm.edu. Of course, he is available for interviews.
Allen M. Parkman, Ph.D., J.D.
Regents' Professor Emeritus of Management
Anderson Schools of Management
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
###
Contact
Allen M. Parkman
(505) 277-5222
www.unm.edu/~parkman
(505) 277-5222
www.unm.edu/~parkman
Contact
Categories