"An intriguing business/sociological chronicle with wider implications for modern corporate practices."

— KIRKUS REVIEWS

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“Over the last couple of decades there has been a lot of ink spilled about Silicon Valley, which ironically has helped disembowel most ink-spilling businesses. Lewis, Stone, Swisher, Bronson, Losse, Isaacson and yours truly have all tried to take hoi polloi on a written tour of that peculiar area south of San Francisco, whisking them around like Midwesterners in a celebrity-tour van in Beverly Hills. Now, we have two more to add to the collection: the aforementioned book by [Alexandra] Wolfe, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and ‘The Kingdom of Happiness,’ by Aimee Groth, a contributor to Quartz — both of which are about tech culture.”
— Nick Bilton, The New York Times, February 14, 2017

The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia 

Kirkus Reviews, December 8, 2016

An investigation into the social experiments at the corporate headquarters of Zappos that raises some important questions about entrepreneurship, business management methods, and human values.
In 2013, journalist Groth, a freelancer who writes often for global business news publication Quartz, triggered a firestorm of publicity when she reported that the company’s CEO, Tony Hsieh, had decided to completely reorganize the company as a holacracy, which “eliminates job titles and abandons traditional hierarchy. The ultimate goal is self-organization.” Working as a senior editor at Business Insider, the author was on the scene as the adoption and implementation of the holacracy occurred, resulting in a management shakedown, employee discontent, and numerous layoffs. Groth traces the prehistory of a company that, from the beginning, prided itself on a quirky insistence that culture and fun ruled over mere profit. Hsieh adopted holacracy expecting to develop a common language that would unite the different components of his empire. However, it was much rockier than he expected, and Groth explores the shortcomings of the attempt. The culture of Zappos was organized around the slogan, “Delivering Happiness.” Similar concepts have been adopted by countless digital-age tech companies and have resulted in corporations beginning “to take on the task of managing the emotional well-being of [their] employees.” In the case of Zappos, the author identifies a group therapy–like tendency to psychologize, even at the company’s mass meetings. She writes that the practice sharply contrasts with that of some of Silicon Valley’s best investors, who are “investing in someone’s career…over the span of decades.” 

Consequently, there is “a subtle backlash emerging around the cult of the entrepreneur.” Groth’s investigation led to the conclusion that the Zappos organization has become quite cultlike; whether that was caused by holacracy or Hsieh’s personal foibles remains undetermined.
An intriguing business/sociological chronicle with wider implications for modern corporate practices.