High Performers: How the Best Companies Find and Keep Them.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Bookshelf - Book - Brief Article

High Performers: How the Best Companies Find and Keep Them.

By Leon Martel. Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Company, 267 pages. $32.

One of the most notable characteristics of this highly readable book is that its roots are in a research project. Author Leon Martel, senior fellow at The Conference Board, started by attempting to identify what the felt were the top 25 companies in the world, based on such factors are share-holder returns and Fortune's annual list of the 100 top companies to work for. The resulting list of companies is drawn from dozen major industries.

Such a list is always subjective and highly debatable, and it's not worth detailiong here. But Martel went well beyond formulating the list. He went to the human resources people at those companies and began an extensive series of interviews designed to draw them out on...