Book Analysis: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Essay Example
Book Analysis: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Essay Example

Book Analysis: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Essay Example

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  • Pages: 9 (2300 words)
  • Published: February 14, 2022
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Abstract

This paper will focus on comparing theories or concepts from two book analysis. These books are “The Outliers” by Gladwell and “Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills” by Andrew DuBrin. This paper will also focus on the principal purpose of the author in writing the book “The Outliers.” Several theories, Expertise Theory and Expectancy Theory, The Theory of Success and Goal Theory, Cognitive Resource Theory as well as Attribution Theory, will be compared to analyze what the authors wrote about and meant.

Much of this paper will be the emphasis of the authors on the critical issue of success and how people manage to succeed in life. Later in this article, it will be realized that many of the compared theories, talk about success and people can enormously succeed in life. The relation

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of the two authors and their theories can be seen whereby they both speak of success being interlinked with hard work for anyone to be able to make it in life.

Introduction

The “Outliers” is a book written by Malcolm Gladwell. The author of the book brings in the idea that success is not born with anybody because it is earned through the various factors known as Matthew effect. Success is a very powerful word used by the society to express an individual that is intelligent. Gladwell depicts a distinct meaning for the word success, which many people are not familiar with (Gladwell, 2008). “Outliers” reveals that it is not a must that an individual is born with the talent to become victorious in life, but it involves taking the time to practice and make the best out of everything (Gladwell, 2008). The book depict

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that timing, culture, and opportunity plays a big responsibility in an individual’s success. The author of this book used his approach to demonstrate that success takes much practice for it to be achieved.

Author’s Purpose for the Book

The aim of Malcolm Gladwell for writing the book “Outliers” was to notify people on how successful individuals attain success through the help of opportunity, others, and practice. His purpose is to get rid the society’s crude perception on how outliers become victorious. According to the author, a rudimentary knowledge can be, “Bill Gates has become victorious since he was smart,” but he wanted to go further than that generality (Gladwell, 2008). He opted to know how Bill Gates achieved his success. The author went further to research in detail about Bill Gates’ culture and the past and learned why he became successful in life. He found that Bill Gates hailed from a wealthy family and attended a private institution that had computers, a technology that was rare in the 1950s.

Bill had the opportunity as a little child to use computers that boosted his success. This kind of opportunity was not affordable to every child during his period. Not only did Bill Gates have the opportunity, but he also had practice for what he wanted best. According to the author, Bill Gates spent much of his time programming virtually nonstop for seven successive years (Gladwell, 2008). The author affirms that Bill was past ten thousand hours, which is termed to be the amount of hours required to be taken to become a master of something.

Also, Bill Gates was offered the opportunity at a tender age to use computers and

got the practice that made him better than any other programmer in the world. Gladwell asserts that Bill Gates did not begin as an outlier, but begin his life a little bit better. All through the book, the author proves his theory for all the outliers by stating that they have something either on purpose or accidental that pushed them to victory.

Discussion

The themes in the book “The Outliers” are success and failure, timing and historical context, solutions and implications for the future, talent, opportunity, work, and work, privilege, heritage, and cultural background (Gladwell, 2008). Therefore, this can be related and compared to some of the concepts and principles argued by DuBrin in his book the “Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills.” DuBrin’s book is full of theories, principles, and concepts that can be applied by the reader to assist in becoming an effective leader who in turn would make an individual victorious.

The right factors coming forth about some of the ideas presented by Gladwell paired with the correct understanding, as well as the application of the textbook can result in probably a successful leader. Among the theories presented in the book “Outliers” are the expertise theory, the theory of success, the 10,000 hours rule, and the Matthew effect. Conversely, some of the theories or concepts presented by DuBrin in his book “Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills” include the expectancy theory, goal theory and motivation, cognitive resource theory, and attribution theory (DuBrin, 2015). Some of these theories or concepts relate to each while others differ.

Expertise Theory and Expectancy Theory

First, this essay compares the theory of expertise from the book “Outliers” to expectancy theory by DuBrin.

According to Gladwell (2008), expertise theory specifies how talent grows across defined fields or domains by focusing on cognitive duty analysis, practice and instruction. It also specifies learning results against which an individual can measure the development of expertise. This theory used by Gladwell signifies an update on classical behavioral learning theories dating back to Pavlov. In the 1970s, the central theories on how people succeed in their work, as well as careers, had shifted heavily in the direction of trait-oriented theories (Hawkins, 1980).

The type of practice needed to develop expertise and according to Gladwell is not just doing work. It involves a cognitively effortful endeavor whereby an individual thinks about what the other is doing. Gladwell made the expertise theory famous and introduced the major concepts to a broad audience. Further, he extended credit for the advancement of the basic theory and encouraged research to others. This theory very much relates to DuBrin’s theory of expectancy. The theory of expectancy and motivational skills by DuBrin proposes that a person can behave in a certain way simply due to the motivation of a selected particular behavior over another set of behaviors because of the outcome they expect from the practice (DuBrin, 2015).

This theory characterizes motivation theories, as well as offers the leader several guidelines by triggering plus sustaining constructive attempt from the group members. The theory is centered on the principle that how much effort individuals extend relies on how much reward they expect to get back. Expectancy theory presumes that people choose among options by selecting the only thing that they have the best opportunity of achieving (DuBrin, 2015). They end up choosing the

option that seems to have the largest personal payoff.

These two theories are related in that they both embrace for individuals to work hard so as to achieve success. Any person engages in a task that he/she hopes that will be fruitful later and will bring better rewards for his/her efforts. These theories explicate more about expectancy, which is the probability assigned to a person that the efforts invested in performing a task as expected will be rewarding.

The Theory of Success and Goal Theory and Motivation

In the book “Outliers” Gladwell discusses the theory of success through a determined effort. He states that having a strong support system in one’s family can define an individual’s future success. For instance, just as Gladwell says, his parents raised him with immense efforts to question ideas and concepts that he does not understand or differ with. They taught him from since he was young to be grateful for what he had and work hard for better things in life. He valued education so much even though they had no much money (Gladwell, 2008).

The notion of not been poor and not been rich gave him hope to work hard for better things in life instead of using the money to achieve what he wanted. According to Gladwell (2008), success always relies upon explorative energy that brings an individual into practical knowledge and who contacts with opportunity. On the other hand, goal theory and motivation talks more about goal setting. The theory emphasizes on the significant correlation between performance and goals (DuBrin, 2015). The principle underlying the goal theory and motivation is that the behavior of an individual is regulated by his/her

values and goals so that he/she can succeed. The motivational skills are developed from the goals set by a person and the efforts they invest to succeed.

These two theories relate and to some extent differ in the clarity of what an individual should expect if he/she invests his/her efforts and does not succeed in life. Their relation is that they both communicate about hard work towards achieving success in life. Both Gladwell and DuBrin embrace about an individual’s hard work to succeed in life. This is because according to Gladwell, hard work is combined with success. This emanates from Gladwell’s quote that “no one can rise before dawn three sixty-five days annually and fail to make his entire family rich” (Gladwell, 2008).

The goal theory and motivation DuBrin differs from success theory by Gladwell in that although they both embrace for success, the goals of an organization does not always concur with the aims of the individual. Alternatively, Gladwell asserts that hard work leads significantly to success, but DuBrin in his theory claims a person may work hard to succeed while the goal of the organization does not align with his/her goal (DuBrin, 2015).

For instance, the goal of the company would be to train employees on new safety protocols. Nonetheless, the manager’s bonus relies upon the financial performance of the company and not the workers getting trained. The manager may not be aggravated to take workers away from their obligations to complete the training. Another difference is that goals do not always promote interest in an individual and interest goals do not ease learning. The paranoia is that people are more tempted to take risky actions

and work hard in chase of their goals that can lead to potential failure other than success unlike what Gladwell said.

The 10,000-Hour Rule and Cognitive Resource Theory

The 10,000-hour rule by Gladwell asserts that 10,000 hours of purposeful practice are required to become world-class in any field. Gladwell's thoughts on success are on the hours an individual invests and the opportunity that comes to him (Gladwell, 2008). The notion that excellence at conducting a complex task needs a necessary minimum level of practice surfaces repeatedly in studies of expertise. Success is attained by how hard an individual works and how much time and effort he/she invests in it. For instance, Gladwell gives an example of sports, whereby an individual cannot become better without investing in practice by dedicating time.

Alternatively, cognitive resource theory by DuBrin is a leadership theory that focuses on the influence of the leader’s intelligence, as well as experience on his/her response to the issues affecting him/her. Knowledge plus experience, as well as other cognitive resources, are factors that contribute to leadership success. According to DuBrin (2015), cognitive abilities even though significant are not sufficient to predict leadership success in an individual. Therefore, stress is said to impact the capacity to make decisions that can lead to success. These two theories relate in the sense that they both focus on success through hard work, but differ on the fact that DuBrin goes further to assert that other factors make people even though they work hard to fail to succeed in life (DuBrin, 2015). Gladwell in his book does not feature stress as a bothering factor to success, but affirms that hard work contribute greatly

to success since both are interconnected.

Matthew Effect and Attribution Theory

According to Gladwell (2008), Matthew effect or accumulated advantage is that small advantage at the start of something, which is amplified to make a difference that leads to an opportunity by creating bigger opportunities. This concept in the book “Outliers” states that there are feedback loops in several aspects of the society that make individuals who have given an advantage to something will be capable of using it to achieve better things in life than others (Gladwell, 2008).

Conversely, attribution theory looks at how individuals make sense of their world. It also looks at what cause and effect interventions they make concerning the behaviors of other people and themselves. The aim of making attributions in life is to be able to achieve cognitive control (DuBrin, 2015). This theory presumes that people try to determine why they do what they do by interpreting causes to occurrences and behaviors. This theory is all about accomplishment in life following hard work based on good morals. According to DuBrin (2015), essential factors affecting attributions involve capacity, luck, and effort. This theory and the Matthew effect by Gladwell are related in the sense that they all campaign for success through hard work. For instance, when a person succeeds, he/she attributes that success is internally.

Conclusion

In conclusion, both Gladwell and DuBrin’s theories or concepts are much more related together than they differ. Their theories explicate in detail about how success can significantly be achieved. They also inform on how people can become great individuals in the society by considering that they had worked for their success. Besides, they both relate success to hard work,

a fact that shows no one comes without the other.

References

  1. DuBrin, A. (2015). Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills (8th ed.). Cengage Learning.
  2. Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. London: Allen Lane.
  3. Hawkins, D. M. (1980). Identification of Outliers. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
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