Kathleen Kelley Reardon is professor of management at the University of Southern California Marshall School where she has served on the preventive medicine faculty. She is the author of seven books, including the Amazon Best Seller, The Secret Handshake and It’s All Politics about how politics impacts the careers of individuals and missions of organizations. She is the author of Persuasion in Practice (Sage) and three-time Harvard Business Review author– her latest article is “Courage At Work.” She was co-principal investigator and author on the feasibility study that launched Starbright later chaired by Steven Spielberg and conjoined with Starlight. Dr. Reardon was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi and Mortar Board, received her Ph.D. “With Distinction” from UMASS, Amherst, and has been a political analyst with The Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com).
What is persuasion? How is it maintained? How is it practised and applied? Offering a unique blend of theory, research and application, this volume deftly answers these questions and helps debunk many of the myths surrounding this topic. The constructs, schemata, rules, illusions, attitudes and values of persuasion are explored and various contemporary theories are presented. In addition, the author examines persuasion as it is practised in a number of different settings, including politics, organizations and the mass media.