Turns out William H. Swanson's book "...Unwritten Rules of Management," was taken from other sources - unacknowledged sources.
While this is a problem for sure, there is another issue in our PM domain.
Where are the references and bibliography in PMBOK?
This has been presented before, here and other places. While in absolutley no way related with the plagiarism by Swanson or other plagiarist of late, and I'm not saying in any way what so ever that the material in PMBOK is plagiarized - no way no how.
But where are the references and bibliography in PMBOK
If Swanson had attributed his quotes to the source, trhen I personally woudl have foudn his book no less interesting and useful. Without attribution of ideas in PMBOK I'm always stuck with the little twing in the back of my head - who says this is the way to think about this? Although the PMBOK stuff is pretty much mainstream and obvious at times, it's downright odd this days not to have the research references to underpin what is billed as a "guide to the body of knowledge." Where's the body of knowledge PMBOK is a guide to?
Oh there are a few - maybe 6 if you stretch it. But this is a mighty thin list.
A counter example is Peter WG Morris's book The Management of Projects or Terry Williams book Rechtin's The Art of Systems Architecting or one of my favorites Jim Collin's Good to Great. All have extensive reference and bibliography section. Each addresses context related to project management and systems.
It time we started to understand that there is very little new in the world of project management and certainly not much new in the process areas associated with project management.
A good reading list or bibliography needs to be produced by PMI in support of the Guide to the Body of Knowledge - that way it can actually be a guide to the body of knowledge.
Disclaimer
I am a PMI member, but not a PMP, so I'm on the outside looking in.
