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Review
At BP we have found John Roberts' ideas and concepts to be powerful, and we have used them in addressing the issues we face... I am pleased that these ideas have been made available in a systematic fashion in this timely book. (Sir John Browne, Group Chief Executive, BP plc )
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During the first two decades of the twentieth century, managers at Standard Oil of New Jersey, Dupont, Sears Roebuck, and General Motors invited a new way of organizing and managing their businesses. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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The Modern Firm is written in a similar way as for instance the Innovator's Solution by Clayton M. Christensen: (1) it presents theory and concepts that the author draws from some of the best research and illustrates the usefulness of the theory and concepts by real life examples; (2) the book is clearly written and many issues are handled more in-depth in the notes; and (3) the book doesn't pretend that there are simple solutions (do this and you can't fail), rather presents the best available scientific knowledge and let's the reader make the best of implementing it.
This is not to say that the book wouldn't offer any advice - it does, but the reader has to understand the broader context of those advices. The real insight in the book comes from how Mr. Roberts binds the theory into a coherent whole and based on this and his own experience from dozens of companies makes practical advice and illustrations.
The book is very well written, but if you are not used to economic reasoning - and perhaps even if you are - the book's theory part can occasionally be a slow read (for instance when the relationship between the marginal returns of two different variables are discussed). However, I see this as a natural downside of providing an intelligent book. This book is highly recommended for anyone working with organizational change or otherwise interested in the topic.
BP, as everybody is well aware now, has been prone to major failures, the most recent of which was the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but also the explosion of a refinery at Texas City in 2005. The US based Chemical Safety Board and academic Andrew Hopkins ( in his book Failure to Learn) have convincingly argued that the organizational structure of BP, and in particular the system of performance contracts put in place at BP, contributed to the Texas City disaster.
In view of these facts, the claims made by John Roberts in this book should be read with caution.
I have the habit of marking my books in two ways. First; I highlight passages to make important concepts easier to find again. Second; I mark my books with tags so that the most important of these can be accessed rapidly without having to page through the volume. The exercise of thinking about the choices I shall make for highlighting and tagging is a way of helping to consolidate the material in my memory; and - ironically - this exercise at times makes the highlighting and tagging redundant.
Now, what am I to do when the book is so rich in material, when it is comprised of such fertile intellectual soil, when so pregnant with insights and meaning, that almost every paragraph needs to be highlighted, and every second page tagged? Of course, I lower the threshold for highlighting and tagging. And, to ensure that much rich material is not forgotten for its quantity, or buried for its density, I read this book a second time.
Only one negative note: Roberts is given to outlandish Americanisms. Anyone sensitive to good English usage will find it difficult to prevent the occasional grammatical shocks from spoiling their reading pleasure. For example; "Absent efficient Coasian bargaining or complete contracting, coordinating across business to handle the externalities will require cooperation in the sense used in Chapter 3..." What he means is: "In the absence of efficient Coasian bargaining..." 'Absent' is not a prepositional phrase. It is an adjective. What a pity it is that the copy editors of the Oxford University Press didn't repair these mistakes. They give rise, however, to aesthetic problems for the most part. Once the reader becomes aware of Robert's idiosyncratic linguistic lapses, his meaning becomes clear.
For its content, the book is strongly recommended.
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