- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Mandarin; New edition edition (6 Nov 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 074932645X
- ISBN-13: 978-0749326456
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 274,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
A critique of management theory and the gurus who promote it. The authors, who spent two years travelling through Britain, the USA and the Far East, studying companies as they struggled to manage themselves, sort through the muddle of modern management theory and aim to explain it in plain English.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book really presents a summary of all of the key 'new ideas' in management and strategic thinking over the past 50 years - for better or worse. It starts off a little sensationalistic: 'All consultants are bad, and no ideas are new' - but then goes into some clear detail as to what the main ideas were, why they work, and what their limitation are. It's written in frank, easy prose, and I love the fact that the guy they seem to endorse most is Peter Drucker - a 90 year old whose books span 5 decades and never seem to date.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The book is a must read for the top managemet who are concerned about their business.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
38 reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
The best summary on management theory there is
6 Jan 2004
Format:Paperback
Great fun, great wit, great journalism. These guys started off as outsiders but they clearly are top-class journalists: they truly captured all the "strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats" that all the true, semi or fake gurus have produced since Taylor, Sloan and Drucker. A must have!
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Warms the cockles of this management consulting cynic.
28 Feb 1997
Format:Hardcover
For those workers in the trenches who have recently found themselves downsized due to the latest round of "re-engineering,".....
For those frustrated managers who have had just one too many management consultants imposed upon them by paranoid executives.......
For those paranoid executives who feel they need to hire the "latest and greatest" consultants to stay ahead of the competition.......
.....You must read this book.
Written by two staff editors of the economist, this book reveals the charlatanism surrounding the management consultant industry, and how the growth of the industry has led to the imposition of new management techniques which may be entirely irrelevant to the enterprise, its workers, and the shareholders. The prose is what you would expect from The Economist - pragmatic, and easy to read.
The conclusions are straightforward and hard to ignore.
As one of the senior Editors at The Economist warned the authors while they were writing the book: "You know what worries me about your book about management theory: that you'll talk to all the people and read all the books; that you will detail all its incredible effects - the number of jobs lost, the billions of dollars spent, and so on. And you won't say the obvious thing: that it's 99 percent bullshit. And everybody knows that" (from the prologue).
Indeed, if everybody read this book, his statement would ring true
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
The best management book ive read
26 July 2002
Format:Hardcover
Would recommend this book strongly to two sets of people:
1. All those who feel they do not read enough about management
2. My B-school strategy professors that tried to treat books by gurus as bibles
1. All those who feel they do not read enough about management
2. My B-school strategy professors that tried to treat books by gurus as bibles
After working in companies that have consistently outperformed the market, my conclusion is that good managements are those that have the ability to learn about the environment all by their own and have the knack to apply it well bt themselves. No consultant or management guru can ever know a company's business better than its employees do. The best the gurus can ever do is mouth generalities. All of management theory is ephemral, transient. It is good to know concepts and use them sparingly and caringly.
This book validates what ive been feeling for a long time.
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