Builders & Dreamers: The Making and Meaning of Management - Hardcover

Witzel, Morgen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0273654373 ISBN 13: 9780273654377

Publisher: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall, 2002

Synopsis

Builders and Dreamers weaves the story of our business past and future, showing how and why management has evolved to it's present state. Stripping away some of the complex theories which have grown up around management over the years, this book reveals the unchanging, successful principles in management. Examples presented range from the Medici Bank to the East India Company; from the Cistercian order of monks - masters of organisation and innovation - to the military managers who have defined our modern concepts of strategy.
In business there are lessons from history that last and managers need to use these lessons to their advantage. In Builders and Dreamers, Morgen Witzel equips readers with a corporate memory that will enrich their judgement and renew their sense of management purpose.

About this title

Review:

 "Builders and Dreamers is a vivid account of how management developed as a set of practices and as a subject of study. Morgen Witzel has an encyclopaedic knowledge of management biographies and his book is highly readable."  Professor Malcolm Warner, Fellow, Wolfson College, Cambridge and Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge  "Morgen Witzel has written a fascinating and important book. Builders and Dreamers highlights the long history of management and helps put today's global world in proper perspective. I would recommend it for managers and students of management alike."  Professor Karl Moore, Faculty of Management, McGill University  "Builders and Dreamers reminds us that when it comes to management, history is anythingbut bunk. Every facet of business, be it marketing, organization, finance, strategy, or ethics, has a centuries-old and quite human story to tell. From Cheops to Bill Gates, Morgen Witzel tells this story, topic by topic, very, very well. Historians, MBA students and CEO's ignoring this charmingly readable book will miss out on a whole new and valuable perspective."  David Lewis, Historian and Co-author of Foundations of Corporate Empire  "Celebrating millennia of organizational triumphs, Morgen Witzel offers provocative ideas about management by describing achievements and thinking from around the world and across time. He reminds us (with considerable style and humour) that today's managers can learn as much from history's military and religious leaders as from its commercial titans. Builders and Dreamers is both a good read and a vital contribution to the history of business."  Peter McKenzie-Brown, Business Historian

About the Author:

Morgen Witzel

is a historian of management and writer on business. After taking a masters degree in Renaissance history from the University of Victoria, Canada in 1986, he emigrated to the UK and became a member of the research faculty at London Business School. He later spent five years at LBS helping to design and teach courses on business in China, and co-wrote a successful book, Doing Business in China. He has also worked with Durham University Business School and the Department of Trade and Industry.

At present, he is editor in chief of the journal Corporate Finance Review, and deputy editor of Mastering Management Review, published on the web by the Financial Times, where he also writes the series Management A to Z. He is a partner in two businesses, Western Writers Block, which provides services to the publishing industry, and Carucate, a research consultancy. He is also the editor of the Biographical Dictionary of Management, an important reference work containing biographies of more than 600 management thinkers and practitioners from around the world.

He believes that many of the boundaries within the study of business are artificial ones, imposed by the constraints of academia. To master management, he says, "managers need to study not only the traditional core concepts of marketing, organization behavior, finance and so on, but also look outside their discipline and study philosophy, psychology, military strategy, art, music and culture". Some of these ideas are contained in his book How to Get an MBA. He has written frequently on Asian models of business, and believes that Chinese classics like the Daodejing and the works of the Chinese and Japanese masters have much value in explaining how other cultures do business and tackle business problems.

Over the past three years he has written more than 300 articles for management journals and reference works.

About this edition

• Publisher: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0273654373
• ISBN 13: 9780273654377
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 297