Key Management Ideas: the thinkers who change the way we manage - Softcover

Crainer, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0273638084 ISBN 13: 9780273638087

Publisher: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall, 1998

Synopsis

"The only thing worse than slavishly following management theory is ignoring it completely" -The Economist

"If you are short of reading time and want to become ridiculously well-informed in a single sitting about any management fad for the last 15 years, this is the book for you" -Business Age

It’s back! and better than ever.

New management ideas are springing up all the time, propagated by new gurus, adopted by consultancies, and promoted through hundreds of business books. But how do managers find time to read every new theory? How do they distinguish important ideas from pure sales hype?

They read one book instead of hundreds.

Key Management Ideas cuts through the padding and jargon to give concise summaries of the most important contemporary management ideas. It puts the ideas that changed the management world into the hands of those who need to implement them.

Stuart Crainer provides an educated and unbiased opinion of the worth of each concept and discusses the benefits and pitfalls of applying them.

New for this edition:

• an expanded chapter on global management
• a new chapter on stakeholding and corporate responsibility
• a scaled down section on re-engineering
• a revised Chapter 8 focusing on knowledge management, intellectual capital and organisational learning
• analysis of c. 20 new theories
• introduction of several more management gurus.

Author :

Stuart Crainer is an expert on business books and business schools. He is an experienced journalist and author whose previous titles include: FT Handbook of Management, The Future of Leadership and The Ultimate Business Library.

About this title

Review

It would be tempting to dismiss Key Management Ideas as a crib sheet, a 300-page bluffers' guide to every management nostrum that has waxed and waned over the past ten years. "Reengineering", "the learning organisation", "empowerment", "the challenge of technology", "the quality revolution" and many more; they are all here. But this volume doesn't just describe and condense them. It tries to make sense of the latest management trends and terms by putting them into context and explaining their underlying foundation. More important still, it tries to show busy, pressurised, put-upon managers how they can tailor these ideas to their own particular circumstances. It is an attempt, and a highly successful one at that, to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Author Stuart Crainer writes in an authoritative but readable and even entertaining style that makes light work of the sometimes complex ideas he describes. The book goes out of its way to make itself accessible with icons used to denote passages of special interest on key ideas and key thinkers, a checklist summary of key points in each section, and lists of further reading. There is even a glossary of leading management thinkers complete with 200-word summaries of their works.

This isn't just an excellent management summary of recent management thinking--it would make an outstanding primer for any layman interested in understanding the key developments in modern thought that are shaping the world of commerce. --Alex Benady

Edition details

• Publisher: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0273638084
• ISBN 13: 9780273638087
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 320