Management Strategies : A Critique of Theories and Practices

The wide range of possible performance criteria for business enterprises raises serious questions of definition and measurement. Indeed, measurement is at the heart of the analysis of success and failure of business operations, and much depends on the quality of the information that is available. The evaluation of business performance comes into sharp focus with the pUblication of companies' annual and semi-annual accounts, which are then followed by commentaries from stockbrokers and business analysts in reports to investors and in articles in the financial press. Captains of industry may not have to suffer the indignity of frequent public opinion polls that gauge the popularity of politicians. Nevertheless, they are plagued by a similar phenomenon, in that views expressed by analysts, customers, shareholders and investors, serve as powerful reminders to senior executives that the business world is subject to many upheavals and that even the most seemingly secure can suddenly fall from grace. The task of management has become increasingly complex in recent years. Chief executives and senior managers are confronted with the daunting challenge of making sense of a myriad of variables that affect the performance of business systems and of determining causal relationships that underlie seemingly unstructured problems. A wide gulf now exists between theory and practice in the field of management. Pronouncements by theorists have become increasingly unintelligible to practitioners, while practical propositions by management consultants - often presented as recipes derived from experience and case studies - often lack any firm theoretical foundation and are largely based on limited and unreliable hard evidence. This has given rise to many fashions in the way management is practised. The trouble with fashionable doctrines is that they come and go. And while they are in vogue, they can lead to the adoption of what may be regarded as management mispractices, namely practices rooted in questionable beliefs, which are based on false premises. This book is written for managers, management consultants, and students of management, including business school faculty. The range of topics included here should provoke the reader to ponder on the complexities of the multi-faceted managerial scene and to question the basis of many managerial practices as well as the validity of theories propounded in the literature Front Matter....Pages i-7 Structuring the Unstructured....Pages 9-23 Mission Incomplete....Pages 25-33 Board Size and Corporate Failure....Pages 35-44 Determinants of Corporate Performance....Pages 45-59 Prominent Performance Measures....Pages 61-78 A Simple Formula....Pages 79-89 A Misleading Performance Measure....Pages 91-96 Use and Misuse of Productivity Ratios....Pages 97-106 The Bottom Liners....Pages 107-118 In Pursuit of Market Share....Pages 119-132 Intrepid Gurus....Pages 133-139 On Competitiveness....Pages 141-148 Or at the Top?....Pages 149-161 Managing Change....Pages 163-167 Closing the Gap....Pages 169-177 Measuring the Quality of Information Systems....Pages 179-185 Divide and Rule....Pages 187-208 Centralism versus Federalism....Pages 209-215 Hondaism — Myth and Reality....Pages 217-230 A Cake can be Cut in Many Ways....Pages 231-242 Time Management....Pages 243-248 Management Performance Appraisal....Pages 249-261 What Makes Sammy Run?....Pages 263-281 Don’t Spit in the Soup, We All have to Eat....Pages 283-291 The Role of Business Schools....Pages 293-303 Business Policy for Beginners....Pages 305-314 Back Matter....Pages 315-324 "This book is written for managers, management consultants, and students of management, including business schools' faculty. The range of topics included here should provoke the reader to ponder on the complexities of the multi-faceted managerial scence and to question the basis of many managerial practices as well as the validity of theories propounded in the literature."--BOOK JACKET.