Customer Reviews

MANAGEMENT BY VICE, A Humorous Satire on R&D Life in a Fictitious Company

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C.B. Don's highly amusing and wry insight into the stresses and strains of laboratory and business life is strongly recommended for anyone who has experience of either. And absolutely essential to anyone with both! Expressed in an enjoyable and easy-read style, the various characters which colour The Company with their devious ploys, underhand tactics, greed and bungling incompetence provide the reader with a verbal picture which is larger than life. Thinking back on the last thirty years I have spent in laboratories, there is not one situation I have experienced which has not been highlighted in this book. Each has been closely scrutinised, squeezed for the last exquisite drop of human nature, embellished with wonderful characters with outrageous names such as Loyola Fraise and VP Barron, and delivered back in such a witty style that the frustration of life's experiences are forgotten in waves of humour.But there is a moral to every good tale; behind the fun is a message that those in positions of responsibility would do well to heed and those in lesser roles might use to prepare themselves better for the trials of life.

Management By Vice: A Humorous Satire On R&d Life In A Fictitious Company vividly portrays the tensions between managers and their technical staff in a typical high-tech firm called "The Company". Eleven episodes showcase highly memorable, wickedly entertaining, lampooned characters. C.B. Don's totally engaging text is enhanced with satirical verses and hand-drawn illustrations. Highly entertaining reading (especially for anyone who's "been there, done that"). Highly recommended reading for business management students and anyone working in today's volatile dot.com environments, Management By Vice will also have the reader responding with serious reflection concerning the basic underlying issues portrayed including such true-life realities as project mismanagement, inequities in profit sharing, patent authorship, commandeering innovative concepts, grievance proceedings, and more.

As "Parkinson's Law" (by C.Northcote Parkinson, 1958)addressed the malpractices inherent in big business and government administration, so "Management by Vice", with like wit and satirical humor, exposes the managerial "vices" of the science/management world of high-tech Research and Development. The book is superbly written, the characters made me laugh out loud and the pointed message in the verses and the corresponding illustrations, make this book a must-read for anyone in management,R&D research staff or any other workplace. Very well done!

Management by Vice is a very perceptive, interesting, biting, witty and down-to-earth statement of how organizations, systems, managers and executives live their lives within the corporate setting. Yet, it's novelized and told as an episodic tale of an R&D battle between scientists and their managers and executives...I especially liked the battle of a female scientist vs management in the episode "A Taste of The Company Justice". The book could be a case study for any organization, except that the excerpts, rhymes and witticisms are so humorous, satirical and to the point you might think you're reading a script for an all-too-familiar play --- the play of life. Yet, the bottom line ethical, moral, ugly and devious ways people go up and down the corporate ladder are plain for all to see. This book REALLY points out how important it is to "think for one's Self and not be a member of the 'herd'". Instructive, useful, funny and well worth your time and that of your (management consultant) clients...This book will provide chuckles, ideas, case studies and opportunities to reflect!

Great stuff with wonderfully barbed humor and not a dull edge anywhere throughout the book! Management by Vice is the kind of book that one could read and read again, each time finding a new character and situation detail to laugh, talk and think about. My personal favorite episode is "The Doughnut Deal". Check it out to see whether you are getting a share of the ring or the hole? I definitely recommend Management by Vice for anyone with a sense of humor on either side of the bench!

we really enjoyed this, we re not in big business but work for the health service in the UK. The book has a 'reality feel' which I presume is a reflection of the authors own experience. Very funny but gave us a real insight into how big businesses go on. Bit of a shock! liked the pics too

Its a sarcastic view of management from the point of R&D scientists. From the point of view of the R&D scientists you get to see some of the underhanded and self serving behavior of incompetent management at the fictional company and how it is tolerated by senior members of management. Unfortunately the book does not explore how "The Company" which was once an R&D powerhouse, got to be in this dysfunctional state. Also the book offers very little hope for dealing with a company in this type of state, short of the company being acquired or getting lucky and having unintended benefits during a passive/aggressive power struggle amongst management. If you were attracted to reading this book by the title "Management by Vice" I would recommend skipping this one and instead read The Below-the-Belt Manager by Eric Broder which I found to be more Humorous than this book.

Management By Vice is full of razor-sharp, satiric humor. You'll find no boring, longwinded analyses of the characters and the fictitious Company's history, though there is enough exposure of human nature to fill a work psychology manual! I like the way the book stays focused on a series of sprightly, humorous episodes, which show various aspects of interactions between managers and technical staff. I have seen and experienced them in the workplace for many years, so I fully agree that Management By Vice is in every way a true-to-life rendition of what takes place in many companies. The writing style is appealing too with witty, short verses that relect the content of each episode. Management By Vice is head and shoulders above the 1st grade reading primer level of many unrealistic, silly humor books about management and the workplace. The repartee between the characters, such as the managers and technical staff, is also very real and entertaining. What can be done about the less-than-satisfactory management described in The Company? Any bright reader will see this type of management must be replaced for the sake of The Company's survival. In fact, the

Most of the satiritical episodes in CB Don's book entitled " Management by Vice" are quite familiar scenes in both commercial and government settings. "Gettting ahead" at the expense of one's integrity as well as colleagues' future is the only means for some people. Greed often blinds ambitious management. A quick promotion and fat bonouses are the driving forces for these managers. Hence, short-term goals, say 3 to 5 years, are all thay care about at present, regardless of the future of the organization. Cooperation mergers are too common a way to survive and getting ahead than collisons on the highway, and lay-off is only a part of the evolutionary process, in the commercial world, where survival of those who are most vocal, but are deficient in both technical skills and vision, seems to be the rule. I thoroughly enjoyed reading CB Don's book. It is humorous, yet candid. I highly recommend it to the current managers and those who are old enough to drink....

Mr. R. K. MSc., Supervisory Civil Engineer, from Michigan, USA.
I find this to be a most delightful book. If you have ever worked in an office, design or R&D outfit, you can really relate to the adventures portrayed therein. I spent 35 years in the egg-laying part of the duck and found the barbed lampoons a titillating reflection of my own adventures. There's also a pleasant sprinkling of cartoons and verse the summarize each fo the 11 episodes. The heroine survives a cliffhanger for those of you that relish a bit of adventure. It's one of those "once you pick it up, you can't put it down" pieces that are a fast read and leave you satisfied like a good pastrami sandwich. For you managers, the Scots have an appropriate saying, "would some power the great giver give us to see ourselves as others see us". Give it a go!!