Customer Reviews

Management

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An excellent introduction to management theory and practices. Major subjects are economic and social environment, planning, organizing, leading, and controlling, each containing key topics such as motivation and teamwork.

Each chapter offers examples (provided as embedded boxes), begins with study questions to provide learning objectives and an opening headline, and concludes with an excellent summarization of key points, a self-test that is in depth and challenging, and a listing of key terms. Do's and don'ts of managerial behavior are highlighted. Photos and diagrams add color and clarity.

There are also career development tools, cases and exercises, research projects, and management skills assessments linked to each chapter and available online and in interactive format at a website. A website has been developed in support of this text. Includes CD-ROM and a good glossary. THIS IS A TERRIFIC TEXT! Reviewed by Yvette Borcia, co-founder, Stern & Associates, co-author of Stern's Sourcefinder: The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and Stern's Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.

This presents the rise and fall of Enron from the perspective of the business school case, with a little bit here and there of all the key strategic dimensions. The interviews with key executives in 4/2000 and 5/2001 are especially useful in seeing how the executive team saw themselves and their goals for the corporate culture. However, it is nicely sanitized and does not have the gritty, down-to-earth dimension you will find in Power Failure by Swartz and Watkins, such as the salty language and pushy behavior on the Enron trading floor and the malfunctions of the group process at the managerial and executive levels.

p99 7ed politically correctly redefines the Hawthorne effect to be "tendency of persons singled out for special attention to perform as expected" - but this has been taught forever as
the placebo or guinea pig effect. p273 7ed promotes "progressive" management. Societ agent Henry Wallace who designed the now-defunct grain silos from the Confucian "Ever Normal Granaries" would be proud. Progressive was a proud soviet term. No wonder the author is in the rust belt. Any manager who hires students taught by this book deserves to have his job offshored! This is the communist ideology taught in the business schools that has created the rust belt!