Customer Reviews

Managing Change: Cases and Concepts

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although slightly dated Managing Change has become a classic of the genre and a favourite of business schools. For good reason. The book comprises some of the most useful academic articles on change management published in academic journals in the 1980s and early 1990s as well as case studies. The latter are well selected and will help to generate furious debate in any group that studies them. Jick's own contributions provide balanced and thoughtful links between the pieces as well as several articles on issues like the role of vision statements and implementing change.

Any one interested in change management will need this book. Although there are no `formulas' for the right way to introduce change programs, a thoughtful reading of the material in this book can only improve one's ability to implement change and to understand how others react to it.

Why four stars rather than five? The price of the book is unbelievable and (I suspect) hard to justify given the large numbers which would have sold in business schools. It's sad that no paperback edition is available for students either. I understand an updated edition is being prepared.

Professor Todd Jick, one of the great people in a respected field of time management, produces a great source of needed information. It talks about honchos of GM, Motorola among others, and helps you also with sales and brunches and things that can really improve your life in drastic ways. Professor Jick should definetley writew a second, because this one has really helpedme grow in many ways. He has helped many because of this book. Read it!

Professor Todd developed the book for his students at Harvard, using the case study approach. And ,of course, it is an excellent text to be used in the class room. But the beauty is that it is an extremely readable book, not heavy, not your typical book by a professor.

It conveys the concepts in a series of simple and elegant reading materials and cases. And it feels great to read case-studies about the inside workings of many corparate titans like Bob Galvin (Motorola), John Reed (CITIGROUP), Jack Welch (GE) and many more.

The book is great, but more so for people who do not come from the behavioural sciences or organization development background, but just plane business background. It zeroes in on and enunciates the key concepts of leading and managing change. It walks you through a series of cases illustrating not only what to do , but what not to do. And the cases have a tremendous variety to them ranging from merger situations to executives being brought in from the outside to internal organizational programs.

If you have time for not even one book on change management, this is it.