7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good book on management, October 3, 2009
This review is from: Strategic Management & Business Policy: Achieving Sustainability (12th Edition) (Hardcover)
This is the text book that is used for my capstone class MBA program. There are two versions of this edition, the first one is the entire book including the cases, the other is a paperback without the cases, I bought the latter. We used only four cases; I photocopied the four by borrowing a copy from my teammate.
This is an easy book to pick apart. The effect it had on me is that, I know a lot of things about business, my knowledge is rounded out my knowledge into a coherent whole. The subject is strategic management, not so much business policy. The sustainability part is in several places but never an in-depth issue, it is usually relegated to the various panels and vignettes that litter the chapters. I'd have to disagree with the claim that the entire book has as its focus, environmental matters.
The content is divided into the major components of a strategic audit. The parts (in order) are environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation and evaluation and control. There are three levels of strategy in an organization: corporate, business, and functional. The emphasis is in the highest, corporate and business. Functional strategies are touched on shallowly, which is sensible since marketing, finance, accounting, information technology, operations, are covered in-depth elsewhere in the MBA curriculum.
There are interconnections in the content, topics in chapters are cognates in other chapter. This book is not exactly a cookbook, even if it was it would be a very good one. You can analyze a company by its products, organization, industry, management etc., and it will spit out a good strategy to implement. Chapter eight is kind of weak and just needs to be read just once. Structure and staffing follows strategy, so the type of organization and mangers a firm has is driven by the chosen strategy and are important considerations. I know that whole graduate programs are devoted to teach organizational change and human resources, but the final chapters are very weak. In organization, all that is touched on is life cycle of the company and the forms matrix and networks. Terrorists organize themselves into cells, that structure in touted as the future. In human resources it is just a matter of matching managers to functions, these topics are covered in a chapter each.
This book is good enough that you can teach yourself. If this is for a class, then this book will not dissuade you into matriculating. You can gainsay that this book is not rigorous enough, if you don't need that rigor to present your knowledge the better.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Easy read, March 15, 2010
This review is from: Strategic Management & Business Policy: Achieving Sustainability (12th Edition) (Hardcover)
I had to purchase this book for my capstone course and I found the book to be easy to read and up to date. The case studies are interesting to read and well written. I would have liked if the publishers had posted the strategic audit worksheet to their website. I created one, but it was a lot of work.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
EXCELLENT FOR CLASS, October 15, 2009
This review is from: Strategic Management & Business Policy: Achieving Sustainability (12th Edition) (Hardcover)
I am currently using this book for the semester and so far I am satisfied with it. This book gives another angle for corporations to work with citizens to not only increase profits and marketshare but also to spread goodwill and care for the environment more efficiently.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
