Customer Reviews

Sun Tzu: War and Management : Application to Strategic Management and Thinking

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It is very difficult to find any book that is error-free. What is more important is the contents. The Californian reviewer seems to be very biased against Asian authors! He obviously does not know the very high credentials of the senior author and his works. He also deliberately chose to ignore the comments of the authors on ethics which were given strong coverage towards the end of Chapter 7. Not only have I read the book, but have recommended it to many of my American corporate clients who greatly enjoyed it. I personally think that this is the best book in the market on the applications of Sun Tzu's Art of War to business. The authors deserve strong commendations for their great effort. The mere fact that the book is still selling today without any revised version since it was first published in 1991 speaks volumes about its credibility and popularity. How many books are in such demand after 9 years?

By the way, the ignorance of the Californian reviewer is appalling and mind-boggling. I hope not the average American is not like him. What has this book got to do with the recent economic ills of Asia? For his information, I like him to know that Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and many other Asian economies are NOT dominated by the Chinese. Interestingly, those that are truly dominated by the Chinese - Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Singapore - suffered least in the recent crisis.

This book analyzed Sun Tzu's principles and theroies extremely well. It's a must for executives and educators.

This book prescribes that being unethical (cheating your competitors, lying to them, subverting their trusted advisors, spying on them and harrassing them when weak) is desirable and indeed good strategy. There is no coverage of any aspect of developing one's own assets or competitive strengths -- just of taking advantage of one's competitors' vulnerabilities. These strategies are passed of as "ancient Chinese wisdom". If this is Chinese wisdom, it certainly explains the crurrent fall of the economies that they dominate! This is also a clumsily written book replete with grammatical mistakes and cliches.