BROUGHT TO BOOK/What Management Is: Management has come of age, according to Joan Magretta, even if more people than before are confused about what it actually is. Using the yardstick of MBA graduates in the US, the annual crop has grown from 5,000 in 1960 to 100,000 in 2000. Even the New Yorker magazine has a regular management feature.
Despite the acceleration in book and student production, the discipline is surrounded by a lot of smoke and What Management Is sets out to separate the wood from the trees.
As editors of the Harvard Business Review the authors have had front-row seats.
Magretta is in no doubt about its importance. She says technology gets all of the credit for driving our prosperity, but management is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
As the world economy becomes more knowledge-based, work will become more specialised and complex, so management will play a greater role in our lives.
Newcomers to the field are promised a jargon-free introduction - you are invited to think of the book as everything you wanted to know about management but were afraid to ask.
For those with more experience, the book pledges to outline the big picture, noting the basics are not always obviously recognisable. This may be typical American hard sell, but in the main What Management Is delivers on its promises.
This is not a "how-to" book; its purpose is to explain the underlying "why" of both theory and practice.
It is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the big picture - design concepts - and begins with value creation. The second section deals with translating plans into performance, or execution.
Magretta points out one occupational hazard for the management teacher, using real organisations and business leaders as examples.
Management is done in real time and things change. So today's hero can sometimes be tomorrow's villain.
In highlighting the role of management, the book also ventures out of the business world and concerns itself with organisations working in health and education.
Well written and presented, What Management Is delivers.
What Management Is
(How it works and why it's everyone's business)
By Joan Magretta
(with the collaboration of Nan Stone)
HarperCollinsBusiness £20 (UK)
