What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business

Citation

(2003), "What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business", Work Study, Vol. 52 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2003.07952dae.004

What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business

What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business

Joan Margretta, Nan StoneHarperCollins£20ISBN: 0-00-713246-8

The authors suggest that this book is not just for managers and students of management – but for everyone. This is because management matters – to all. It is the driving force behind all the innovations of the last 100 years. Margretta and Stone attempt to cover and relate a number of topics from value creation through business models to competitive strategy, the 80/20 rule and decision analysis. They do this by beginning with a description of what is required to be a manager, and then explaining, in general terms, how to do it. The material is organised into two simple, main parts: "Design: Why people work together and how", and "Execution: making it happen". There is then a final chapter – "saving the best for last" on "Managing people: which values matter and why".

Whether the basic premise – and therefore intended readership – is justified is perhaps arguable, but the authors do provide useful lessons and insights into a number of management areas. Often this is through case studies – some of which have been aired before, but many of which are new. The book aims to promote "managerial literacy". Certainly it does a good job of setting out many of the basic principles of management and offering advice on how they might be deployed.