Product Description

Management models – love them or hate them, they're at the heart of management thinking and practice. They have two main purposes. The first is to provide a framework for improving business performance. The second is to help managers and management consultants get away with murder by intimidating the uninitiated with buzzwords and acronyms.

Key Management Models

takes the reader through each of these essential management tools in a clear, structured and practical way by answering the following key questions:

• What’s the big idea?
• When do I use it?
• In the final analysis, is it any good?

From essential management tools like kaizen, overhead value analysis and benchmarking, to models developed by Gods of management thinking like Belbin, Handy, Kotter and Mintzberg, you'll find dozens of new ways to improve your business and from now on you’ll never have to admit you don't know your way around risk reward analysis.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9044 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-17
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Synopsis
Management models - love them or hate them, they're at the heart of management thinking and practice. They have two main purposes. The first is to provide a framework for improving business performance. The second is to help managers and management consultants get away with murder by intimidating the uninitiated with buzzwords and acronyms. Key Management Models takes the reader through each of these essential management tools in a clear, structured and practical way by answering the following key questions: *What's the big idea? *When do I use it? *In the final analysis, is it any good? From essential management tools like kaizen, overhead value analysis and benchmarking, to models developed by Gods of management thinking like Belbin, Handy, Kotter and Mintzberg, you'll find dozens of new ways to improve your business and from now on you'll never have to admit you don't know your way around risk reward analysis.

About the Author
Steven Ten Have is the Vice Chairman of the board of directors of Berenschot, a leading European management consultancy.

Customer Reviews

Great survey, but sometimes superficial
This 214 page book surveys 56 key management models (hence the title) in the fields of Strategy, Functional Processes, Organization, People and Behaviour and Primary Process. With that many models in those few pages, it's clear this is not going to be an in-depth treatment. The articles outline the key ideas and show the most important diagrams, as well as giving an assessment of the value of the model, under the headings of 'The Big Idea', 'When to use it' and 'The final analysis'.

Inevitably some of the concepts lend themselves better than others to this treatment. The article on the BCG matrix (question marks, cash cows, rising stars and dogs) encapsulates the idea and expresses it elegantly. The article on chaos theory is rather more sketchy.

This is a superb book for reminding you, in a handy volume, of the terminology and main ideas of management models that you already understand. It's also a good launching point for further reading, if you have the time to do this. Equally, if you are confronted with a model you are unfamiliar with in a meeting, you could quickly slip out (and break the tension, by saying "Excuse me, I just have to slip out for a -er- study break") and check out what the person is talking about.

On the other hand, this book is not a shortcut to understanding management theory. To be fair it is not marketed as such, but I suspect that a number of purchasers will be looking for that very thing.

Just a couple of final quibbles. 'Key Management Models' picks up on Mintzberg's Configurations and his Management Models, but not on his seminal 10 types of strategy, which seems an odd omission. Also, the spelling and general editing are not _quite_ up to the usual standards.

Worth having, though, if only as a quick reference to things you used to know.

Great for MBA students
I recommend this to any business student. Most of the main theoretical models are covered in enough depth to aid understanding and justify/otherwise inclusion in assignments.

Well worth the money.

Big let down
Having read the previous reviewer's remarks I bought this work.

It's a big let down. Conceptually it's great and the authors have chosen their models wisely. Likewise, the layout of the book is good. What lets this book down is the text: wordy, clumsy, imprecise and difficult to understand. It's not up to the FT's usual standards and I can't help but think it clipped through an editor's net. I give it 3 stars for the content selection alone and 0 stars for the text.