Developing Strategic Thought
Bob Garratt (Ed)

Shaping and transforming an organisation to meet the demands of a shifting market place means continual learning and adapting. This book addresses the fundamental roles of chairmen and directors in directing the organization through a learning process called strategic thought. The future of an organisation involves more than the management of immediate problems and issues - direction-givers need purpose and passion, vision and values to energise their organisation, balanced with imagination and a capacity to take decisions in times of uncertainty.

This book illustrates the neccesity and the advantages of using strategic thinking and how this differs from strategic planning.

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Managing Across Borders
Sumantra Ghoshal

A guide to the management of companies in the global environment, this text is based on a study of a diverse group of multinational comapanies - including Procter and Gamble, Unilever, General Electric, Matsushita, ITT, Ericsson and NEC. The characteristics of these multinationals, and the process described by Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal, provides valuable lessons on how to develop the organizational structures, administrative processes, and management perspective necessary to success.

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The Individualized Corporation
Sumantra Ghoshal

Based on six years of research, this book reveals that in today's information intense, service based, competitive environment, leaders must recognize that human creativity and individual initiative are their most important asset.

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Dream Merchants & How Boys
Barry Gibbons

Retired CEO of Burger King and Fortune turn-around champion, Barry Gibbons, brings together some of the most famous names in business today. He takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the careers, lives, and crazy decisions of eccentrics from Walt Disney and Michael Dell, to Luciano Benneton and Malcom Forbes. All of them made decisions which, at the time, seemed odd, rash, and downright weird, but which, ultimately, worked.

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The New Leaders
Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee

As business reinvents itself at broadband speed, what makes leaders effective has inevitably been transformed. Old assumptions and old modes no longer hold; a new style of leadership that works has emerged amidst the chaos of change. This new leader excels in the art of relationship - the singular expertise which the changing business climate renders indispensable.

Excellence is being defined in interpersonal terms as companies have stripped out layers of managers, as corporations merge across national boundaries, and as customers and suppliers redefine the web of connection. Daniel Goleman argues that emotionally intelligent leaders are now "must-haves" for business. Many readers have been left with "So now what do I do?" and "The New Leaders" aims to answer that question by laying out the map for transforming leadership in individuals, in teams and organizations.

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Competing for the Future
Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad

Written by two leaders of business strategy, this book provides a model for attaining industry leadership. It explains how to balance the demands of current businesses with the drive toward leadership in the markets of the future. The authors show executives how to:

• Get their company off the restructuring and reengineering treadmilland onto the elusive path of corporate revitalization.
• Develop the industry foresight necessary to proactively shape industry evolution.
• Establish a truly stretching strategic intent and mobilize the entire organization in its pursuit.
• Discover ways of leveraging resources that will enable the company to attain heroic goals despite resource constraints.
• Develop a point of view on which core competencies can be built for the future.
• Extend the boundaries of corporate imagination and revitalize the process of new business creation.

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Leading the Revolution
Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad

Leading the Revolution shows how to:

• get off the treadmill of incrementalism
• save your company from becoming a "one-vision wonder"
• harness the imagination and passion of every employee
• develop new financial measures that focus energy on the challenge of creating new wealth
• create vibrant internal markets for ideas, capital and talent.

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Riding the Waves of Culture
Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars

Many managers understand that cultural differences affect the process of doing business, but many underestimate by just how much. This book aims to dispel the idea that there is only one way to manager and encourages readers to get to know their own culture before doing business with others. The author explores the cultural extremes and the incomprehension that can arise when doing business across cultures - even when people are working for the same company. The book explains that there are five key factors or orientations that affect how people all deal with each other, do business and manage.

The goal is the "transnational organisation" - one in which the company can take from each country what is best, and for those who are sensitive to these differences, the opportunities are enormous.

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Understanding Organizations
Charles Handy

Organizations are a part of everyday life, whether in schools, hospitals, police stations or commercial companies. In this text, Charles Handy argues that the key to successful organizations lies in a better understanding of the needs and motivations of the people within them. "Understanding Organizations" offers an extended "dictionary" of the key concepts - culture, motivations, leadership, role-playing, co-ordinating and consultation - and then shows how this "language" can help us find new solutions to familiar problems.

All organizations need to select, develop and reward their people; to structure and design their work; to resolve political conflicts; to lay down guidelines for their managers; and to plan for the future. In each case, the approaches and techniques described here (and the perspectives opened up by the detailed "Guide to Further Study") should prove invaluable.

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Organization Theory
Mary Jo Hatch

This text offers a comprehensive and original introduction to organisation theory and is designed to provide an even handed, balanced appreciation of the different perspectives that have contributed to our knowledge about organisations. The text's approach is pluralist, reflecting the diverse nature of organisational theory as a field of study influenced by thinkers from a variety of academic disciplines. Specifically, perspectives described as `modern', `symbolic-interpretive' and `postmodern' frame the analysis.

A key question addressed throughout the text is the nature of the relationship between organisational theories and the reality these theories describe.

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