Reinventing Management

The economic crisis was not just caused by a failure of regulation or economic policy; it was a story of the failure of management in a fundamental sense—a deeply flawed approach to management that encouraged bankers to pursue opportunities without regard for their long-term consequences, and to put their own interests ahead of those of their employers and their shareholders.   The revised edition of this best-selling book shows convincingly that many of today’s major economic problems in the west can be traced to a failure of management.  In this updated edition the author draws our attention to new examples of failed management, from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and the disaster at BP, to the ongoing problems in financial services companies such as UBS and RBS.  Throughout the book the references and statistics have been updated, to make this a current, highly relevant analysis of the problems besetting modern business and how managers need to tackle them.

Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii About the Author xvii Chapter 1 Why Management Failed 1 Chapter 2 What’s Your Management Model? 27 Chapter 3 Coordinating Activities: From Bureaucracy to Emergence 53 Chapter 4 Making and Communicating Decisions: From Hierarchy to Collective Wisdom 85 Chapter 5 Setting Objectives: From Alignment to Obliquity 119 Chapter 6 Motivating Employees: From Extrinsic to Intrinsic Motivation 145 Chapter 7 Four Models of Management 173 Chapter 8 The Change Agent’s Agenda 205 Chapter 9 The Leader’s Agenda 225 Epilogue Broadening the Debate on Reinventing Management 251 Notes 263 Index 283