The Ultimate Business Library: The Greatest Books That Made Management

I recently sat for (and passed) my doctoral comprehensive exams in Management, and used this book to help me develop context, so that I didn't lose my way in the forest. So many thinkers, so many papers, and such grim prose. This book, along with Crainer's "Key Management Ideas" were indispensible in helping to form a review outline. They could also be useful for an MBA student trying to understand the epistemological history behind some of the concepts spouted by practitioners, such as "tipping-point" and "network-effect." He or she will learn, as I have, that the progenitors often didn't receive the credit he or she deserved. Some of my fellow students preferred Shafritz, Ott & Jang's "Classics of Organization Theory," to which I also referred, but as the previous reviewer pointed out, Crainer's laudible biographical sketches and context-setting side-bars (many provided by Gary Hamel, who understands the value of a clever phrase) within each section aid the reader in understanding the place each theorist occupies in the literature. This book first appeared in 1997. That was recently enough that I believe that it should have included the work of Karl Weick, whose concept of sense-making has gained in stature and will likely have long-term importance. A minor quibble though about an excellent synopsis.

This is the third edition of one of the volumes in the "The Ultimate Series" published by Capstone Publishing Limited. I have also reviewed Des Dearlove's The Ultimate Book of Business Thinking and John Middleton's The Ultimate Strategy Library. The three volumes comprise an especially informative and valuable resource for busy executives as well as those now preparing for a business career. The brevity of coverage of individuals and individual books is inevitable, given the scope of each volume. For example, during the course of a 301-page narrative, Stuart Crainer provides a briefing on a total of 85 of "the greatest books that made management." They are arranged by author in alphabetical order but Crainer also offers a series of time-specific clusters that range from "Management prehistory" (e.g. Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations) to "The nineties" (e.g. James Collins and Jerry Porras' Built to Last and Thomas Stewart's Intellectual Capital). The last works Crainer discusses were first published in 1998: Don Tapscott's Growing Up Digital and Patricia Seybold's Customers.com. I like the format Crainer chose for each of the 80 commentaries. First, he provides a mini-bio of the given author, then a brief discussion of her or his "classic" book, followed by a few notes. In the Bibliography that follows the last commentary (devoted to William H. Whyte and Organization Man), Crainer lists all of each author's major works. Many readers will appreciate being introduced to certain works with which they may not have previously been familiar. For example, Frank Gilbreth's Motion Study (1911), Chester Barnard's The Functions of the Executive (1938), Frederick Herzberg's The Motivation at Work (1959), Marvin Bower's The Will to Manage (1966), Taiicho Ohno's Toyota's Production System (1978), and Joseph M. Juran's Planning for Quality (1988). To paraphrase Isaac Newton, they are among the "giants" upon whose shoulders so many more renowned business thinkers have since stood. Of course, no such list is complete nor does Crainer claim that his is. My own opinion is that there are some notable pre-1998 omissions (e.g. Eric Drexler, Thomas Kuhn, Michael Hammer, and James Womack) but, to repeat, no such list is complete. Crainer makes especially effective use of brief observations by Gary Hamel, each relevant to the given context, that are inserted throughout the narrative. Here are three representative examples: On organizational learning: "If your organization has not yet mastered double-loop learning it is already a dinosaur. No one can doubt that organizational learning is the ultimate competitive advantage. We owe much to [Chris] Argyris and [Donald] Schon for helping us to learn about learning." (Page 8) On the rise and fall of strategic planning: "Henry [Mintzberg] views strategic planning as a ritual, devoid of creativity and meaning. He is undoubtedly right when he argues that planning doesn't produce strategy. Bu