The Management Guide

This book challenges its readers to test their skills at managing a complex division of a large corporation. By following a year in the life of Ed Cunningham, a senior vice-president who heads the Speciality Foods Division, a small but vital division of Consolidated Commodities Inc. (or ConCom), readers see exactly what choices a top manager must make, participate themselves in the decision making and learn the results. This Division concentrates on the lower volume but higher profit "glamour" products suitable for gourmet food stores. After a detailed and realistic description of the company, important personnel, the industry, and the competition, readers are asked to assume the title of manager and actually run the division. Each chapter sets the scene for a specific managerial challenge - the selection of a distributor, staffing, organization, advertising, promotion - and the reader must choose from a number of possible "solutions". At the end of the "year", each solution is analyzed and the authors present a picture that takes into account how each solution meshed with corporate priorities, divisional needs, and personal career alternatives.
Readers are awarded points for choosing solutions that do the most to advance the long-term strength of the company and their own position in it. Ardis Burst received her MBA from Harvard Business School after having served on its faculty as a researcher in organizational behaviour. Leonard A. Schlesinger is Executive Vice-President and Director of Au Bon Pain Co. Inc., a national retail food chain based in Boston, Massachusetts.