Total Management Thinking

Total Management Thinking is a unique guide to the dominant theories influencing management practice in the late 20th century. In a refreshing and straightforward manner, this book provides a critical insight into key management initiatives and shows how they have changed the nature of the workplace. The author comments: 'In my job I have come across thousands of business executives who have attended leading edge management conferences and training programmes. The topic of conversation always boils down to the following key aspects of business: - we cannot cope with the various management fads and thinking that are proliferating in the business world - do these management ideas work in practice and what types of organizations have applied them? - wouldn't it be nice to have all these issues addressed in one book?' Uniquely, Total Management Thinking begins and ends with a mock internal 'memo' - one from the CEO to employees, full of suspect platitudes about people being 'our greatest asset' despite redundancy programmes. The response from employees is a plea for less 'organizational schizophrenia' and more courage from the top team.
Total Management Thinking looks at: *Total quality management *Benchmarking *Delivering service excellence *Business process re-engineering *Performance measurement *Empowerment *The horizontal organization *The learning organization *Teaming for business success *The knowledge era. Through practical examples and first hand observations from case studies and managers at the chalk face, Kermally goes beyond the jargon to create a common-sense guide. Sultan Kermally is the senior Vice President and the Director of the Economist Conferences. Formerly he was a Senior Group Director at Management Centre Europe, Brussels. He designs conferences on leading edge management issues such as Benchmarking, Empowerment, Process Re-engineering etc. He is also a part-time lecturer at Durham University Business School.