What Management Is

Book Author - Joan Magretta and Nan Stone

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Abstract:
"Most management books preach a single formula or a single fad. This one distills the wisdom of the best that has been

thought and written about the discipline of management. Using numerous examples, Joan Magretta lucidly explains the logic of successful organizations and how that logic is embodied in practice."

About the Author:
"Joan Magretta is an award winning contributor to the Harvard Business Review (HBR). She has also served as HBR's strategy editor during the 90's."

"Most management books preach a single formula or a single fad. This one distills the wisdom of the best that has been thought and written about the discipline of management. Using numerous examples, Joan Magretta lucidly explains the logic of successful organizations and how that logic is embodied in practice."

The Universal Discipline
At a time when most books on management are either mind-numbingly abstruse or amusingly simplistic, Joan Magretta takes a clear-eyed look at the discipline of management. She describes what management is, and why it is important to all of us – the managers, the managed, and the bystanders. According to her, management now affects everyone because "today, all of us live in a world of management 's making." If we are to make informed choices about matters that affect our well-being and that of our communities, we must know what management is, and when it is good for us and when it is bad. To satisfy our needs with the limited resources available to us, we need to understand and apply the principles of management to what we do.

The discipline of management has made possible the organizations that are so much a part of modern day life. We now rely on vast organizations to carry on much of the work of modern society. Management did not evolve because we had organizations and we needed a way to run them; instead, it made it possible for us to design and create these organizations, and in many cases, to run them well. However, the very success of the discipline, and the all-pervasiveness of the organizations that have been built on its principles mean that we now take these organizations and the principles on which they are run, for granted.

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