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Review briefs
Book In the late 1970s and early 1980s virtually every one of our large industrial companies had divisions which were in crisis and they have some proud stories to tell: ICI Fibres, Courtaulds, Shell Chemicals, BP Chemicals, GKN. Lucas, Dunlop (now transferred to Sumitomo), British Leyland, Fisons, Hepworths, Burtons, MFI, Woolworths. National Freight Corporation, British Steel . . . the stories could be multiplied. To quote Paddy Naylor, the Managing Director ofJob Creation Ltd: ‘We were leaders in disaster: pioneers in decline. First into the industrial revolution, and the first out of it.’ So what have we to learn from this experience? The research could potentially produce some most worthwhile results for present and future generations of managers. Firstly, despite the title, ‘Sharpbenders’ are not turnarounds ‘because in a turnaround the company has no choice but to change’. They are companies ‘which achieve a sharp and sustained improvement in performance’. Performance is not defined simply as improving profits and returns to shareholders. It also includes ‘welfare of employees’ in terms of pay and employment, and benefits to the ‘national economy’, in increased productivity and exports. These are not necessarily ‘excellent companies’ by absolute standards-a company’s performance was measured relative to its industry. The researchers excluded companies which used takeovers and mergers, and they were ‘less interested’ in companies which achieved rapid improvement in performance by closing down large parts of their organization or selling them to others. All these qualifications and omissions I regret because it means the researchers have excluded some of the most dramatic stories and some of the most valuable lessons for management. So what are we looking at? A sample of 25 companies which includes very large companies such as Glaxo, Tube Investments, Fisons and Ferranti; well-known specialists like Pringle and Sirdar Wools and medium and small size firms which are unknown except in their own sectors, e.g. Underwater Diving Inspection (UDI), and the John Wood Group which is in ship repair and offshore services. I found myself wondering if Sharpbenders; i.e. ‘companies which achieve a sharp and sustained improvement in performance’, are in fact one group or a number of different groups. Can we really compare Glaxo, a huge research-intensive company with a turnover of Llv4bn and profits of EO*Sbn with Macallan Glenlivet, a tiny whisky distiller with a turnover of ESm? In a very general way we can. Glaxo’s recovery was allied to the growth of Zantac which has become one of the world’s most successful drugs, and the saviour of Macallan was the switch from blended whisky to bottled malt. But these kinds ofcomparisons are very facile and may involve gross over-simplification because the sample companies are in very different industries from electronics and pharmaceuticals to building and ship repair. They differ wildly in size, diversity and international spread, and hence in organizational complexity, management systems, financial and marketing strength etc. Ferranti, the largest employer, has 19,000 staff and highly complicated industrial relations and Macallan Glenlivet is a small family business with 46 employees. In an attempt to cope with this diversity, each sharpbender company was matched with a ‘control company’ to provide a comparison within the same industry. But the authors still tend to assume that comparisons can be made across industries and despite differences in size, scope and structure. So what
can we learn
from
the experience
of these firms?
Reviews
151
What do they have in common? The authors list ten ‘Key Features of Sustained Improved Performance’. These include such items as ‘action-oriented management, effective financial controls and management information, an emphasis on good communications, a simple organization “people”, structure with a small head office, a clear product focus, a strong marketing focus, a drive for quality’, etc. Under ‘Unleashing Corporate Potential’, they discuss the need for management to take trade unions into their confidence and the fact that successful managers tended to ‘evince an air of confident, energetic, positive enthusiasm’. They conclude finally that ‘there are no easy recipes, no single solutions, but the emphasis lies on informed action, recalling Eric Thain’s remark that there are “the three G’s” which give the route to a successful sharpbend-“guts, good luck and good judgement” ‘. The analyses of the actions taken by individual companies such as ?‘I Group and Fisons-both turnaround situations in my opinion-are much more fruitful, but somehow they get lost in the wash. The book is well worth reading, and it represents a useful addition to the literature, but Sharpbenders is not going to become a best-seller. It is written like a NED0 report and, like other NED0 reports, I suspect it had been trimmed and balanced so that it will not offend members of the three sponsoring groups: government officials and politicians, trade union leaders and employers. The result, for me, is a book which is bland and unexciting. A respectable piece of research, delivered in measured terms. Hardly ‘the secrets of unleashing corporate potential’ which is promised in the title. BERNARD TAYLOR, Henley-the
ley-on-Thames,
Review
Management
College,
Hen-
U.K.
Briefs
The following notes on books received are not reviews. They are mainly brief descriptions of each book to enlighten the reader on its apparent intention. The expectation is that more books can be described to readers than has proved possible by publishing only detailed critical reviews. The descriptive information should enable interest in the books to be raised beyond that induced by only listing the titles. However, it is recognized that a detailed review can be far more informative about a book than is attempted with Review Briefs and, accordingly, offers to review any books are solicited. Having been described in Review Briefs, a review should critically examine the contents of a publication as an assessment ofwhether its stated intentions have been met and whether the way it achieves these intentions is attractive to the reader. It is expected that each review will require l@OO-1500 words and will be fully attributed. The reviewer keeps the book but Long Range Planning makes no payment. As an alternative, it may be apparent that either a single ‘milestone’ class publication or several books on a single topic could constitute a wider perspective Essay Review.
152
Long
Range
Planning
Vol.
22
June 1989
This would be expected to comprise an article of some 3000-4000 words and would have a written introduction by the Review Editor. The Journal would make its usual article contribution payments to the author of an Essay Review. Readers interested to review any book in Review Briefs should be prepared to offer a copy deadline some 3 months ahead which can be relied on in planning the Journal. As a matter of readership policy, reviewer preference will be given to practising managers, or planners. Your interest should be expressed as a specific request to review a book from Review Briefs, preferably giving some intimation of why you think your review would be of interest to readers, addressed to: B. LLOYD, Book Review London NW6 3QA, U.K.
Editor,
48 Aberdare
Employee Development Strategies: The Basic Analysis, LEICESTER,University of Sussex (1988). 157 pp.
According to this report British training sets too low a premium on the individual employee’s personal goals, and British management is achieving very uneven success in linking the work performance of employees to corporate goals. For both reasons, many employers in Britain currently have a far too inflexible work-force for the 1990s. The author argues the answer lies in greater versatility. This report helps put some strategic thinking into the critical area of personnel planning; unfortunately its presentation will limit its readership to the determined specialist.
Gardens, The Efictive Management of Technology, Addison-Wesley (1987), 201 pp., 414.
Efictive Change, ANDREW LEIGH, Management (1988), 219 pp., L8.95.
Institute
of
Personal
The author believes that some managers ignore change, some resist it and some use it to improve their organization. This book sets out to help the latter group by creating a toolkit of strategies, procedures and techniques for achieving effective change. it examines questions of leadership and commitment, experimenting and tracking, force fields, team building and 14 other areas of skill. There are no instant, packaged, answers to managing change but this book-despite little on New Ventures-is an excellent introduction for any management training programme. If every manager read this book, and applied its guidelines, there would be a quantum improvement in the performance of their companies.
Developing Top Managers, 242 pp., E25.
ALAN MUMFORD, Gower
(1988),
What mix of training and experience is most likely to help managers reach the top of the organization tree? And once they are at the top, what training and experience will help them succeed? The answers to these questions have been distilled from personal interviews with 144 company directors and are presented in this volume. Professor Mumford has constructed a new model for management development which attempts to combine what the best managers do unconsciouly with those elements of the formal management processes that have proved to be effective. A book that deserves to be widely read by all those concerned with management.
The Inheritance Generation, Smith (1988), 62 pp., E25.
JOHN HOWKINS, Elgie
COLIN
Stewart
Society is continually changing and the demographic changes forecast for the next decade are of importance to planners, yet they are often ignored. This report attempts to fill a gap for the U.K. by: (a) analysing the impact ofthe increasing importance of the 40-60-year-old age group, (b) identifing the impiications of the expected dramatic rise expected in the scale of inheritance across all social classes. Demographic changes could radically alter the supply/demand position for both people and products in the next century. These are subjects that justify greater attention today.
SUSHIL K. BHALLA,
This book provides a process for integrating technological and business planning into a cohesive and effective strategic plan. The author argues for a unified strategy of technology and business management to assure the optimal distribution and use of resources, the right mix of technical skills and an effective corporate portfolio of technologies. An excellent introduction to the subject, although perhaps more attention could have been given to the cultural conflicts that arise between the core and new business areas. To argue: ‘Planning for new product development challenges a corporation’s technology and business function to the utmost. A strong team with skills in business and technology, plus a strong plan to integrate the two is absolutely necessary for success. To get these diverse functions working with each other, new product development areas must have strong support, guidance, and commitment from top corporate management.’ That does say it all; unfortunately, it is never that easy in practice and some discussion of these problems would have been valuable.
Managing
Ambiguity
and
Change, Eds LOUIS R. PONDY, HOWARD THOMAS, John Wiley
RICHARD J. BOLAND JR and
(1988), 205 pp., 624.95. In the manufacturing and service industries, as well as in the professions, the fundamental nature of how we manage is in transition. Established rules of the game no longer seem to apply. What once was solid ground now moves under our feet. How can managers make decisions in the midst of this ambiguity and change? How can strategies be set when the familiar terms of reference no longer hold? How do managers cope, let alone succeed, when the very problems they must address are themselves unclear? Emphasizing the need to blend theoretical models with practical experience, this book presents some new maps and images for guiding managerial action and draws lessons from the experiences of a number of companies who have succeeded--or failed-in meeting this challenge. The 10 chapters, all written by academics, contain much that would be useful to managers today but most of them would just require a brief summary of the key points. It is particularly difficult to get a coherent summary out of a collection of papers. The book would make a useful contribution to an MBA course, especially as it is a subject that rarely gets the attention it deserves.
can we learn
from
the experience
of these firms?
Reviews
151
What do they have in common? The authors list ten ‘Key Features of Sustained Improved Performance’. These include such items as ‘action-oriented management, effective financial controls and management information, an emphasis on good communications, a simple organization “people”, structure with a small head office, a clear product focus, a strong marketing focus, a drive for quality’, etc. Under ‘Unleashing Corporate Potential’, they discuss the need for management to take trade unions into their confidence and the fact that successful managers tended to ‘evince an air of confident, energetic, positive enthusiasm’. They conclude finally that ‘there are no easy recipes, no single solutions, but the emphasis lies on informed action, recalling Eric Thain’s remark that there are “the three G’s” which give the route to a successful sharpbend-“guts, good luck and good judgement” ‘. The analyses of the actions taken by individual companies such as ?‘I Group and Fisons-both turnaround situations in my opinion-are much more fruitful, but somehow they get lost in the wash. The book is well worth reading, and it represents a useful addition to the literature, but Sharpbenders is not going to become a best-seller. It is written like a NED0 report and, like other NED0 reports, I suspect it had been trimmed and balanced so that it will not offend members of the three sponsoring groups: government officials and politicians, trade union leaders and employers. The result, for me, is a book which is bland and unexciting. A respectable piece of research, delivered in measured terms. Hardly ‘the secrets of unleashing corporate potential’ which is promised in the title. BERNARD TAYLOR, Henley-the
ley-on-Thames,
Review
Management
College,
Hen-
U.K.
Briefs
The following notes on books received are not reviews. They are mainly brief descriptions of each book to enlighten the reader on its apparent intention. The expectation is that more books can be described to readers than has proved possible by publishing only detailed critical reviews. The descriptive information should enable interest in the books to be raised beyond that induced by only listing the titles. However, it is recognized that a detailed review can be far more informative about a book than is attempted with Review Briefs and, accordingly, offers to review any books are solicited. Having been described in Review Briefs, a review should critically examine the contents of a publication as an assessment ofwhether its stated intentions have been met and whether the way it achieves these intentions is attractive to the reader. It is expected that each review will require l@OO-1500 words and will be fully attributed. The reviewer keeps the book but Long Range Planning makes no payment. As an alternative, it may be apparent that either a single ‘milestone’ class publication or several books on a single topic could constitute a wider perspective Essay Review.
152
Long
Range
Planning
Vol.
22
June 1989
This would be expected to comprise an article of some 3000-4000 words and would have a written introduction by the Review Editor. The Journal would make its usual article contribution payments to the author of an Essay Review. Readers interested to review any book in Review Briefs should be prepared to offer a copy deadline some 3 months ahead which can be relied on in planning the Journal. As a matter of readership policy, reviewer preference will be given to practising managers, or planners. Your interest should be expressed as a specific request to review a book from Review Briefs, preferably giving some intimation of why you think your review would be of interest to readers, addressed to: B. LLOYD, Book Review London NW6 3QA, U.K.
Editor,
48 Aberdare
Employee Development Strategies: The Basic Analysis, LEICESTER,University of Sussex (1988). 157 pp.
According to this report British training sets too low a premium on the individual employee’s personal goals, and British management is achieving very uneven success in linking the work performance of employees to corporate goals. For both reasons, many employers in Britain currently have a far too inflexible work-force for the 1990s. The author argues the answer lies in greater versatility. This report helps put some strategic thinking into the critical area of personnel planning; unfortunately its presentation will limit its readership to the determined specialist.
Gardens, The Efictive Management of Technology, Addison-Wesley (1987), 201 pp., 414.
Efictive Change, ANDREW LEIGH, Management (1988), 219 pp., L8.95.
Institute
of
Personal
The author believes that some managers ignore change, some resist it and some use it to improve their organization. This book sets out to help the latter group by creating a toolkit of strategies, procedures and techniques for achieving effective change. it examines questions of leadership and commitment, experimenting and tracking, force fields, team building and 14 other areas of skill. There are no instant, packaged, answers to managing change but this book-despite little on New Ventures-is an excellent introduction for any management training programme. If every manager read this book, and applied its guidelines, there would be a quantum improvement in the performance of their companies.
Developing Top Managers, 242 pp., E25.
ALAN MUMFORD, Gower
(1988),
What mix of training and experience is most likely to help managers reach the top of the organization tree? And once they are at the top, what training and experience will help them succeed? The answers to these questions have been distilled from personal interviews with 144 company directors and are presented in this volume. Professor Mumford has constructed a new model for management development which attempts to combine what the best managers do unconsciouly with those elements of the formal management processes that have proved to be effective. A book that deserves to be widely read by all those concerned with management.
The Inheritance Generation, Smith (1988), 62 pp., E25.
JOHN HOWKINS, Elgie
COLIN
Stewart
Society is continually changing and the demographic changes forecast for the next decade are of importance to planners, yet they are often ignored. This report attempts to fill a gap for the U.K. by: (a) analysing the impact ofthe increasing importance of the 40-60-year-old age group, (b) identifing the impiications of the expected dramatic rise expected in the scale of inheritance across all social classes. Demographic changes could radically alter the supply/demand position for both people and products in the next century. These are subjects that justify greater attention today.
SUSHIL K. BHALLA,
This book provides a process for integrating technological and business planning into a cohesive and effective strategic plan. The author argues for a unified strategy of technology and business management to assure the optimal distribution and use of resources, the right mix of technical skills and an effective corporate portfolio of technologies. An excellent introduction to the subject, although perhaps more attention could have been given to the cultural conflicts that arise between the core and new business areas. To argue: ‘Planning for new product development challenges a corporation’s technology and business function to the utmost. A strong team with skills in business and technology, plus a strong plan to integrate the two is absolutely necessary for success. To get these diverse functions working with each other, new product development areas must have strong support, guidance, and commitment from top corporate management.’ That does say it all; unfortunately, it is never that easy in practice and some discussion of these problems would have been valuable.
Managing
Ambiguity
and
Change, Eds LOUIS R. PONDY, HOWARD THOMAS, John Wiley
RICHARD J. BOLAND JR and
(1988), 205 pp., 624.95. In the manufacturing and service industries, as well as in the professions, the fundamental nature of how we manage is in transition. Established rules of the game no longer seem to apply. What once was solid ground now moves under our feet. How can managers make decisions in the midst of this ambiguity and change? How can strategies be set when the familiar terms of reference no longer hold? How do managers cope, let alone succeed, when the very problems they must address are themselves unclear? Emphasizing the need to blend theoretical models with practical experience, this book presents some new maps and images for guiding managerial action and draws lessons from the experiences of a number of companies who have succeeded--or failed-in meeting this challenge. The 10 chapters, all written by academics, contain much that would be useful to managers today but most of them would just require a brief summary of the key points. It is particularly difficult to get a coherent summary out of a collection of papers. The book would make a useful contribution to an MBA course, especially as it is a subject that rarely gets the attention it deserves.