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Setting up an effective marketing organization
Book Reviews Edited by Harry Jones
Operational Research in Industrial Systems, Edited by J. BRENNAN, The English Universities Press, London (1972), 325 pp. f5 (hardback), fifteen parts in English and six in French. Brennan has edited a collection of proceedings of the NATO Scientific Conference held at St. Louis, France, in 1970. The title is accurate, and covers both specific case studies and wider-ranging review or theoretical papers, the richest being that by G. D. Frazier of Boise Cascade Corporation, ‘The Corporate Planning Model in a Large Decentralized Industrial Corporation’. The paper is an introduction to the timber and timber based industries. and illustrates the technique named and its application; it sheds light on the relationships between OR and corporate planning, between management science and management and between the computer and management. There are other good and interesting papers, on such topics as Forest Fire Control Aircraft, Shared Fixed Costs, Energy Contracts, Sampling Techniques in the Analysis of Stock Coverage, and several other traditional OR applications in the logistics of inventory control, production and distribution. F. E. Burke of the University of Waterloo (Canada) contributes the most thought provoking paper; on the use of forecasting for planning science policy. Some of the French contributions, at least to an empirical Briton, seem unexciting and on an abstract plane. Each paper is followed by a short discussion section, which in some cases helpfully sharpens what has previously been presented-or omitted. In total, a good book either for the management scientist looking round at the wide field of application of OR techniques, or for the professional manager sniffing to see what OR has to offer. MARK F. CANTLEY Lancaster Setting Up an Effective Marketing Organization, by PETER J. YOUDALE, Business Books, London (1972). 160 pp. f3.75 (hardback). The usual Author’s preface is missing, so that the book’s target market is not defined precisely. However, from the title and the general tenor of the text it may be assumed that it is intended primarily for executives setting up Marketing in their companies for the first time. Nevertheless, from Chapter 3 onwards, the book contains a number of useful practical suggestions for experienced executives but lacks depth on the many problems a newcomer to marketing would encounter when creating an organization for the first time. For example, there must be a thorough assessment of the individual and collective personalities of the firm, how they prefer to operate, their experience and prejudices, the past record of achievement, etc. Also, it would have helped to have included a detailed account of /low a successful organization works, the relationship that must exist within a marketing department and the co-operation and
80
inter-relationships sister departments
which must be maintained if success is to be assured.
with
Further, the book seems to be oriented towards consumer goods manufacturers yet it is in the field of industrial products that Marketing has still to be widely accepted and used. Mention is not made of the different situations and requirements in that area. Nor is there mention of the more common problems faced when Marketing is introduced for the first time (resistance to change, new methods and ideas and the time needed to overcome this resistance, and that the chief executive’s full support for the idea of Marketing should be perceived by all).
years’. These are claimed to be gee-centric imperative theory of Perlmutter, Ansoff’s views on corporate strategy, Amstutz’s ideas on MIS for marketing, and a rather ragged chapter on management development (which represents the views of an unidentified U.S. based company). In my opinion this chapter is too sketchy to be of much value. None of these chapters does justice to the subject. For example, Ansoff’s work is summarized in only IO pages, and nothing is said of the many contributions to strategic thinking of numerous other writers and researchers. But the book can be recommended stimulation of the first section
for the
The book is only 160 pages overall, and it is a pity that another, say, 50 could not have been included to deal more fully with points such as those quoted. They have an important bearing on the creation of an effective organization.
DAVID E. HUXLEY London
Nonetheless, many will find it a useful practical reminder to have on their shelves. The author lists in chapter one, a number of questions and states if the reader answers in the affirmative to any of them he needs the book. So potential buyers might browse through these two pages to check if the book can help them. However, the definitive book on this subject has still to be published.
Technique of Long Range Corporate Planning, by SERGIO CARNAROLI, Franc0 Angeli, Milan (1972). L.6.500 (hardback), in Italian.
DOUGLASW. FOSTER Woking
Managing the Multinationals: Preparing for Tomorrow, by Business International S.A. in conjunction with Centre d’Etudes Industrielles, Geneva, George Allen & Unwin, London (1972), 162 pp. f3.50 (hardback). Do not let the title of this book make you think that it covers the day-to-day management tasks of the multi-national business. In fact, its purpose is quite different. The largest section, and most valuable, section of the book is a series of forecasts of ‘some of the more consequential environmental opportunities and challenges that corporations will face in the next decade’. The forecasts carry the seal of that well known organization, Business International. Specific chapters deal with Europe, North America, Asia, Latin America, assumptions on world institutional change, and corporate financial needs. I believe that the value of these forecasts is that they paint an integrated picture of what might happen, and no responsible manager could read the book without realizing that his company has to prepare for a considerable degree of change. For this reason alone. the book is well worth while reading, and it is not necessary to agree with all the predictions given. You may quarrel with the underlying assumptions. explicit or implicit (for example, will the pollution problem be stabilized by the 1980’s; is continued unlimited economic growth possible for all?), but you cannot ignore the message that business must prepare for tomorrow. The second section of the book is the lesser in length. It describes ‘four central responses that might be vital for corporate survival in coming
The author’s purpose in this book is stated as being ‘to offer a better understanding of planning, its characteristics and benefits, and to suggest a methodology’. The four parts of the book outline the nature of corporate planning, describe a logical process, consider the role of the corporate planner and describe a fictitious case history of a cosmetics company in a developing country. The book is descriptive and prescriptive rather than analytical. The book does not claim to break new ground in ideas or information, and must be viewed as an attempt to codify practice with a blend of theory. Since the book is designed as a fairly comprehensive guide to planning in any company, it operates at a level of generality which means that qualifications have to be made at all stages. This is a major weakness of the book. Too much of the book is devoted to long lists of factors which must be considered in any corporate or functional plan, and far too little is devoted to the importance of selecting those which are critical in any operation. Any manager using the book as an introduction to planning would be likely to react vigorously against the undifferentiated scope and coverage of long check lists. The fictitious case study at the end of the book has the great advantage of being created to fit the author’s model but all the disadvantages of a lack of reality. As such, it fails to carry conviction as being the type of appraisal and plan which would be developed in a real situation. All in all, not a book for anyone with experience of corporate planning, either as a manager or as a planner. Those who might benefit from it are those who have never tackled systematic planning before and require an exposition of what it is all about, and who would value a reference source of lists of factors, schedules and possible forms as a basis for evolving their own planning process. BASILW. DENNING London
LONG RANGE PLANNING
Operational Research in Industrial Systems, Edited by J. BRENNAN, The English Universities Press, London (1972), 325 pp. f5 (hardback), fifteen parts in English and six in French. Brennan has edited a collection of proceedings of the NATO Scientific Conference held at St. Louis, France, in 1970. The title is accurate, and covers both specific case studies and wider-ranging review or theoretical papers, the richest being that by G. D. Frazier of Boise Cascade Corporation, ‘The Corporate Planning Model in a Large Decentralized Industrial Corporation’. The paper is an introduction to the timber and timber based industries. and illustrates the technique named and its application; it sheds light on the relationships between OR and corporate planning, between management science and management and between the computer and management. There are other good and interesting papers, on such topics as Forest Fire Control Aircraft, Shared Fixed Costs, Energy Contracts, Sampling Techniques in the Analysis of Stock Coverage, and several other traditional OR applications in the logistics of inventory control, production and distribution. F. E. Burke of the University of Waterloo (Canada) contributes the most thought provoking paper; on the use of forecasting for planning science policy. Some of the French contributions, at least to an empirical Briton, seem unexciting and on an abstract plane. Each paper is followed by a short discussion section, which in some cases helpfully sharpens what has previously been presented-or omitted. In total, a good book either for the management scientist looking round at the wide field of application of OR techniques, or for the professional manager sniffing to see what OR has to offer. MARK F. CANTLEY Lancaster Setting Up an Effective Marketing Organization, by PETER J. YOUDALE, Business Books, London (1972). 160 pp. f3.75 (hardback). The usual Author’s preface is missing, so that the book’s target market is not defined precisely. However, from the title and the general tenor of the text it may be assumed that it is intended primarily for executives setting up Marketing in their companies for the first time. Nevertheless, from Chapter 3 onwards, the book contains a number of useful practical suggestions for experienced executives but lacks depth on the many problems a newcomer to marketing would encounter when creating an organization for the first time. For example, there must be a thorough assessment of the individual and collective personalities of the firm, how they prefer to operate, their experience and prejudices, the past record of achievement, etc. Also, it would have helped to have included a detailed account of /low a successful organization works, the relationship that must exist within a marketing department and the co-operation and
80
inter-relationships sister departments
which must be maintained if success is to be assured.
with
Further, the book seems to be oriented towards consumer goods manufacturers yet it is in the field of industrial products that Marketing has still to be widely accepted and used. Mention is not made of the different situations and requirements in that area. Nor is there mention of the more common problems faced when Marketing is introduced for the first time (resistance to change, new methods and ideas and the time needed to overcome this resistance, and that the chief executive’s full support for the idea of Marketing should be perceived by all).
years’. These are claimed to be gee-centric imperative theory of Perlmutter, Ansoff’s views on corporate strategy, Amstutz’s ideas on MIS for marketing, and a rather ragged chapter on management development (which represents the views of an unidentified U.S. based company). In my opinion this chapter is too sketchy to be of much value. None of these chapters does justice to the subject. For example, Ansoff’s work is summarized in only IO pages, and nothing is said of the many contributions to strategic thinking of numerous other writers and researchers. But the book can be recommended stimulation of the first section
for the
The book is only 160 pages overall, and it is a pity that another, say, 50 could not have been included to deal more fully with points such as those quoted. They have an important bearing on the creation of an effective organization.
DAVID E. HUXLEY London
Nonetheless, many will find it a useful practical reminder to have on their shelves. The author lists in chapter one, a number of questions and states if the reader answers in the affirmative to any of them he needs the book. So potential buyers might browse through these two pages to check if the book can help them. However, the definitive book on this subject has still to be published.
Technique of Long Range Corporate Planning, by SERGIO CARNAROLI, Franc0 Angeli, Milan (1972). L.6.500 (hardback), in Italian.
DOUGLASW. FOSTER Woking
Managing the Multinationals: Preparing for Tomorrow, by Business International S.A. in conjunction with Centre d’Etudes Industrielles, Geneva, George Allen & Unwin, London (1972), 162 pp. f3.50 (hardback). Do not let the title of this book make you think that it covers the day-to-day management tasks of the multi-national business. In fact, its purpose is quite different. The largest section, and most valuable, section of the book is a series of forecasts of ‘some of the more consequential environmental opportunities and challenges that corporations will face in the next decade’. The forecasts carry the seal of that well known organization, Business International. Specific chapters deal with Europe, North America, Asia, Latin America, assumptions on world institutional change, and corporate financial needs. I believe that the value of these forecasts is that they paint an integrated picture of what might happen, and no responsible manager could read the book without realizing that his company has to prepare for a considerable degree of change. For this reason alone. the book is well worth while reading, and it is not necessary to agree with all the predictions given. You may quarrel with the underlying assumptions. explicit or implicit (for example, will the pollution problem be stabilized by the 1980’s; is continued unlimited economic growth possible for all?), but you cannot ignore the message that business must prepare for tomorrow. The second section of the book is the lesser in length. It describes ‘four central responses that might be vital for corporate survival in coming
The author’s purpose in this book is stated as being ‘to offer a better understanding of planning, its characteristics and benefits, and to suggest a methodology’. The four parts of the book outline the nature of corporate planning, describe a logical process, consider the role of the corporate planner and describe a fictitious case history of a cosmetics company in a developing country. The book is descriptive and prescriptive rather than analytical. The book does not claim to break new ground in ideas or information, and must be viewed as an attempt to codify practice with a blend of theory. Since the book is designed as a fairly comprehensive guide to planning in any company, it operates at a level of generality which means that qualifications have to be made at all stages. This is a major weakness of the book. Too much of the book is devoted to long lists of factors which must be considered in any corporate or functional plan, and far too little is devoted to the importance of selecting those which are critical in any operation. Any manager using the book as an introduction to planning would be likely to react vigorously against the undifferentiated scope and coverage of long check lists. The fictitious case study at the end of the book has the great advantage of being created to fit the author’s model but all the disadvantages of a lack of reality. As such, it fails to carry conviction as being the type of appraisal and plan which would be developed in a real situation. All in all, not a book for anyone with experience of corporate planning, either as a manager or as a planner. Those who might benefit from it are those who have never tackled systematic planning before and require an exposition of what it is all about, and who would value a reference source of lists of factors, schedules and possible forms as a basis for evolving their own planning process. BASILW. DENNING London
LONG RANGE PLANNING