Books

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Learning for Action: A Short Definitive Account of Soft Systems Methodology, and Its Use Practitioners, Teachers and Students

From the father of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), Peter Checkland, comes a new, accessible text which clearly and concisely looks at SSM. The book leaves out all of the development detail and historical/intellectual material which can be found in Checkland’s other classic works, but contains the practical essentials that will allow teachers to teach SSM accurately and students to learn it with real understanding.

Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics: A Feedback Systems Approach

Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics introduces the system dynamics approach to modelling strategic problems in business and society, based on the author’s successful MBA course at London Business School. The book covers all stages of model building (from conceptual to technical) including problem articulation, mapping, equation formulation and simulation. It includes a range of in-depth practical examples that vividly illustrate important or puzzling dynamics in business, society and everyday life (e. g. drug-related crime, perverse hotel showers, intended supply chain cyclicality, spontaneous product growth from word of mouth, managed market growth leading to premature decline, boom and bust in oil and housing, the collapse of fisheries etc). In order to bridge the experience gap for the undergraduate students the book includes gaming simulations and microworlds. The easy to use simulators expose students to the vagaries of communication and cross functional co-ordination in organizations, highlighting blindspots that unintentionally undermine strategy. These tools allow readers to roleplay in dynamically complex and loosely coordinated systems. The simulations include a baffling hotel shower, a start-up low-cost airline, an international radio broadcaster, a commercial oil producer and a fishing firm.

Brain of the Firm

This is the second edition of a book (originally published in 1972) which has already become a management ‘standard’ both in universities and on the bookshelves of managers and their advisers. Brain of the Firm develops an account of the firm based upon insights derived from the study of the human nervous system, and is a basic text from the author′s theory of viable systems. Despite the neurophysiology, the book is written for managers to understand.

The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning

In this definitive and revealing history, Henry Mintzberg unmasks the process that has mesmerized so many organisations since 1965: strategic planning. One of the original management thinkers, Mintzberg concludes that strategy cannot be planned because planning is about analysis and strategy is about synthesis. That is why, he asserts, the process has failed so often and dramatically. Mintzberg traces the origin and history of strategic planning through its prominence and subsequent fall. He argues that we must reconcieve the process by which strategies are created by emphasizing informal learning and personal vision. Mintzberg proposes new definitions of planning and strategy, and examines in unusual ways the various models of strategic planning and the evidence of why they failed. Reviewing the so-called ‘pitfalls’ of planning, he shows how the process itself can destroy commitment, narrow a company’s vision, discourage change and breed an atmosphere of politics. In a harsh critique of many sacred cows, he describes three basic fallacies of the process – in that discontinuities can be predicted, that strategists can be detached from the operations of the organisation, and that the process of strategy-making itself can be formalized. Mintzberg devotes a substantial section to the new role of planning, plans and planners, not inside the strategy-making process, but around it, in support of it, providing some of its inputs and sometimes programming its outputs, as well as encouraging strategic thinking in general. This book is essential reading for anyone in an organization who is influenced by the planning or strategy-making process. It is also suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking corporate strategy, strategic management and business policy courses.

Enterprise Governance of Information Technology

Enterprise governance of information technology is a relatively new concept that is gaining traction in both the academic and practitioner worlds. Going well beyond the implementation of a superior IT infrastructure, “Enterprise Governance of Information Technology” is about defining and embedding processes and structures throughout the organizations that enable both business and IT people to execute their responsibilities, while maximizing the value created from their IT-enabled investments. At the forefront of the field, the authors draw from years of research and advising corporate clients to present the first comprehensive resource on the topic. Featuring numerous case examples from companies around the world, the book integrates theoretical advances and empirical data with practical application, including in-depth discussion of such frameworks as COBIT and VALIT, which are used to measure and audit the value of IT investments and ensuring regulatory compliance. A variety of elements, including executive summaries and sidebars, extensive references, and questions and activities (with additional materials available on-line) ensure that the book will be an essential resource for professionals, researchers, and students alike.

Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society

Radical and hopeful – Presence synthesises cutting-edge thinking, firsthand knowledge and ancient wisdom Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future gives the reader an intimate look at the development of a new theory about change and learning. A book built around a series of wide-ranging conversations over a year and a half, Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, and Flowers explore their own experiences and those of one hundred and fifty scientists and social and business entrepreneurs in an effort to explain how profound collective change occurs. Their journey of discovery articulates a new way of seeing the world, and of understanding our part in creating it – as it is and as it might be. Presence explores the living fields that connect us to one another, to life more broadly, and, potentially, to what is “seeking to emerge.” Seven capacities underlie our ability to see, sense, and realize new possibilities. Developing these capacities accesses a deeper level of learning that is the key to creating change that services the whole – ourselves, our organizations and the communities of which we are a part.