Wednesday, July 4, 2007

What it is supposed to mean


What management is?

Surely not a question you would ask yourself 2 weeks into b-school . Amidst Financial accounting, Micro Economics, surprise and-not-so-surprise quizzes, tests, results, figuring out the secrets behind deciphering CGPAs,et all , out pops a class on learning Management.
And out popped this question.

It was surprising to see that none of us in class could beat the claim that "management education was just a fad". As much as we tried, PM would simply swat away all our arguments. To support our understanding of the true meaning of management, we were asked to read this book.

This book is written by a former Chief Editor of the Harvard Business Review. Well in management circles, that must sound like the Bible. It gives a lot of useful and not so useful insights on how organisations are run, how people and resources are subject to change, on values, execution strategies and so on... What is nice is the author's wide spread knowledge on various organisations which stems from her first hand experience of being in the academic and corporate world. The examples from Ford, GM, Nike, Toyota, Honda, etc are insightful to say the least...

Until i read this book, i never knew that the Nike shoes i spend 5 grand buying, are never manufactured by Nike.. The router i buy from Cisco was never made by them... It all boils down to outsourcing and cheaper transaction costs.. Brand management takes such a huge meaning.

Over all, if u r the kind who likes reading management books, this book is definetly worth a read...

4 comments:

Shruti said...

Many branded compnaies, do the same thing like Nike..
They all outsource the product and sell them under their name..

The book you have mentioned seems intresting..
If gotta chance, will definetly read it..

Take care..

Ekta said...

ooh ur post reminded of my B-school days and the first few days in B-school and all its anxieties!!

Anonymous said...

after a year, i still DONT know what its supp to mean...
infact i don't think it really means anything...its jus an aura...n u run behind it like eveyrthin else in life...then one fine day u wake up n realise none of it truly matters... but in the runnin u missed out on wat truly did...

K K Kishore said...

hey nice post !