The Collapse of the American Management Mystique

ISBN-13: 9780198774068 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 368 str.

Robert R. Locke

Opis

This is a book on the history and "mystique" of American management--its development and diffusion to other countries, and its subsequent eclipse by Japanese and German approaches.
In this work, Robert Locke traces the evolution of American management in the postwar era--the phenomenon once described by Churchill as that "clear cut, logical, mass production style of thought." He goes on to discuss in detail the views of such business writers as Chandler, Reich, Senge, and Deming. But the force of his critique rests on a thorough examination of alternative forms of management that grew up in West Germany and Japan during the past decades. He argues that these alternative management forms have done a better job managing capitalist economies since the 1970s than has American managerialism.
With an unusually wide-ranging knowledge of management and business thinking in the United States, Germany, and Japan, and the historian's ability to stand back and take the longer view, Locke has written a powerfully argued and challenging book.

Recenzje

Robert Locke's book is a bold venture. Thirty years on it offers a striking riposte to Servan Schreiber's bestseller Le Défi Américain. Is this merely a provocation? No - it is a demystification. The book is something which in the physical sciences would be called a discovery.

O autorze

Robert R. Locke is Professor of History at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Reading. He is the author of several books on comparative management and business education, including The End of Practical Man: Entrepreneurship and Higher Education in Germany, France and Great Britain 1880-1940 (Jai Press, 1984) and Management and Higher Education since 1940: The Influence of America and Japan on West Germany, Great Britain and France (CUP, 1989).