Corporate Vices uncovers the real performance gap in modern corporations between good business practice that builds companies, and bad corporate habits that eventually bring them down. It builds a detailed picture of how wayward corporations often try too hard, think too little, and forget too much. And it offers a sharp contrast with companies, large and small, that are good businesses, and how they manage to stay that way.

Looking behind the headlines of spectacular corporate disasters, such as Enron and Marconi, as well as corporations that are under pressure and going...