The Beans and the Dreams

Management science has become like theology, dominated by respected gurus and a body of accepted teachings. However, the pressures of a rapidly changing business environment are making managers and leaders more and more aware of the need for a broader scope of ideas to help in decision-making and the encouragement of innovation. Here I have attempted to combine conventional theories of management with concepts and writers outside of the conventional and accepted orthodoxy at the danger of being burned at the management stake for heresy. Yet, the original source of this work on strategic management was inspired by the need to provide students of the subject at bachelor and masters level with a basic script to guide their studies and was first published as a series of four books. This was of course accompanied by face-to-face lectures and many discussions and term papers. It is the author's intention to here provide a simple framework that managers and leaders as well as students and teachers of management can use as a basis for provoking thought and intention. It was because of many requests to provide the four sections in the form of one book as a reader for managers and others interested in strategy that inspired me to produce this reader's edition.