AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Vision, Values, and Courage: Leadership for Quality Management by Neil H. Snyder, Dianne Morse Houghton, James J. Dowd ISBN: 0-02-929755-9 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: February, 1994 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $32.00

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (8 reviews)

Rating: 1
Summary: Business mgmt texts: long on hyperbole, short on logic
Comment: Vision, Values and Courage's title alone summarizes the fascination of the "field" of management with marketable, but painfully vague concepts.

Nowhere in the book are these concepts defined with any precision. (E.g., how do we know vision when we see it? How much courage is sufficient, and when does it become foolhardy? As for values, I have yet to meet a human without any. Telling me that a leader must have values is not particularly enlightening when one might wish to distinguish between leaders such as, say, Ted Turner and Adolph Hitler. In fact, it resembles the old rejoinder of international relations scholars to the notion of the "national interest": ask 20 different people what the term means, and you'll get at least 20 different answers.)

Hence, any exploration of concepts devoid of even minimal clarity becomes virtually tautological. (To be sure, these particular "concepts" are words that may be especially intractable, but that should hardly have prevented massive reconceptualization of the work before inflicting it on the market.) Then again, anyone with at least a smattering of knowledge of social sciences and methods is immediately painfully aware within the first few pages that without a clear argument based on clear concepts, it becomes impossible to construct basic hypotheses (not even attempted here) or to collect evidence systematically, let alone engage in insightful analysis--be it descriptive or causal--of patterns or lack thereof. The case studies, as with so many management books, simply skew the sample towards successful leaders and do not even bother to worry about all those potential leaders with the allegedly necessary vision, values and courage, but who failed to raise their business career to the level of the other titans. (The proportion of failed leaders may not be easily measured, but logical rigor demands the recognition of this severe, and some would say devastating, limitation for the study.)

Note that all this is not Dr. Snyder's fault, but the basic, essential flaw in the entire field of business management studies and the culture it encourages among its proponents and educators. (Working in a top 5 business school's library, I can confirm that nearly every book on reserve assigned to management courses is virtually as fluffy.)

Snyder's book simply repeats the prevailing paradigm in style and content, a paradigm that paralyzes the rest of the literature from providing actual education. The case studies are mildly intriguing as thumbnail biographies, but when it comes time to answer the question, "what conclusions can be learned from this book?", the embarrassing answer is: nothing you'd stake your professional reputation on.

The book does have its own value, however: I got a dollar for it at the local used bookstore, and feel quite confident that, at that price, I made out like a bandit, notwithstanding the loss on the original investment.

Rating: 5
Summary: BEST BOOK ON GLOBALIZATION
Comment: This is the best book on Globalization that you will find anywhere-- better than Thomas Friedman BY FAR!

Rating: 5
Summary: A TRUE VISIONARY SPEAKS
Comment: The textbook for Globalization, hands down. So many people today are concerned about what will happen in the future -- Samuel Huntington, Thomas Friedman, among so many others. No one offers a solution. That is, until this book. Though lesser known, Neil Snyder has created the BEST management book I have ever seen. He writes for all you out there who want to be LEADERS and not FOLLOWERS, because in this new era of GLOBALIZATION, it's sink or swim. Snyder wants us to rise to the challenge.

Neil Snyder himself once wrote a thesis about "hostile" economic conditions in the world economu. This little known pamphlet was PROPHETIC in its interpretation of events, and his view of the world has been the one which rings a bell in this day and age.

BUY THIS BOOK. YOU NEED IT!

Similar Books:

Title: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss ISBN: 1592400876 Publisher: Gotham Books Pub. Date: 12 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $17.50