Management Mistakes and Successes

When it comes to critiquing yesterday's football game or business flop, everyone's an expert. But in this case, Robert F. Hartley really is an expert. His Management Successes and Failures, here in its seventh edition, has been a mainstay of business students' bookshelves for twenty years. Hartley, professor emeritus at Cleveland State University, added seven new cases this time for a total of twenty-three analyses of what mistakes might have been avoided in major business ordeals as well as what strategic choices led to success. The cases are divided into eight categories such as Merger Mania (Daimler/Chrysler, Boeing, Snapple, Maytag) and Crisis Management (Ford/Firestone debacle, United Way, and others). While the book makes for easy and often enlightening reading, readers have an opportunity to mull over their own takeaways with hands-on exercises and the section that follows each case: "What Can Be Learned?"