New Era of Management 2nd Edition, By RICHARD L. DAFT. THOMSON SOUTH-WESTERN, MASON, OH: USA, ISBN-10: 0324537778, ISBN-13: 978-0324537772. 815PP

Abstract

The 21st century has brought with it a new workplace, one in which everyone must adapt to a rapidly changing society with constantly shifting demands and opportunities. The economy has become global and is driven by innovations and technology and organisations have to transform themselves to serve new customer expectations. It is necessary to review this book so as to identify issues that was not reflected so that practicing and aspiring managers can be guided effectively. This book was designed to inform existing and aspiring managers invert innovative solutions to the challenges that affects today’s organisations. This is because today’s business environment forced managers to go beyond theories and practices of traditional management. Managing in today’s dynamic and uncertain world needs intensive management skills and capabilities. Thus, this book covers both traditional management skills and the new competencies needed in a turbulent environment characterized by chaos. While the traditional practices focused on control, rules and regulations, stability and efficiency, the contemporary approaches focus on leading change, creativity and enthusiasm, shared vision and value. The main weakness of the book is its failure to present and link notion of knowledge and information sharing culture as well as firm growth stages in each management function on which this book is designed, the book also assume relationship between issues and topics presented are linear and failed to link management functions and stages of firm development. Nevertheless, New Era of Management is a very good resource book for managers, professors and university students pursuing courses related to business studies. The book will also help researchers to identify gaps in the knowledge for the future researchers.