The Gower Handbook of Management

Citation

Megginson, D. (1999), "The Gower Handbook of Management", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 120-121. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.1999.31.3.120.2

This review of the state‐of‐the‐art of management is now in its fourth edition and has stood the test of time since 1983. It lays claim to the strap‐line, “If you have only one management book on your shelf, this must be the one”. How well does it match up to this claim? Certainly, it gets a lot of points for comprehensiveness. The 72 chapters include 16 on general management, six on financial management, 13 on marketing and selling, 11 on operations, five on materials and bought‐out services, seven on administration, eight on HR and six on personal skills.

I suppose one of the problems for the reader of such a text is that it will contain more than they ever wanted to know about some areas and not nearly enough about the areas which interest them. However, applying this test to my own interests, the handbook does not do at all badly. There are excellent chapters by Alan Mumford on “Developing effective managers”; by David Clutterbuck and Jenny Sweeney on “Coaching and mentoring”; by Vivien Whitaker on “The holistic manager”. Nicholas Jeffrey writes an even‐handed chapter on negotiating, but does not commit himself to a win‐win orientation. Colin Hastings has a chapter on teamworking which, for me, does not include enough on virtual teams. Peter Kangis’ chapter, “Towards the virtual organization”, lies at the boundary of speculation and whimsy. The chapter on intellectual property takes a narrow legal view of the topic. The 31‐page index has no reference to “the learning organization”, to “dialogue” or to “knowledge management”.

I would still be tempted to buy this handbook if I was only allowed to have one book. It has many chapters on familiar and unfamiliar topics that are informative, practical and clearly written. It has others that are traditional, and it fails to address many of the hot topics in management in a way that would inform a contemporary debate or prepare a manager for a grilling on issues which companies are considering taking on board.