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Professor Milton Leontiades teasingly reminds us of Thomas Huxley's quip about tragedy in science being the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. One of the favorite beautiful hypotheses of business and economics is that diversification—especially unrelated diversification—is bad. Specialization, on the other hand, is supposed to be good. For a list of arguments that could shake your blind adherence to this theory, see box, “Six Myths About Diversification” (Page 29). Professor Leontiades makes a strong case for nonspecialized diversification. If the thought of maneuvering your firm away from its core activity sounds like heresy, read on. He even provides you with guidelines for committing diversification heresy the tight way. Didn't we learn in the 70s and 80s that it was disastrous to stray from your core business? Here's the contrarian argument from Myth Management: An Examination of Corporate Diversification as Fact and Theory.

The first planning conference of the North American Society for Corporate Planning, held in New York City in May, was a tribute to those who planned it. In terms of what is generally used to measure such events—such things as number of conferees, quality of speakers, smoothness of arrangements, palatability of hotel food—it was very successful. As might be expected, some parts of the conference appealed more than others. An attempt to provide an overview therefore will reflect certain personal biases. I confess, for example, to overcoverage of applications of strategic planning in companies and to lack of coverage on sessions dealing with modeling and economics. This is not to disparage the quality of the latter sessions, merely to indicate that a choice had to be made.

Is your company wondering how to manage the R&D function? If so, Dr. Steele's book is worth reading. It is written by an expert (Ph.D. from MIT with 20 years experience) in non‐technical language. This is in keeping with the book's implied message that R&D is too important to be left to technicians. Prior to World War II, R&D was tertiary enough to ignore, or leave to the scientists to manage, which amounted to much the same thing. Now that R&D represents about 2.3% of GNP, or over $30 billion, companies are challenged to translate R&D expenditures into commercial sales.

The social responsibility of business is not a new issue, but it is certainly one whose time arrived during the 1960s and early 1970s. There are today few issues of greater concern to business people. There are also few issues that have so galvanized consumer groups to protest to influence specific business decisions, such as installation of a nuclear utility plant, or against the philosophy of a “profits‐first” orientation of business generally.

An economist who makes such an insightful remark on his profession is not without promise. On balance, however, in this book Lekachman does not deliver the much needed critical evaluation of the economics profession by an economist of stature.

Despite the title, the central focus of this book is how portfolio planning techniques assist or impede strategy in large diversified companies. The author does not test the validity of the theory or assumptions underlying the portfolio planning approach. Instead, noting that most Fortune 500 companies are diversified and that about half of a sample of Fortune 1,000 firms use portfolio planning, Hamermesh concludes that CEOs and their companies must find it useful. The major research questions are thus:

As Gerard Adams points out, “Even if managers feel relatively secure in their control of internal business variables, the outcomes of their decisions are affected by the changing external economic environment.” This is especially true today as a multitude of forces, many of which are unpredictable, are reshaping the structure and adding to the volatility of an already rapidly changing economy. Fortunately, a revolution in business forecasting is underway that is improving the ability of planners and other managers to deal with the economy's uncertain future.

This is a wise book about management, not another book about miracles from the Orient. Masaaki Imai believes that in corporate races the turtles can still beat the hares if they become smarter competitors. But they have to work at management to win. Why break your rule about not reading another book on Japanese management? For one thing, Kaizen is not just about Japanese management. Masaaki Imai writes about “management” in its fullest sense—how to make best use of all the resources in a company to set desirable objectives and then attain them. He bases his work on his long familiarity with business in the U.S. as well as Japan, and like much of Peter Drucker's work, it makes simple sense. Finally, it's about people and how to stimulate them to make their best contributions to corporate success. Perhaps the greatest hazard to its acceptance will be the response, “I already knew that!” But if that's true, why do so few executives really practice these things?

During the 1960s the phrase “affluent society” seemed an appropriate sobriquet to describe the national mood. It reflected expectations of crossing the threshold into a new era of mass, as opposed to class, affluence.

Running a business used to be a matter of fundamentals. Managers were expected to raise the operating efficiency of a firm. That meant new plants, or new technology, or better people. Creating value was largely a question of making better products or making products a better way. If management was successful, earnings improved and investors' stockholdings appreciated.