Professional Documents
Culture Documents
19-Book Reviews - Business Policy and Strategic Management
19-Book Reviews - Business Policy and Strategic Management
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vision, mission business definition, and goals and objectives. Chapter 4 and
5 deal with SWOT analysis that enable organizations to achieve strategic
advantage over their rival companies. Chapter 6 and 7 deal with numerous
corporate and business strategies. Chapter 7 on strategic alternatives
specifically described those strategies that are more commonly used for
Indian companies. Chapter 8 deals with strategic analysis and choice that
facilitate strategy formulation.
Part III entitled 'Strategy Implementation' has four chapters, namely,
Chapter 9: 'Activating Strategies', Chapter 10: 'Structural Implementation',
Chapter 11: 'Behavioural Implementation' and Chapter 12: 'Functional and
Operational Implementation'. Chapter 9 to 12 deal with different accepts of
strategic implementation. Chapter 11 dealing with behavioral issues of
implementation addresses factors such as corporate culture, corporate politics
and power, personal values and business ethics, and social responsibility.
These issues are increasingly becoming important as the application of the
behavioral concepts to strategic management gains wider acceptance.
Chapter 12 deals with functional and operational issues of implementation
such as productivity, processes, people and pace. Productivity is the measure
of the relative amount of input needed to secure a given amount of output.
Processes are courses of action used for operational implementation. People
are the stakeholders in the organizations. Pace is the speed of operational
implementation and measured in terms of time.
Part IV entitled 'Strategy Evaluation' consists of a single chapter, namely,
Chapter 13: 'Strategic Evaluation and Control'. Strategy evaluation is
necessary to test effectiveness of strategies in achieving objectives. Through
strategic and operational controls strategists set standards, measure
performance, evaluate the strategy, and then initiate corrective action. The
end result is adjustment of strategies, reformulation of objectives, or adaption
of plans.
Part V entitled 'Case Method and Case Studies' covers two sections,
first section dealing with conceptual foundations of case method under the
title 'Applying Strategic Management through the Case Method' and the
second section provides details of 20 case studies under the title 'Synopses
of Case Studies'. Each case study ends with a set of pertinent questions.
There are short and long cases: cases from different industries; case based
manufacturing as well as service organizations; and cases that deal with a
limited number of issues to cases that have a wider coverage.
Management & Change, Volume 13, Number 1 (2009)
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VITAL PURSUITS
Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another
special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete
what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self starter. Let your
first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to
echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Dont
waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.
- Og Mandino
Dont waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before
you, well assured that the right performance of this hours duties will be
the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
- R.W.Emerson
Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How
did they work out? Did not most of them turn out all right after all?
- Dale Carnegie
I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win than win a cause
that will some day lose.
- Woodrow T. Wilson
Source: The Times of India, Sacred Space, New Delhi, October 29,
2007 and December 4, 2007
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His passion for clean environment is obvious when he wrote: 'Let the
earth and the water, the air and the fruits of my country be sweet (banglar
mati, banglar ja) '. In his works one can frequently come across references to
tapovan (forest hermitage) and in one of his writings he noted: "Our tapovans,
which were natural universities, were not isolated from life; and the spiritual
education, which the students received there was a part of the spiritual life
which included all life. Our centre of culture should not only be the centre of
the intellectual life of India but of her economic life as well. Its very existence
would depend on the success of its industrial ventures carried out on the
cooperative principle, which would unite the teachers and students in a living
bond (The Centre of Indian Culture)".
In Sonar Tari (Golden Boat), one of his poetic works, he wrote 'gagane
garaje megh ghanavarsha' (heavy rainclouds clap in the sky); and in Kshanik
(For a While) 'My heart dances today like a peacock. My soul and the kadamba
flowers blossom together. Rain-clouds wet my eyes with their blue collyrium.'.
In Balaka (Flight of Swans) looking at a flight of swans moving over the
Jhelum, Tagore responded: "When like a scimitar the hill stream sheathed
in evening gloom, suddenly a flock of birds passed overhead their laughing
wings hurtling like an arrow among the stars. It awakens a passion for
speed among the motionless things, in their bosom the hills leave with the
anguish of storm clouds. The trees yearn to break away from their rooted
shackles. The flight of the birds had rent the veil of stillness and revealed to
me an immense movement in the deep silence. I see the hills and forests
flying across time to the unknown and the darkness thrill into fire as the stars
wing by. In my being I feel the rush of the sea-crossing birds leaving a way
beyond the limits of life and death, while the migrant word cries out in a
myriad voice - not here, not there, but in the bosom of the far-away."
Tagore's love for nature also included children. As a writer he would
never forget children. His concern for their need for joy, love and freedom,
was genuine. He would often remind children: "Blessed I am that I was born
in this land (sarthak janam amar janmechhiei deshe)".He noted (p.124):
"My real work has been to awaken, in nature's vast playground, the tender grace of childhood, its budding effort, the first rays of knowledge falling
across its horizon. Otherwise I would have been swamped by the trivia of
routine, statute and syllabus. My happiness, my fulfillment has been in trying
to rouse the young ones to the Delight of the unseen Player, to set them in
tune with the Dance of Life itself. It is not in me to be more serious than that.
The Master of Games has mercifully released me from the fetters of the
mature and the elder. Those who try to set me on a pedestal I shall tell them
that I was born with my seat below on the lap of the earth. In these trees and
forests, the dust, earth and grass, have I poured out my life. T hose who are
close to the spirit of the earth, those who are made and shaped by her, and
who will find their final rest in her, of them all I am the friend. I am a poet, ami
kavi (From the Seventieth Birthday Address)."
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