Handbook of Management Skills

Citation

Boocock, G. (2000), "Handbook of Management Skills", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 19 No. 9, pp. 805-807. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmd.2000.19.9.805.1

This Handbook brings together 26 key topics in management, and devotes a chapter to each of them, with the whole book weighing in at 456 pages. First published in 1987, this edition has been extensively revised. Twelve of the 26 chapters are new. The contributors are all academics or consultants, three of whom contribute two chapters. The editor does not contribute a chapter, but she has lectured overseas and in the UK, having held academic posts at Middlesex University Business School, Cranfield and Henley.

The book is aimed at managers and they are invited to keep the handbook in a desk drawer, out of sight, for reference whenever a tricky problem presents itself!The editor promises practical help to facilitate effective management. The book is in three parts.

Part I focuses on personal skills, such as managing time, information and information technology, writing and making presentations, managing one’s health and dealing with stress. Part II deals with the tasks of the personnel manager, covering a range of issues including recruitment, interviewing, motivating, team building and running meetings. Part III is concerned with more general business skills, introducing topics such as financial management, project management, decision making and problem solving, negotiating and creativity.

There is inevitably some overlap between chapters, but I did not find this intrusive. Each chapter explains the basic theory and there are numerous diagrams, checklists and examples. I found myself being drawn into some chapters that I had not expected to appeal, for example, Chapter 11 on “listening”.

From a personal perspective, I found Part I the most useful. There is a wealth of common‐sense advice. Much of the material was familiar, but it was expertly distilled and presented in a very accessible form. Lecturers tend to harangue students about time management, writing styles, etc., but it is so easy for us to slip into bad habits. This book is a useful aide memoire for stressed‐out academics!Practising managers would also find much to assist them in managing their workloads. On a different tack, Part I and some chapters in Part II have also proved extremely useful for first‐year undergraduates at this university on the module “Personal Effectiveness”. The title of the module speaks for itself, and it is designed to enhance personal transferable skills. The material covered helps students in a variety of ways, notably in coping with university life, putting together a CV and applying for placement opportunities.

The contributions in Parts II and III understandably vary in terms of style and content. I found some of the topics rather bland, but could not argue that the book does offer a “taste” of the key management functions. How far does the book achieve its aim of facilitating effective management? As a stand‐alone text, the practising manager might want more information to tackle specific problems, but this book would certainly point the manager in the right direction.

All in all, I judge this book to be a helpful compendium of ideas for managers, academics and students.