The wide range of possible performance criteria for business enterprises raises serious questions of definition and measurement. Indeed, measurement is at the heart of the analysis of success and failure of business operations, and much depends on the quality of the information that is available. The evaluation of business performance comes into sharp focus with the pUblication of companies' annual and semi-annual accounts, which are then followed by commentaries from stockbrokers and business analysts in reports to investors and in articles in the financial press. Captains of industry may not have to suffer the indignity of frequent public opinion polls that gauge the popularity of politicians. Nevertheless, they are plagued by a similar phenomenon, in that views expressed by analysts, customers, shareholders and investors, serve as powerful reminders to senior executives that the business world is subject to many upheavals and that even the most seemingly secure can suddenly fall from grace.

Product Description: The task of management has become increasingly complex in recent years. Chief executives and senior management are confronted with the task of making sense of the multiple factors affecting business systems, and identifying causal relationships in seemingly unstructured problems...read more

Product Description: This book highlights certain topics in the field of decision making, corporate planning, and organization theory, and continues the debate about crises in the study of management. In particular, the new modelling tools of operational research are afflicted with problems of validity and implementation, while much of the current research into organization behaviour and design does not seem relevant to problems encountered by managers in real life...read more

Product Description: Identifies the control function as a central theme in the management process. The essential ingredients of control include the specification of a goal (or goals), a measurement task, feedback information on performance, and the decision to take corrective action...read more