A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Strategy

by Chris Carter, Stewart R Clegg, Martin Kornberger

A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Strategy is a welcoming, lively, and thought provoking account of strategy. It helps students get to grips with strategy′s key issues and broad debates and introduce them to the latest ideas that won′t yet have been covered in the classroom. Organized into three sections, concepts are made really accessible as the authors first recap the history of strategy as an academic discipline, then evaluate major schools of strategic thought, and conclude by critiquing the latest developments in strategic research.

Genres: Business

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 17, 2008

About the author

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Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A couple of things about this book:

1. The title is misleading. It is, in-fact, not 'very short'. Though it may only be 170 pages (or thereabouts), it took me many, many hours of reading and rereading in order to absorb the many theories and studies that are presented in the text. Additionally, at $20 for the Kindle edition, it is not what I consider 'reasonably cheap.'

2. If you're not involved with strategy in your organization, this will most likely bore you to tears. I read this for the capstone course in my MBA program. I was warned ahead of time that it was the most boring book some of my classmates have ever read. With that said, I did find it 'fairly interesting' based on the fact that I actually am a strategic planner. Much of the content was applicable to what I do, and for the most part I could appreciate the authors waxing lyrical about strategy. However, I am vastly in the minority among my classmates when it comes to enjoyment and knowledge extraction from this book.

3. Though I did glean some pearls of wisdom, this text is a perfect example of academia being self-perpetuating. Although I admitted above to finding parts of it interesting from a strategist's perspective, the content is probably more appealing to business strategy professors rather than actual business strategy practitioners. I tend to be somewhat of a nerd when it comes to theory, so I enjoyed the academic-ness of it. For the most part, the book is structured as so: a study by a professor is presented, another professor(s) studies that study, a different professor(s) finds faults in the study, still yet another professor(s) critiques and delves deeper into the study matter, and some other professor(s) decides to begin a completely new study based on the old study. And the authors of the book disagree with all of the studies (after they've presented an entire chapter going over every detail of said studies). Repeat.

Overall, it was a tolerable read. It was like reading a very, very long lecture. You'll get some nuggets of knowledge out of it, but for the most part it's lots of droning on and on.

[Bjarne Skjødt Hjaltalin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tjae... kort er den ikke... interessant.. mjae.... interessante øjebliksbilleder, desværre bruger forfatteren mange overflødige ord, floskler og sider uden at understrege pointerne. Den er dog - momentvis - opløftende og interessant.

[Craigd · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think the title reveals the problems with the book, the book is not reasonably cheap and so the ivory tower is built and the rest of their views seem to be equally disconnected from reality.

[Elisabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The early chapters of the book actually were pretty interesting, especially the sections on Machiavelli and tracing the military roots of strategy. But the book became increasingly dense as it went on and the vocabulary more and more esoteric. The last few chapters were especially difficult, and I am convinced that the authors were more focused on sounding intelligent than actually imparting information to readers!

[Alison Atkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

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