A Guide to Controlling Your Corporation's Future - Tapa dura

Acerca del autor

About the authors Russell L. Ackoff is Daniel H. Silberberg Professor of Systems Sciences at the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1947. Dr. Ackoff is the author or co-author of fifteen other books, along with over 150 articles published in various books and journals. He also performs research for more than 200 corporations and government agencies, and serves as a consultant for a number of major companies. Elsa Vergara Finnel is with the Phoebe Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia. Dr. Finnel has worked on a wide variety of planning and industrial and institutional consulting projects including the Philadelphia Export Network, an effort devoted to the promotion of exports among Philadelphia area firms. She received her Ph.D. from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. Jamshid Gharajedaghi is Director of The Busch Center at The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. He has previously worked with the IBM World Trade Corporation and The Industrial Management Institute.

De la solapa interior

Are corporate managers charting their companies? futures using inherently flawed planning methods? According to Russell Ackoff, many are doing just that. In his groundbreaking work, Creating the Corporate Future, Ackoff addressed the growing criticisms of American management techniques at home and abroad and first introduced his revolutionary systems approach to policy making?interactive planning. Generally acknowledged as a breakthrough in corporate planning, interactive planning increases managers? ability to control change and its effects, while at the same time enabling them to respond rapidly to changes they cannot control. Now this original and incisive thinker and two of his colleagues have taken the essential ideas of interactive planning, added fresh insights gained while helping corporate clients apply it to their own planning, and put them into this practical "how-to-plan" guide. Here is a step-by-step blueprint for translating the innovative concepts behind interactive planning into workable, implementable strategies and techniques for corporate development as well as corporate growth. While short enough to be read in a single sitting, this is a book packed with ideas you will refer to again and again throughout the planning process. Its pages are filled with realistic guidance for actually using interactive planning in your organization. With art, elegance, and insight the authors tackle such issues as:

• How do you identify the problems or opportunities faced by your organization? How do they interact, and what obstructs or constrains your doing something about them?
• What are the goals, objectives, and ideals of the organization you are planning for?
• How do you determine what should be done to narrow the gap between the actual and "idealized" redesign?
• How do you determine the resources required, and how should they be acquired or generated?
• How do you implement and control these planning decisions to insure you get the desired effects on performance?

As Anthony Catanese, writing in the APA Journal, noted, "Russell Ackoff has probably influenced the thinking of more managers than any other living person." His writings?from A Concept of Corporate Planning (1970), Redesigning the Future (1974), and The Art of Problem Solving (1978), to Creating the Corporate Future (1981)?form the cornerstone of much of the theory and methods for systematic analysis of problems in management planning. Now he has continued this rich tradition with colleagues Elsa Vergara Finnel and Jamshid Gharajedaghi in this practical and important work?A Guide to Controlling Your Corporation?s Future.