Redefining Excellence: The Financial Performance of America's Best-Run Companies - Hardcover

Ghosh, Arabinda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0275933393 ISBN 13: 9780275933395

Publisher: Praeger, 1989

Synopsis

Management literature is full of examinations of so-called managerial excellence: firms such as GM, IBM, and DuPont have been managed in an exemplary fashion which others might emulate. Works such as Peters & Waterman's In Search of Excellence have extolled these firms as models for the future. In his new book, Ghosh responds to the hyberbole in this literature by taking a hard, analytical look at the real financial performance of such firms. His study of the financial performance of these well-known firms during the last twenty-five years (1960-1984), brings out significant findings that are invaluable to the investing public as well as to finance and management analysts.

Taking a list of these best-run companies and a control sample from the Fortune 500, the author applies sophisticated statistical and econometric tools to analyze their performance, comparing the excellent firms with the control group. By using these analytical techniques, Ghosh is able to determine whether these firms were indeed excellent from both the management's and stockholders' point of view. Over the period studied here, Ghosh discovers that the excellence of these firms has been transitory at best, that in most respects the control group has surpassed the excellent group in financial performance and market valuation in the long run, and that the excellent group has not exceeded the performance or the market generally. Given these results, Ghosh has called into question the whole 1980s notion of excellence (what it is and what it is not) and which firms are to be emulated for the long-term good of the U.S. economy. This book will have wide public appeal and be of special interest to scholars in management, finance, and economic history, as well as to financial and management analysts.

About this title

Book Description

Ghosh takes a hard, analytical look at the financial performance of those excellent firms often extolled as models for the future. Taking a list of these best-run companies and a control sample from the Fortune 500, he applies sophisticated statistical and econometric tools to analyze the performance of these firms, comparing that of the excellent firms with that of the control group.

About the Author

ARABINDA GHOSH is an Associate Professor of Economics and Finance at the School of Management, William Patterson College of New Jersey. He is the author of OPEC, the Petroleum Industry and the United States Energy Policy (Quorum Books, 1983) and Competition and Diversification in the United States Petroleum Industry (Quorum Books, 1985). His articles have appeared in such publications as the The Wall Street Journal, The Oil Daily, The Antitrust Bulletin, The Indian Economic Journal, The Journal of Industrial Economics, and The Journal of Portfolio Mangement, and The North American Review of Economics and Finance.

Edition details

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0275933393
• ISBN 13: 9780275933395
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 173