The Exceptional Manager: Making the Difference

Most businesses face the choice of either competing on the 'low road' of cost, or the 'high road' of innovation and value. Much the same goes for national economies and the UK is no exception. But how do businesses - and the people who manage them - go beyond the policy prescription and the easy exhortation to make that shift, to manage change and go well beyond business as usual?

This ground-breaking book - the combined insight of some of the best minds in management, grouped together in the Advanced Institute of Management Research - does just that. It presents a clear and crisp analysis of the context and the challenge; and offers managers a range of ideas on how to develop the competences, practices and values that can make a difference. It is essential reading for policy makers, analysts, academics, and managers to be who want to make a different future.

Rick Delbridge is Professor of Organizational Analysis at Cardiff Business School. His research areas include work organization, workplace and inter-organizational relations and the management of innovation.

His most recent projects include 'High performance manufacturing and the learning factory' (funded by the EPSRC), 'Trade unions and the representation of non-standard workers' (funded by the ESRC) and 'Learning companies: developing innovative potential of Welsh manufacturing SMEs' (funded by the European Regional Development Fund). He is the author of Life on the Line in Contemporary Manufacturing (OUP, 1998), co-editor of the Routledge book series Studies in Employment Relations and Associate Editor of the journal Organization.
Lynda Gratton is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School where she directs the school's executive programme, 'Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Organisations'. Between 1992 and 2002 Lynda led The Leading Edge Research Consortium, a major research initiative involving companies such as Hewlett Packard, Citibank, BT and GlaxoSmithKline.

The results of this research were published in Strategic Human Resource Management: Corporate Rhetoric and Human Reality (OUP, 2000). In 2002 she published Living Strategy: Putting People at the Heart of Corporate Purpose (FT Prentice Hall). This book was voted one of the 20 most influential books by American CEOs and has been translated into eight languages. Her most recent book is The Democratic Enterprise (FT Prentice Hall, 2004). She is a member of the board of The American Human Resource Planning Society, and sits on the advisory board of two American companies.
Gerry Johnson is Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Strathclyde Graduate School of Business in Glasgow. His research interests focus on management processes of strategy development and strategic change. Past research has included work on the links between strategy development and organizational culture and cognition; and micro aspects of institutional change. Current work is increasingly concerned with the links between major strategic issues and everyday, often routine, activities and practices in organisations; and the development of an international network of scholars addressing this agenda.

He has published a number of books and written numerous papers in the field of Strategic Management. Exploring Corporate Strategy (FT Prentice Hall, 2004), of which he is co-author, is the best selling text on Strategy in Europe and regularly appears in the Top 10 Business Books in the UK.