Management Mistakes and Successes

To know what works, understand what didn't!

Great business leaders don't manage to avoid mistakes. They manage to learn from them. Now, you can go out and make your own errors--and suffer the consequences--or you can read this book and painlessly glean the secrets of successful management strategy from the real-life missteps of some of the foremost corporations and business leaders.

In the Ninth Edition of this classic book, Robert Hartley takes you inside the trials and tribulations of top companies to examine the crises the managers faced, the decisions they made, and the results, both good and bad, of their actions. Out of these tales of reckless acquisitions, strategic bungles, lost opportunities, failed leadership, and entrepreneurial exuberance gone wild, Hartley hands you practical insights and strategic principles that will guide you down your own road to success.

Under the microscope, you'll find such instructive cases as:
* Quaker's acquisition of Snapple that was anything but sweet
* Euro Disney's bungling of a successful format
* Ford's crash-and-burn handling of the Explorer/Firestone fiasco
* Vanguard's success in taking the road less traveled
* Southwest Airlines' dubious challenge to "try to match our prices"
* Boeing's continuing battle for dominance with Airbus

Fully revised and updated, the Management Mistakes, Ninth Edition covers every key aspect of management--managing performance and crises; mergers and acquisitions; planning; leadership and execution; controls and oversight; and entrepreneurship. And for the first time, the book includes "Great Comebacks"--tales of companies and leaders who actually did learn from their mistakes, so you can too.

Bob Hartley is Professor Emeritus at Cleveland State University's College of Business Administration. There he taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in management, marketing, and ethics. Prior to that he was at the University of Minnesota and George Washington University. His MBA and Ph.D. are from the University of Minnesota, with a BBA from Drake University.

Before coming into academia, he spent 13 years in retailing with the predecessor of Kmart (S. S. Kresge). J.C. Penney, and Dayton-Hudson and its Target Subsidiary. Positions held included store management, central busying, and merchandise management.

His first textbook, Marketing: Management and Social Change, was published in 1972. It was ahead of its time in introducing social and environmental issues to the study of marketing, Other books, Marketing Fundamentals, Retailing, Sales Management , and Marketing Research, followed.

In 1976, the first Marketing Mistakes book was published, and it brought a new approach to case studies, making them student-friendly and more relevant to career approach to case studies, making them student-friendly and more relevant to career enhancement than existing books. In 1983, Management Mistakes was published. These books are now in the tenth and ninth editions respectively, and have been widely translated. In 1992, Professor Hartley wrote Business Ethics: Violations of the Public Trusts, and Business Ethics Mistakes and Successes was published in 2005. He is listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World.