Judi Bevan has won the WHSmith Book Award for the best business book of 2002. The Rise and Fall of Marks and Spencer is out now in paperback and has been completely updated with an entirely new chapter assessing the apparent recovery, the success of the new George Davies 'Per Una' range and the fresh approaches of a powerful new team at the top - Roger Holmes (Head of UK Retail), Yasmin Yusuf (Director of Women's Clothing), Steve Longdon (Women's Clothing) and Barry Stevenson (Director of UK Stores). All the main historical players are here too, from the Jewish founders who dominated the company for nearly a century through the brilliant, intimidating Richard Greenbury and hapless Peter Salsbury to the fearsome triumvirate - Luc Vandevelde, Roger Holmes and, of course, George Davies. In this gripping history of the rise and fall, and now slow revival of Marks and Spencer, the in-fighting, rampant corridor creeping, takeover attempts - you name it - are set down in stone with perfect accuracy.

For decades Marks & Spencer was the most successful retailer in the world. Its clothes were a byword for affordable quality and its food halls pioneered ready-prepared meals. Then suddenly they were dowdy, the staff deserted in droves and the shares plummeted - but the annual results in April 2006 show that the company is on the mend. What went wrong and how have things improved? In new chapters covering the Philip Green bid and the Stuart Rose recovery plan, and covering the Christmas 2006 trading figures, Judi Bevan reveals all.

In this groundbreaking book Bill Bolton and John Thompson present a completely new take on the conventional domains of entrepreneur, leader and manager. They argue that in today’s turbulent and uncertain world, businesses no longer have the time for a business cycle that begins with an entrepreneur, hands over to a manager and finally brings in a strategic leader when things are flagging. ‘The New Normal’ that now prevails requires that these things run together and calls for a new kind of all-rounder. Bolton and Thompson give us a new word to describe such a person: The ENTIREPRENEUR The entirely competent person, able to discern aright and make things happen. Drawing upon the successful person-centred approach of their books on entrepreneurs they first tell the stories of over 40 entirepreneurs, demonstrating clearly that such people do exist. After discussing the ‘New Normal’ context they present a fascinating analysis that goes below the surface to describe the key Talent, Temperament, Technique and Discernment attributes that explain the entirepreneur. Readers have the opportunity to make a self-evaluation of their own attribute strengths, concluding with a final ‘entirepreneur’ score. This fascinating and insightful look at the entirepreneur is a clear pointer to what will be demanded of those who wish to succeed amid the vicissitudes of the 'New Normal’.

Succession management, often little more than an annual form-filling chore and a throwback to 'chess board' charting of 1950s multinationals, needs revitalisation to become a key driver of organisational renewal in the twenty-first century. Whilst recent corporate failings have focused attention on the difficulties of leadership succession, those organisations which have made the transition to greatness have understood the impact of strategic resourcing in renewing their leadership capability and character. The challenge for organisations is reconciling leadership demand and supply. When it may be impossible to say what your organisation will look like in three years time, or what strategy it will be pursuing, demand becomes difficult to predict. And in an era of shifting career realities, supply management needs to be more than an analysis of the age profile of the leadership population. Practical Succession Management is a response to the increasing relevance of proactive succession management but the widespread difficulty of making it happen. The author focuses on the business realities of succession management rather than provide a conceptualisation of how it might work in principle or simply headline a series of corporate 'just so' stories. In a robust evaluation of relevant research and imaginative practice, Andrew Munro maps out the battlegrounds for succession management, with tools and techniques to guide readers from start to finish. The result is a book that will stimulate and challenge your thinking in opening up new options and provide practical methodologies to advance strategic resourcing within your organisation.

Why do smart and experienced leaders make flawed, even catastrophic, decisions? Why do people keep believing they have made the right choice, even with the disastrous result staring them in the face? And how can you be sure you're making the right decision--without the benefit of hindsight? Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell show how the usually beneficial processes of the human mind can become traps when we face big decisions. The authors show how the shortcuts our brains have learned to take over millennia of evolution can derail our decision making. Think Again offers a powerful model for making better decisions, describing the key red flags to watch for and detailing the decision-making safeguards we need. Using examples from business, politics, and history, Think Again deconstructs bad decisions, as they unfolded in real time, to show how you can avoid the same fate.

An exquisite memoir of a life saved by poetry. "This is a portrait of the artist, narrated by a priest and a poet and a gay man with tenderness and searing honesty. Spencer Reece weaves the poetry he loves into how he has lived, the poetry as solace and relief, as confirmation and rescue, as redemption." —Colm Toíbín The Secret Gospel of Mark is a powerful dynamo of a story that delicately weaves the author's experiences with an appreciation for seven great literary touchstones: Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, James Merrill, Mark Strand, George Herbert, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. In speaking to the beauty these poets' works inspire in him, Reece finds the beauty of his own life's journey, a path that runs from coming of age as a gay teenager in the 1980s, Yale, alcoholism, a long stint as a Brooks Brothers salesman, Harvard Divinity School, and leads finally to hard-won success as a poet, reconciliation with his family, and the fulfillment of finding his life's work as an Episcopal priest. Reece's writing approaches the truth and beauty of the writers who have influenced him; elliptical and direct, always beautifully rendered.

Lecturers - save time by clicking here to request an e-inspection copy of this textbook - no waiting for the post to arrive! Written by a team of leading academics, this groundbreaking new text is an invaluable guide to the core elements of strategy courses, that will challenge conventional thinking about the field. Key features: - Provides a coherent and engaging overview of the established 'classics' of strategy, while taking an innovative approach to contemporary issues such as power and politics, ethics, branding, globalisation, collaboration, and the global financial crisis. - A unique critical perspective that encourages you to reflect on the strategy process and strategic decision-making. - Packed with learning features, including a wealth of international case studies and accompanying discussion questions. - A website offering a full Instructors' Manual, video cases, podcasts and full-text journal articles. Visit the Companion Website at www.sagepub.co.uk/cleggstrategy Read the authors’ research paper ‘Re-Framing Strategy: Power, Politics and Accounting’ in which they make the case for a critically informed approach to studying strategy in the special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (Vol 23, Issue 5) Praise for Strategy: Theory and Practice "Finally, something different in a strategy text! This new volume provides a broad view of strategy covering the conventional as well as less mainstream alternatives like the growing strategy-as-practice perspective. It also does a great job of providing balanced critiques of the existing orthodoxy and provides explicit connections to some of the more accessible academic articles providing more depth to the arguments presented. All in all, it is an excellent break from the unfortunate tendency to make strategy a narrow economic enterprise in a world that is far more complex and social than that. Strategy: Theory and Practice is a welcome addition to the available texts on strategy" - Nelson Phillips, Professor of Strategy and Organizational Behaviour Co-Editor, Journal of Management Inquiry "A super and overdue book. It embraces the central importance of organization theory and, especially, the play of power and politics both inside and outside the organization. This erudite, almost polemical book promises to redraw how we approach the study of strategy - and not before time!" - Royston Greenwood, Associate Dean, School of Business, University of Alberta "It explains where strategy originates from and how contemporary ideas and practices facilitate or constrain decision-making and action. In particular, this book illuminates the role of power and politics in strategy - an issue that has been overlooked in most textbooks in this area. Enjoyable and inspiring reading for students, researchers and practitioners" - Eero Vaara, Professor of Management and Organization Dean of Research Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki "The authors have managed to produce a unique and admirable combination of critical external engagement with 'strategy', understood as a complex object of organizational and political construction, and a useable insiders text book rich in illustrative cases. As such it is essential reading for academics, students and practitioners - all of whom will discover how theory and practice are more intertwined than they ever imagined" - Michael Power, Professor of Accounting, London School of Economics and Political Science

This is the dramatic story of the rise and fall of a great British company, Courtaulds. It describes the upheavals that a company goes through when one of its core businesses is threatened with extinction in the face of globalization, and assesses why some companies found a way through the crisis and continue to exist, while Courtaulds did not.

Retailing is one of the biggest and most important sectors in today's economy. Graduates who are seeking a career in the sector will therefore require a solid knowledge of its core principles. The Principles of Retailing Second Edition is a topical, engaging and authoritative update of a hugely successful textbook by three leading experts in retail management designed to be a digestible introduction to retailing for management and marketing students. The previous edition was praised for the quality of its coverage, the clarity of its style and the strength of its sections on operation and supply chain issues such as buying and logistics, which are often neglected by other texts. This new edition has been comprehensively reworked in response to the rapid changes to the industry, including the growth of online retail and the subsequent decline of physical retail space and new technologies that improve customer experience and help track consumer behaviour. It also builds upon the authors' research over the last decade with new chapters on offshore sourcing and CSR and product management in addition to considerable revisions to existing chapters to highlight changes in online retailing and e-tail logistics, retail branding, retail security, internationalisation and the fashion supply chain. This edition will also be supported by a collection of online teaching materials to help tutors spend less time preparing and more time teaching.