does not make much sense to make even a passing reference to thetelex, notwithstanding the fact that this might have been accurate atthe time of the data collection. Already the fax, internet, intranet andsatellite telephones linked to all sorts of hardware and software arehelping refashion both communications, and hence networks, andalso the speed and diffusion of information, innovation and knowl-edge. Without yet being a virtual organization, the emerging MNC isprobably less characterized by relationships de®ned and governedby ownership and more by looser arrangements allowing environ-mental and contextual factors to be better accommodated insteadof just arbitraged. Although the thesis for the differentiated net-work to promote or exploit innovation has been both presentedand defended adequately for historical and analytical purposes, itsrelevance and applicability under current and changing geopoliticalscenaria is still to be underpinned with more up-to-date referencesand empirical work.

Peter KangisDeputy Director,

Sems-University of Surrey

Creating Value: Shaping Tomorrow's Business. Shiv S. Mathurand Alfred Kenyon, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 1997, ISBN0-7506-3339-5, 451pp, price £18.99.

The endorsements that appear on the jacket of this new bookattracted my interest, not least because they were so positive, butalso because they all embraced the notion that here was a text thatwas unconventional: a sure way to whet my appetite for thecontents.

Readers of the Journal will have formed their own ideas about therecent developments in strategy formulation and implementation. Imust confess that a lot of the new texts that have appeared in the lasttwo years or so seem to promise so much but in reality deliver solittle that is innovative, either in thinking or style, and are notgrounded in contemporary research ®ndings of either managerialactions or organizational behaviour. A colleague of mine, who shallremain nameless for the purpose of this review, commented thatmany of the new strategic change and management books shouldcarry a `managerial health warning', i.e. that reading this book canseriously damage a manager's chances of thinking and actingstrategically! Perhaps his comment is a bit unfair, because there havebeen some ®ne new texts in both areas, but equally a dispropor-tionate majority read like a course in insomnia . . . the language andstyle is self-indulgent, turgid and unattractive.

Creating Value I am pleased to report is refreshingly different.It is written and organized in a readable, well presented mannerand the opening chapter even carries its own `health-warning'

# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic Change, December 1998

484 Book reviews

cautioning the reader to take care in the use of words:

Business strategy uses terms like industry, ®rm, competition,differentiation, resource, competitive advantage, and conglomer-ate. They all trip off the tongue quite easily, but they mean verydifferent things to different people. Unfortunately their mean-ings matter. Misunderstandings about them can cause mischief ofany degree, from trivial to catastrophic.

The same sound advice is advanced in their discussions aboutother topics such as: views of business strategy; should managers bethinkers; and what decisions are strategic. The authors present anew approach to strategy making which puts markets at theforefront of the competitive arena, not industry sectors. It links thegoal of achieving ®nancial value with the need to target the mostpro®table customers. Furthermore, it builds and expands on someof the issues presented in John Kay's highly successful andin¯uential book on Foundations of Corporate SuccessÐHow

Business Strategies Add Value. Mathur and Kenyon challenge thestakeholder view that seems to predominate among many writers ofstrategy, calling it `a dialogue of the deaf'. They go on to say that:

The stakeholder view (of business) sounds very persuasive. Itsweakness however is that it mistakes the essential nature of abusiness. A business is not a moral agent at all: it is an inanimateobject. It is an investment project brought into existence to earnin excess of its cost of capital. Its raison d'eÃtre is ®nancial . . .Financial performance must be the ultimate yardstick of businessstrategy.

This is a controversial and provocative book and well wortha read. I would echo one of the endorsements made on the rearjacket of the book by Robert Grant, Professor of Managementat Georgetown University, USA, that the text is . . . `stimulating,insightful, and challenges conventional thinking'.

Graham BeaverProfessor of Business Development,

Nottingham Business School

The Leadership Engine: how winning companies build leaders at

every level. Noel M. Tichy with Eli Cohen, Harper Business, NewYork, 1997, ISBN 0-88730-793-0, 360 pp, price $26.00 (hardback).

This is a splendid book and essential reading for anyone with aserious interest in leadership. It is Tichy's best book so far, broad-ening beyond his long association with Jack Welch at GeneralElectric (GE). Its strength is the conviction it conveys that people areat the heart of leadership and, by extension, of strategy and change

# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic Change, December 1998

Book reviews 485