Forty years later most business process re-engineering projects failbecause the human factor is not fully considered (Hilb, 1996).Against this backdrop it is disappointing that Koulopoulos onlytouches upon the `soft' human issues associated with implementingsuch changes in working practice. Likewise, the sections on creatinga system schematic and conducting a TBA also seem to gloss overthe dif®culty of conducting such an analysis in a real organizationwith all the complexity introduced by the people dimension.

Koulopoulos argues that work¯ow based systems in the of®ceenvironment will be the cornerstone of competitive advantage inthe future, like factory automation and quality were in the past.Perhaps this overstates the case, but many service based companiesin post-industrial economies are likely to adopt some form ofwork¯ow based system over the next few years. Managers in suchorganizations will need to understand these systems. This text willprovide a readable, if rather uncritical, explanation of the coreconcepts.

Lew PerrenCentre for Management Development, University of Brighton

References

De Board, R. (1978). The Psychoanalysis of Organisations, Routledge,

London.

Hilb, M. (1996). BPR: a human resources management perspective, in:C. Armistead and P. Rowland (eds), Managing Business Processes,

Wiley, Chichester.Koulopoulos, T. M. (1995), The Work¯ow Imperative: Building Real

World Business Solutions, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.

Not Bosses But Leaders. How to Lead the Way to Success. JohnAdair, Kogan Page, Guildford, 1997, ISBN 0-7494-0270-9, 166pp,price £9.99 (paperback).

This book was ®rst published in 1987. In 1990 a second editionappeared, and in 1997 a `revised' second edition was published.According to the inside ¯yleaf, the book `explores the concept ofstrategic business leadership in a clear and easy-to-read way', andclaims `. . . to be the best introduction available to the role andresponsibility of a strategic leader in any organisation today.'

The book takes on the form of a ®ctionalized dialogue betweenthe author and a young business executive who is about to becomethe chief executive of a family owned middle-sized company (Adair,p. 1):

`I want some kind of checklist of simple points to remind myself'[the young executive told me]. `I know that I must lead and

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic Change, Jan±Feb 1999

62 Book reviews

manage in my own way, but I want to avoid making the obviousmistakes. A few key principlesÐor even some rules of thumbÐwould be of immense help.'

True to one of its implied objectives, the book provides`keypoints' at the end of each of its nine chapters; and true to itsclaim to be easy to read, the book is well structured, has lots of whitespace, and adopts a narrative style throughout.

On all of these counts the book may be thought to be a `good buy'at £9.99, but on close reading I ®nd it irritating, condescending andlikely to mislead those for whom the book is targeted. Indeed, if Ianticipate the advice I'd give my consulting clients, or the literatureI'd encourage my management students to read, I would steer themaway from the book and point them to other articles and texts whichare more authentic, which are better evidenced and betterreferenced than Not Bosses But Leaders.

So why do I dislike this book so much?First I am irritated by the ®ctional dialogue between the author

and `the young executive'. I don't believe in the dialogue itself, or inthe fake naõÈvete of `the young executive'. Most of the time the author`speaks down' to `the young manager', tends to instruct rather thanlisten, and fails to surface or build on `my client'[s]' own experience.Contrary to best practice in management development, whichextols experiential learning, we learn little about `the youngmanager's' views, his background, prior experiences, personalityor purpose. He is treated as a puppet; treated as a fawning disciplewho is to practice leadership according to the author's views andwho, as a senior manager and management student, is seldomoffered an opportunity to consider contrary interpretations of thenature of `strategic business leadership' (inside ¯yleaf).

If I pass from my irritation with the style, to a review of thesubstantive content of the book, then I become worried with theway that leadership is treated, and am especially concerned with thebeguiling assertions which pepper the text. Such assertionsmasquerade as simplicities which are to be taken without argument.As one example, take the motherhood and apple pie assertion onpage 126, `Technological progress cannot be resisted and it's no useblaming anyone.' (Adair, p. 126). Or, as another example, take theauthor's sweeping generalizations about the purpose of business:the author writes (p. 84),

`I think the purpose or ultimate aim of business is to producegoods or services and market them at a pro®t. Do you agree withthat?' The young manager nodded . . .

This assertion not only oversimpli®es the inherent problem ofcapitalism,1 but as importantly, the assertion conceals the stark

1See Handy, C. (1994). The Empty Raincoat: Making sense of the Future,Hutchinson, London.

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trade-offs which are faced by managers when seeking to determinean organization's means and ends. The assertion also fails to refereven obliquely to the recent notion of the balanced scorecard,2

which provides an heuristic to help resolve the relationships andtrade-offs between stakeholders' competing demands.

In fact, the book is dated in other respects too. The book's passingreference to the term human resource management (HRM) over-simpli®es the process and rhetoric of people management, andre¯ects a Taylorist view of the world. On HRM Adair writes (p. 60):

`Now it is very easy to transfer the `̀ thing-mentality'', as I'll call it,across the line to people. In other words, you slip easily into thehabit of regarding people as things that can be `managed' likemachines or money.

`Labelled `̀ human resources'' more often than not', said theyoung executive,

`But that is a useful phraseÐand I cannot think of a betterone'.

`Precisely', I replied.

Now in all of my teaching of strategic leadership, I would shudderand deny the idea of people being considered or being used as`it-beings'. I would forbid the term, not just because it is repugnant,but such an approach ¯ies in the face of a wealth of material beingpublished under the competing labels of `human resource manage-ment', `organizational behaviour', `strategy', and `leadership'.Indeed the language employed here (Adair, p. 60) would beinadmissible in many of today's journals and magazines which areseeking to return to employees some pale semblance of their soulsand feelings.3

Beyond the classroom even cursory visits to factories andservice organizations reveal that the rhetoric of management (andmanagement literature) has shifted focus.4 And those of us who'veread Peters and Waterman's5 work, or sought to follow insightsdeveloped by Ghoshal and Bartlett,6 will be concerned withelevating the ideas of `purpose, people and process' to counter-balance the dominance of `strategy, structure and systems' in today'smanagerial thinking and practice.

Sadly, it is ironic that such a well-intentioned book, which seeks toprioritize leadership over management, should fail to re¯ect thepreoccupations of today's managers who are being torn between

2See, for example, Kaplan, R. S. and Norton D. (1996). The Balanced Scorecard,Harvard Business School Press, Harvard.3cf. Stephen Fineman (ed.), (1993). Emotion in Organizations, Sage, London.4For readers who want an alternative view of management imperatives, thenRitzer's work on McDonaldization is a refreshing and challenging antidote. SeeRitzer, G. (1998). The McDonaldization Thesis, Sage, London.5Peters, T. and Waterman, R. (1982). In Search of Excellence, HarperCollins, NewYork.6Ghoshal, S. and Bartlett, C. A. (1998). The Individualized Corporation,Heinemann, London.

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64 Book reviews

the rational managerial Taylorist approach and the culture excel-lence school of management typi®ed by the disciples of Peters andWaterman. We as managers, coaches, mentors; as writers, teachersand consultants; and as academics and researchers, have a materialobligation to lead our clients towards a view that leadership is acraft which is not actually reducible to the robotic adoption ofaphorisms or simplicities, or serial attention to keypoints found in atext like this.

In my (metaphorical) book, leadership is about the notion ofcreating an environment where the impossible becomes possible;about creating a culture which fosters creativity among like-mindedindividuals intent on a common purpose. Leadership is about thosecharacteristics which Peter Senge7 writes about: of nurturingpersonal mastery, of building shared vision, developing sharedmental models, enabling team work, and thinking systemically andecologically.

In my teaching I try to glimpse some of our brittle understandingsabout strategic leadership. In my three day module, the ®rst dayencourages managers to get to know themselves a little better; in thesecond day participants focus on their responsibilities and skills inthe leadership of others; and on the third day participants see howbusiness and industry leadership can be thought to be built on theissues, ideas and practice that they confront during the ®rst twodays. The three days are a mere beginning, larded with healthwarnings and resourced by references, cases and articles which,unlike this book (cf. Adair, pp. 62 et seq., pp. 92±93), avoid(fallacious) reference to military analogies and heroes as examplesand role models for business leaders to adopt.

In conclusion, I judge that our obligation as leaders should beginwith the admission to our clients that we know very little aboutleadership. Therefore, to allow our clients to presuppose that leader-ship styles can be copied, or that leadership is easy, or that `it' isreducible to a list of keypoints mugged-up from a single book havingless than 200 pages, is not only potentially misleading, but alsopotentially damaging.

Peter FranklinNottingham Business School

Trust in the Balance: Building Successful Organisations on

Results, Integrity and Concern. Robert Bruce Shaw, Jossey-Bass,San Francisco, 1997, ISBN 0-7879-0286-1, 223 pp, price £18.99(USA, $25).

There are countless books on various aspects of corporate strategy,organizational behaviour, and business performance, all purportingto offer something new to assist the busy corporate executive dis-charge his or her duties and responsibilities more effectively. What a

7Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline, Century Business, London.

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