• The Exceptional Manager is the latest thinking from leading management and economics scholars on how management practice can improve international economic performance
• Encourages managers to go beyond policy prescription to make a difference
• Focuses on employment relations, managing innovation, measuring performance, organizational learning, decision-making, time management, and strategy
• Paperback edition includes a newly written preface by Professor Robin Wensley, Warwick Business School, and Director of AIM

Readership: Essential reading for policy makers, analysts, business and management academics and students, and managers

Rick Delbridge, Chair in Organizational Analysis, The Business School, Cardiff University, Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice, London Business School, Gerry Johnson, Professor Sir Roland Smith Chair in Strategic Management, Lancaster University Management School, and The AIM Fellows

Review(s) from previous edition

"Conventional wisdom suggests that economic competitiveness is assured simply through deregulation and getting government out of the economy. The evidence suggests, however, that what organizational leaders do matters a great deal for both countries and companies. This book speaks to the necessary mind set and activities of managers who want to see their organizations thrive in a world of increasing global competition around innovation and ideas. - Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor, Stanford Business School and co-author of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management

"Clarity and good sense are surprisingly rare qualities in a book on corporate management. This book combines both, and will help managers to think more clearly about what they are trying to achieve, and policy-makers to understand better why some companies thrive and others fail." - Frances Cairncross, Chair, Economic and Social Research Council and Rector, Exeter College, Oxford

"Managers make less difference to businesses than they - or the public - think. This book explains why - and what can be done about it." - John Kay, author of The Foundations of Corporate Success

"'The book is a lucid and powerful exposition of how the exceptional manager of its title should go about this task.'" - Robert Bruce, Accountancy

"...packed with constructive ideas..." - Director

"The Exceptional Manager points in the right direction." - Richard Donkin, Financial Times

"The authors get you thinking outside of the organisation, and consider the wider economic contexts in which businesses can thrive...I think those involved in transformation leadership and organisational change will find it valuable. The Exceptional Manager shows that managers at all levels within a business can make a significant difference to the success of the organisation" - PERSONNELTODAY.COM

"Many, perhaps most, management books sell success recipes - short cuts claiming to make the job simpler and easier. The twin originality of The Exceptional Manager (Oxford University Press) is that it starts from the other end, by identifying what is problematic about managing, and then fitting its advice to the context of the UK today...the book is itself both a working model of practice-led enquiry and a step towards an evidence base for UK management." - The Observer

"This book combines both clarity and good sense and will help managers to think more clearly about what they are trying to do...Managers who want to see their organisations thrive in a world of increasing global competition can learn a great deal from this book." - Business Executive

Part 1: Setting the Scene
1: Making a Difference
2: Building on the National Context
Part II: The Building Blocks
3: Transforming Strategy
4: Managing Employment Relations
5: Innovating Beyond the Steady State
6: Measuring Performance in Innovative Firms
Part III: Key Issues
7: Adopting and Adapting Promising Practices
8: Learning in Organizations
9: Making Intelligent Decisions
10: Cooperating across Boundaries
11: Overcoming Busyness
12: Taking the First Steps