Recycling outdated material and deceptive
5/7/2007
I am using this as a textbook for an MBA course and it is not lightly that I give this strong opinion. After having read/studied nearly the complete book I find that in its 12th edition this book:
1. Recycles itself with nearly no update of the material and text. E.g. "Recent studies found...." and the reference is from 1995. MANY times the text states that something is brand new or latest or recent etc. and the reference is like the Fortune Magazine from 1990. This is unprofessional and deceptive and serves both, students and teaches, badly. The authors are just harvesting $$$ on merits that are pasted.
2. If you use Wikipedia once in a while you know that they label articles sometimes as containing "weasel words: are words or phrases that seemingly support statements without attributing opinions to verifiable sources, lending them the force of authority without letting the reader decide whether the source of the opinion is reliable." Example: "Scientists say...". "Managers often do ..." "It is common that..."
This textbook is peppered with such expressions.
3. The presentation and the writing style is utterly unimaginative and inadequate for this day and age. Those authors haven't thought anyone anything real in a long time. A book that expensive should be held accountable to current standards.
4. The author are incapable of synthesising the material in something the student can take with him/her. In fact they regularly complain themselves that all the theories and models they just wrote about are actually highly invalidated and critizised by other research that itself has trouble coming up with anything tangible. The result is a dead see of the unusable. If at least the presentation had something valuable but it is cumbersome and boring.
5. Some of the case studies are likely written by the Brother Grimm or Scott Adams. Often they relate insufficiently to the text or are so unreal or crippled that it is agonizing to have to even read them, let alone handle them in homework.
My recommendation is that if you have a choice, you better look around for something that will actually add value to your studies. I had no choice as
it is the textbook for this course, but I will urge my uni to move forward. This textbook is a backset.