May 18, 2009

Five Best MBA Books

Gary Eckstein Management 3 bottleneck, business, business change, business process, business school, change, drucker, education, eli goldratt, generic strategies, harvard business review, harvard business school, konosuke matsushita, kotter, leadership, Management, mba, mba program, mba programs, objectives, operations management, peter drucker, process improvement, quality management, small business, strategy, toc, training, transformation

Thinking of enrolling on an MBA program? Then these five books are essential reads (in no specific order):

1. Michael Porter – Competitive Strategy: Porter’s frameworks are covered on every quality MBA program. The three most commonly taught frameworks are the Value Chain, Porter’s Five Forces Analysis and Porter’s Generic Strategies. This book, as well as Competitive Advantage are critical MBA reading.

2. Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged: This masterpiece by Ayn Rand is unlikely to be prescribed reading on most MBA course as it is recommended in Political related courses. I have included this book as essential reading due to the teachings about profit and capitalism contained within the story. Profit, as is taught during MBA programs, is the single most important objective of an organization. This book puts the reasons for profit into perspective.

3. John Kotter -  Leading Change: Kotter, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School is deemed the world authority on business Change and Transformation. His most well known article Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail has been published in the Harvard Business Review twice; in 1995 and 2007. Leading Change describes an eight step framework for successful Change.

4. Peter Drucker – The Practice of Management: Originally published in 1958, this book remains indispensible to successful managers and leaders. The fabled (and often debated) Management by Objectives (MBO) was introduced in this book by ‘the man who invented management‘, Peter Drucker.

5. Eli Goldratt – The Goal: Eli Goldratt the Israeli physicist turned management consultant/guru originally introduced the Quality Framework called the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to the world at large via his 1986 book, The Goal. TOC is a practical Quality Management framework which is covered on most MBA Operations Management modules.