Principles of Management

Listen to this podcast of Mason Carpenter discussing his textbook and the Principles of Management course for insight into his new text.

Principles of Management by Carpenter, Bauer and Erdogan teaches management principles to tomorrow’s business leaders by weaving three threads through every chapter: strategy, entrepreneurship and active leadership.

Strategic – All business school teachings have some orientation toward performance and strategy and are concerned with making choices that lead to high performance. Principles of Management will frame performance using the notion of the triple bottom-line – the idea that economic performance allows individuals and organizations to perform positively in social and environmental ways as well. The triple bottom line is financial, social, and environmental performance. It is important for all students to understand the interdependence of these three facets of organizational performance.

The Entrepreneurial Manager – While the “General Management” course at Harvard Business School was historically one of its most popular and impactful courses (pioneered in the 1960s by Joe Bower), recent Harvard MBAs did not see themselves as “general managers.” This course was relabeled “The Entrepreneurial Manager” in 2006, and has regained its title as one of the most popular courses. This reflects and underlying and growing trend that students, including the undergraduates this book targets, can see themselves as entrepreneurs and active change agents, but not just as managers.

By starting fresh with an entrepreneurial/change management orientation, this text provides an exciting perspective on the art of management that students can relate to. At the same time, this perspective is as relevant to existing for-profit organizations (in the form intrapreneurship) as it is to not-for-profits and new entrepreneurial ventures.

Active Leadership –Starting with the opening chapter, Principles of Management show students how leaders and leadership are essential to personal and organizational effectiveness and effective organizational change. Students are increasingly active as leaders at an early age, and are sometimes painfully aware of the leadership failings they see in public and private organizations. It is the leader and leadership that combine the principles of management (the artist’s palette, tools, and techniques) to create the art of management.

Cases - Mason provides brief cases in his Instructors Manual for those who take a case approach to the course or who wish to incorporate cases.

This book's modular format easily maps to a POLC course organization (Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling, attributed to Henri Fayol (1949, General and industrial management. London. Pitman Publishing company), and suits the needs of most undergraduate or graduate course in Principles of Management.