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365 pgs, 1997, AIAA
ISBN 978-1563472398 "Murphy, move over! Augustine's Laws are in hot pursuit. A witty yet meaningful primer on what to expect in business management." -- Harry J. Gray, former Chairman and CEO, United Technologies.
Norman R. Augustine, Chairman of Lockheed Martin Corporation and five-time recipient of the Department of Defense's Distinguished Service Medal, demonstrates his 52 laws of business life through the cautionary saga of the Daedalus Model Airplane Company. The fictitious company's founders, two optimistic business school graduates, cause every conceivable management catastrophe en route to crashing their enterprise, to exemplify such Augustine Laws as:
"If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance." and:
"It costs a lot to build bad products." Augustine's Laws has been widely praised and quoted in the national media, including a major segment on "CBS Evening News." The book suggests multiple escapes and solutions to those trapped in the coils of business perplexity and offers priceless insights into how things may be better run.
TABLE OF CONTENTS - Preface
- Unbound Enthusiasm
- Minor Oversights
- The Gathering Storm
- The Impending Disaster
- Disaster
- Disaster Revisited
- Epilogue
Drawing on his experience as an aeronautical engineer in industry and for the Pentagon, Augustine, vice-president of Martin Marietta Corp., formulates 52 "laws" designed to avoid or correct bad management practices. In this expanded version of a book originally published by a technical press, his rueful comments and facetiously didactic style, interspersed with numerous examples, quotes, aphorisms and adages, overlay much common sense and shrewd judgment. He is appalled at the inexorable rise in production costs and schedule delays, many of them caused by faulty government cost evaluation and contract-letting systems, and distressed by top-heavy administrations and over-reliance on technology. Among his targets are MBA programs, a surfeit of lawyers and experts of all kinds, along with lengthy maintenance manuals, and unnecessary committees and meetings. Rules and regulations, he concludes, cannot replace management competence. Photos.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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