Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 15:00:16 EST
From: "Rob Slade, the doting grandpa of Ryan Hoff"
Subject: "Technimanagement" by Brown

BKTCHNMN.RVW   950601
 
"Technimanagement", David Brown, 1995, 0-13-180811-7
%A   David Brown
%C   One Lake St., Upper Saddle River, NJ   07458
%D   1995
%G   0-13-180811-7
%I   Prentice Hall PTR
%O   +1-201-236-7139 fax: +1-201-236-7131 beth_hespe@prenhall.com
%P   399
%T   "Technimanagement"
 
Technical people are different.  Technical people are all from Missouri:  they
have to be shown.  Technical people do not respond well to motivational
speeches:  you are better off giving them some numbers.  (Not too many, mind,
or they'll argue about how best to analyze them.)  Technical people fear
anything that *might* be right but could never be proven.  Hence, their
aversion to the "soft" social sciences.
 
But, as Brown points out, technical people are mostly the same as everyone
else.  What he has done, therefore, is taken the best and most solid of the
management, social, and business studies of this century, and presented them in
technical terms and format.  References backed up with citations.  Organization
by behavioral objectives.  Principles of management by mathematical proof. 
Fads and epigrams examined in depth.
 
The material is directed at the technical organization, and Brown points out
where this might differ from a production environment.  The exceptions, though
are very few.  Most of this book could be used to improve any type of company.
 
Nothing in the book is new.  Most of the management models have been briefly 
popular and improved some organizations, while breaking fruitlessly against the
massed ranks of fearful management.  Undoubtedly "Technimanagement" will suffer
the same fate in many quarters.  The manager with a technical background,
however, will almost certainly respond to this presentation.  Here are
techniques--not easy, perhaps, but elegant--which beg to be tried out and
experimented with ...
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995   BKTCHNMN.RVW   950601

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