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HillMcShaneFactSheet.doc (68.0K)

• Focus on what managers actually do: This text was written to close the gap between what managers actually do or think about and what competing titles describe as contemporary practices. This focus is distinctly visible in the organization of the text.

• Organizing and Controlling - Managers consider organizing people into departments and teams a form of control. Therefore, what often is relegated to the end of the book as a “feedback loop”, Hill/McShane incorporates the control chapter (Chapter 9) into the organizing function to demonstrate how control impacts goals and performance measurement, organizational culture, etc., and introduces the balanced scorecard as a measurement tool. See p. 224.
• Leading and Developing Employees – Top performing companies consider developing staff one of the top priorities of their managers. Hill/McShane expands the “leading” function to include “leading and developing” employees to explicitly recognize developing as a cornerstone of the management functions. This theme is highlighted in Chapter 12 (pp. 304–307) with the discussion of employee selection and training.

• Interconnectivity of the four functions of management – Hill/McShane provides students with connections between different concepts bring to light the “Big Picture” they need to understand in order to become successful managers. Specific examples include:

• Chapter 13 on Motivation builds off of the goal-setting material referenced in the planning chapter (Chapter 5) reflecting how goals are cascaded down from the operational plans to individuals. This helps students understand the relationship between the functions of planning and leading, and how employee goals ideally should be aligned to company strategies.
• Chapter 10 on Organizational Culture builds off of the organizational values material introduced in Chapter 2 (p. 45) on the Internal Environment, which demonstrates how values drive culture.
• This text emphasizes values and connects back to this topic throughout the book. Chapter 1 (p. 19) explains how values are anchors for managerial behavior (missing from other management books!). Chapter 2 (p. 45) briefly introduces organizational culture (values and assumptions) as part of the internal environment. The text returns to values in the context of ethics in Chapter 4 (pp. 91, 95 – 96), as one of the foundations of planning in Chapter 5 (pp. 113–116), and as a control system in Chapter 9 (p. 216). Then organizational culture values and assumptions are fully discussed in a full chapter on this topic (Chapter 10).

• Storytelling writing style –As they have in their current market-leading books, both authors use stories to connect with students as a vehicle to help them learn. Using great language such as “From bloody awful to bloody awesome in five years…” (Ch. 3) or “No frankenfood here, please…” (Ch. 18) are just two examples of how the authors grab students attention and hold it with stories that are woven into the narrative of the text.

• Unique Theory/Application Writing style – The authors cover related theories and then apply them with rich examples that are NOT hidden in text boxes that students don’t read, but incorporated into the narrative of the text. Examples are highlighted in the margin of the text so students know an applied example is reinforcing a particular concept (i.e. “cost-leadership at Dell” or “Motivation at 3M”).

• Why does it matter? – Every chapter concludes with a summary of why the material covered matters for students of management, and how understanding these concepts can help students become a more successful manager.

• Management Portfolio Project – Mirroring the goal of the book- showing students how the 4 functions interact- this activity at the end of every chapter asks students to apply chapter concepts to their organization of choice. By following one company throughout the semester students will get a grasp of how and why all functions work together regardless of their experience working in organizations. Perfect for a course project, the instructor’s manual includes an implementation guide as well as samples of actual student portfolios.

• Integrated Support Package – Unlike revised texts/ resource packages, where materials are refitted, resized and repurposed, the resources supporting this text have been freshly created in close conjunction with the text and each other to provide you a truly integrated support package. The instructors manual is laid out by learning objective and includes extra “war stories” cases and teaching tips to use in the classroom that are not in the text. The test bank questions are categorized by blooms taxonomy, AACSB tagged, tagged by learning objective, and level of difficulty.