Management Failures: Lessons Learned Through Case Study

Our 21st century global business environment consists of a very complex and challenging landscape. Businesses rise, and businesses fall. Businesses thrive, and businesses stall. What determines the success or failure of a business? Well, there are many things, but one thing is for sure: management plays a critical role in the success of any business.

Management is messy. There is no nice and neat resource that can adequately prepare a manager for what they will experience throughout their career. Management is challenging. There is no single, straightforward management handbook to reference. Perhaps one can learn the basics in an undergraduate management degree program. Even better, one can learn advanced strategies and insights in a graduate management degree program. These programs will no doubt equip one to be the best manager they can possibly be. But at the end of the day, experience is where the rubber hits the road – where a manager will ultimately rise or fall. Managers learn more by doing and experiencing than by studying. Furthermore, managers learn just as much, if not more, from their failures as they do their successes.

We present to you Management Failures: Lessons Learned Through Case Study. This book contains stories of failure – management failures. While not all business failures are the result of poor management, a good number of them are. This book contains a series of accounts where managers have failed – failed to make good decisions, failed to address organizational issues, failed to address interpersonal issues, as well as a host of other failures. While all failures don’t lead to the collapse of a business, all failures have some measurable impact on the people and the organizations in which the failure touched.

The purpose of this book is not to commiserate with managers, embarrass them, or feel sorry for managers that have blown it. Rather, experience is a master teacher, and the goal of this book is to help managers learn from the mistakes and failures of others. In this book the authors present a series of stories – case studies if you will – that cover a broad range of complex business situations. The intent of each case study is to present you with management issues and failures, get you to think critically about the management issues and failures, and provide guidance on how to avoid similar failures in your management practice.

Made specially to complement undergraduate and graduate courses in management and leadership, this book is organized in a series of “case studies.” Each case study presents a situation or scenario, poses discussion questions for reflection and analysis, and then includes expert analysis by the authors of the key issues of the case and recommendations for how the failure could have been avoided.

While some of the stories presented are globally-known failures that were reported through major media outlets, most of the stories come straight from the authors’ combined 125 years of management experience. Some of the failures you will read about are failures of the authors. Others are failures that the authors experienced or witnessed first-hand. Nonetheless, the authors have learned so much throughout their experiences, and they are eager to share their insights with you throughout this book. We are confident that this book will prove to be a valuable resource in your management toolbox.