Book Description
This text remains the only text in the market that presents a balance of financial theory and applications. The authors maintain the same four goals as with the first edition: helping learners to make good financial decisions, providing a solid text for the introductory MBA course, motivating learners by demonstrating finance is relevant and interesting, and presenting the material clearly.
Customer Reviews:
First, they should learn to write sentences!.......2007-08-22
This book falls into the category of professors who know the material, but just can't communicate it. I can tell it was written on a schedule...sloppy wording, confusing definitions, and unintuitive examples and explanations. This information isn't that tough to understand...poor writing makes it so.
Here's a paragraph defining WACC, p.11.
Financial managers also must make finance decisions relating to how to finance the firm. In particular, what mix of debt and equity should be used, and what specific types of debt and equity should be issued? Also, what percentage of current earnings should be retained and reinvested rather than paid out as dividends? Along with these financing decisions, the general level of interest rates in the economy, the risk of the firm's operations, and stock market investors' overall attitude toward risk determine the rate of return that is required to satisfy a firm's investors. This is a return from investors' perspectives, but it is a cost from the company's point of view. Therefore, it is called the weighted average cost of capital (WACC).
As in the rest of the book, too many words, no directness or clarity.
Don't buy this book for self-study; you'll spend most of your time trying to decipher the obfuscating sentences.
finance student.......2007-07-09
I felt that the book was good. Some of the concepts could have been explained in better detail. I notice that on a lot of the chapters the authors repeated some of the material more than once. Some chapters need more practice problems like in chapter 5. This book explains the basic and fundamental concepts good but does not explained the difficult concepts good. Overall, this book was good.
Not a good book to learn from.......2007-06-01
This book's explanations were poor at best. It utilized undefined terms, and had a weak glossary/index.
Explanations of financial formulas were sorely lacking, and the organization of these formulas so that one could ever find them wasn't even attempted.
Not recommended.
Marcel Douven Netherlands.......2007-04-15
We used this "Brigham" for the course financial management, MBA programm.
The book gives a good overview and analysis of the main issues and is rather easy to understand and pleasant to read. You sould be aware that some issues are seen through the American glasses. Very usefull, I warmly recommend it.
Dissenting Opinion.......2007-02-27
Like many of the other reviewers, this text was required for my MBA program. As intro books go, I think that this book is much more advanced then what many reviewers have indicated.
Plus, my terms are 8 weeks long and this textbook is way, way too long for such a short time period. My school should adopt a textbook that is shorter in length. The book has over 25 long chapters. We barely studied half that before the term came to an end.
I felt that the layout of the text was not great. By this I mean, it would have been very helpful if, like other textbooks, the publishers/authors defined terms and concepts in the margins. Often times, the authors failed to provide clear definitions in the narrative forcing you to go to the glossary.
Next point, the authors present the material in long dense paragraphs which can be a challenge to get through. They need to break things up a bit more and interject more solved problems and examples.
I found this text more "academic" in nature and not something I could use as a reference on the job. I am looking for the practical and not the theory.
Bottomline, I would rather use a textbook that gets to the point faster, has more worked out problems, and is more visually inviting so to speak. For example, I have an old edition of Gitman's "Financial Management" and I like it much better then this textbook. The study guide that goes with Gitman's book is really good as well.
Meanwhile, I am debating whether to keep this text as reference or not.
Average customer rating:
- Not a Project Management Guide
- real world pm
- project management with your feet on the ground and your heart on it
- highly practical and thorough coverage
- Great book
|
The Art of Project Management (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly))
Scott Berkun
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
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ASIN: 0596007868 |
Book Description
The Art of Project Management covers it all--from practical methods for making sure work gets done right and on time, to the mindset that can make you a great leader motivating your team to do their best. Reading this was like reading the blueprint for how the best projects are managed at Microsoft... I wish we always put these lessons into action!" --Joe Belfiore, General Manager, E-home Division, Microsoft Corporation
"Berkun has written a fast paced, jargon-free and witty guide to what he wisely refers to as the 'art' of project management. It's a great introduction to the discipline. Seasoned and new managers will benefit from Berkun's perspectives." --Joe Mirza, Director, CNET Networks (Cnet.com)
"Most books with the words 'project management' in the title are dry tomes. If that's what you are expecting to hear from Berkun's book, you will be pleasantly surprised. Sure, it's about project management. But it's also about creativity, situational problem-solving, and leadership. If you're a team member, project manager, or even a non-technical stakeholder, Scott offers dozens of practical tools and techniques you can use, and questions you can ask, to ensure your projects succeed." --Bill Bliss, Senior VP of product and customer experience, expedia.com
In The Art of Project Management, you'll learn from a veteran manager of software and web development how to plan, manage, and lead projects. This personal account of hard lessons learned over a decade of work in the industry distills complex concepts and challenges into practical nuggets of useful advice. Inspiring, funny, honest, and compelling, this is the book you and your team need to have within arms reach. It will serve you well with your current work, and on future projects to come.
Topics include:
- How to make things happen
- Making good decisions
- Specifications and requirements
- Ideas and what to do with them
- How not to annoy people
- Leadership and trust
- The truth about making dates
- What to do when things go wrong
Customer Reviews:
Not a Project Management Guide.......2007-10-14
I guess I expected more after reading some of the reviews, but was disappointed to find out that it is a high level project management supplemental book. If you are a beginning PMer looking for a good book about the fundamentals of PM, this is not the book. The level of the content is for those who simply want a book that is more a novel than a help book.
real world pm.......2007-06-29
An easy and fun to read book, based on real life examples and experiences. While reading it, I got many tips from the book and apply them in my onw work.
project management with your feet on the ground and your heart on it.......2007-05-24
I really love this book!! I've read many books about how to run projects, to keep teams motivated, to be an effective leader, and I think this book compiles all of the above, plus it gives you a grounded point of view. There are no promises, only hard work and ways to improve your performance.
I've used some of the recommendations included in chapter 13: How to make things happen and, although is not a guarantee of success, I have accomplished some of my most difficult projects with it and the ones I didn't, at least I know why.
[...].
highly practical and thorough coverage.......2007-05-12
Reading this book is almost as good as having a highly experienced mentor help you manage a project. The book provides very thorough coverage with sound, practical advice. There is a good list of reference material as well. I have been a software developer for more than 25 years and have managed several projects and still found I learned a lot from this book. I wish it had been available years ago. The book also provided confirmation for many of my beliefs about which I disagree with my current project manager. I hope to use this book to help convince him to change. I will be managing my own project again soon and plan to use use this book to help me succeed. Every software developer should read this book even if they are not a project manager. My only very slight criticism is that the book is most helpful to software product projects, but I think even internal development projects should be run as this book explains.
Great book.......2007-05-09
This is a great book.
Filled with real-world wisdom, it prepares you for what to expect in the world of project management as a career option.
Especially usefull for people from software development background.
Average customer rating:
- Educational administration textbook that can be understood
|
Educational Administration: Theory, Research, and Practice
Wayne K Hoy ,
Cecil G Miskel ,
Wayne Hoy , and
Cecil Miskel
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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How to Say the Right Thing Every Time: Communicating Well With Students, Staff, Parents, and the Public
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Leadership Capacity for Lasting School Improvement
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The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for for Creating Schools that Work
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School Leadership and Administration: Important Concepts, Case Studies, and Simulations
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Collaborative Teacher Leadership: How Teachers Can Foster Equitable Schools
ASIN: 0072875682 |
Book Description
A leading text in its field, Educational Administration presents the most comprehensive synthesis available of theory and research in organizational behavior as it applies to the practice of Educational Administration. Each theoretical perspective presented concludes with an authentic case study that challenges students to apply their knowledge to an actual contemporary school problem.
Customer Reviews:
Educational administration textbook that can be understood.......2006-12-29
Professor required this textbook for Community College Leadership class. Could understand concepts and theories in plan English along with chapter endings with highlights of the chapter. Great index for looking up topics.
Book Description
Now with a free SINGWIN CD-ROM, Evaluating Practice, Fourth Edition is even easier for readers to understand and apply data analysis.
Unsurpassed among human service evaluation books, Evaluating Practice, Fourth Edition, includes the innovative SINGWIN program, created by Charles Auerbach, David Schnall, and Heidi Heft Laporte of Yeshiva University. Evaluating Practice instructs readers on managing cases and charting and filling out scales. Although the authors are best known within the social work discipline, this book can also be used in other professional programs such as nursing, counseling, psychology, and psychiatry. The free supplement with practice test questions provides a number of helpful exercises.
For anyone interested in social work at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Also for those interested in psychology, counseling, psychiatry, or psychiatric nursing.
Customer Reviews:
A great text book..........2007-01-02
I ordered this textbook for an MSW course, and it's wonderful. I love all the examples and the software that comes with it.
Another Edition to a fantastic text.......2005-08-10
This new edition of the text once again proves that these authors are the masters of single subject research. I have used this text for five years in my graduate methods course and am completely satisfied with their coverage of the material of single subject research design. Just when a researcher thought it could not get any better, this new edition comes along with updates to the software.
Get this book.
enough is enough.......2005-03-22
I was pleased to hear that this text had been assigned in a graduate research course at my graduate school of social work. I'm seriously disappointed. I would not recommend this text's continued use. It is excessively repetitive, constantly restating previous material (commonly referred to as 'rehashing'), and, as a sidebar, i can't help but mention an irritating habit of unnecessary references to material yet to come ('we'll talk about that more in chapter 14.'). The writing style is terribly wordy, and in a weighted, clunky pseudo-conversational style that rarely is effective in a textbook. The actual technical information is obscured in a constant river of verbiage, usually in page after page of solid block text, the least helpful format when learning technical information (or when subsequently searching for specific information or techniques). The result? It serves as a strong sedative. Finally, the authors repeatedly express apologies, in what eventually (by page 350) feels like an obsequious and cloying manner, for putting forward an empirical and accountable approach to clinical practice. The worst, though, is the repetition of material, as if the reader were an idiot. The sheer relentlessness of it is what is so galling, and at $100 bucks, neither affordable nor worth the investment. There are other texts out there with clearer, cleaner, more articulate prose, that are more respectful of the reader, and at half the price, such as the classic and affordable: Single-Case Research Designs: Methods for Clinical and Applied Settings by Alan E. Kazdin. Ignore the pollyanna reviews above and below, and avoid this text, or if on the syllabus, protest and suggest an alternative.
A Classic in Practice Evaluation.......2003-11-13
Bloom, Fischer and Orme continue to make an unique contribution to improving practice in the human services by providing a road map by which practitioners can evaluate their effectiveness. I've been using their text book for over 15 years in teaching practice evaluation and in has been an invaluable help. The new edition has a CD Rom with SingWin, CAAP,and CAAS which I was able to install in Windows XP Home edition. You must install CAAS before CAAP for it to work. The sofware computerizes record keeping, score computation, and graph construction. I strongly reccommend this textbook for human services faculty.
Book Description
This textbook brings modern I/O analysis to the undergraduate level. Consistent with modern analysis, the authors focus explicitly on the nature of strategic interaction and make extensive use of game theoretic tools. At the same time, they never lose sight of the policy motivation behind much IO analysis. Formal analysis is combined with many practical applications, and the presentation does not assume familiarity with calculus, rather it relies on the ability to work through algebraic equations.
Customer Reviews:
Not very clear.......2007-08-10
I had a very hard time following what's going on because the language is not very clear and too verbose. The book focuses on the beauty of language rather than how to express the ideas in a clear and understandable manner. Makes simple stuff a lot harder than it should. Translating equations into words is sometimes confusing, and the concepts are too ideal that they can hardly apply to the real world situations.
do not touch.......2006-12-26
the book is filled with typo. Given that this is third edition, the author doesn't seem to pay much attention to the hw. I was a TA for this class, and it took me some times to figure out what i did wrong because the hw questions are wrong. The theories in this book can only be applied in the context of the book's examples; some of these theories are not general and can't be applied in a broad sense.
Induvitably excellent book!.......2003-11-04
Above all, it enraptured me with its practical orientation,
which really builds the economic sense at the reader. Numerous, straight superior and often also heartbreaking examples make theory well comprehensible. There doesn't lack nor more complex mathematical assecession for more serious study. 1A
Induvitably excellent book!.......2003-11-04
Above all, it enraptured me with its practical orientation,
which really builds the economic sense at the reader. Numerous, straight superior and often also heartbreaking examples make theory well comprehensible. There doesn't lack nor more complex mathematical assecession for more serious study. 1A
Book Description
This book details the technologies used in water and wastewater management today, including standard practice and state of the art. Its main focus is on the mechanics of processes to treat water or wastewater.
Customer Reviews:
Good organization, poor mathematics.......1999-08-02
This book is better organized than most other texts in this field. The selection of topics is generally good. Coverage of many topics is quite satisfactory. Ion exchange and membrane processes, however, are not explained well.
While descriptive subjects (e.g.microbiology, diseases,etc) and those subjects that do not require advanced mathematics are well explained, there are some serious blunders in the coverage of more mathematical topics.
For example, the author employs mathematical language and notation in trying to "prove" or "derive" certain equations in Chapter 10 (pp. 255 to 261). The mathematics used, however, is sloppy and therefore the presentation is more confusing than convincing. The analysis covering Equations 10.37 to 10.40 shows that the author does not have an understanding of the substantial (material) derivative of fluid mechanics and transport phenomona.
There are some serious mistakes in the treatment of fixed bed adsorber systems (pp.490-498). For example, equations 15.51 and 15.65 are incorrect. There is also a mistake in Equation 15.57. There are other more fundamental mistakes. The author seems confused here. I advise readers to consult Weber or Benefield et al. to study this subject.
Despite the above criticism, this book's treatment of many topics is more comprehensive and satisfactory than that of many a textbook in this field. It is a valuable and wellcome addition to the textbook literature. In preparing the second edition, however, the author should have the chapter on mass balances and reaction kinetics completely rewritten (possibly by someone from the chemical engineering faculty).
Good organization, poor mathematics.......1999-08-02
This book is better organized than most other texts in this field. The selection of topics is generally good. Coverage of many topics is quite satisfactory. Ion exchange and membrane processes, however, are not explained well.
While descriptive subjects (e.g.microbiology, diseases,etc) and those subjects that do not require advanced mathematics are well explained, there are some serious blunders in the coverage of more mathematical topics.
For example, the author employs mathematical language and notation in trying to "prove" or "derive" certain equations in Chapter 10 (pp. 255 to 261). The mathematics used, however, is sloppy and therefore the presentation is more confusing than convincing. The analysis covering Equations 10.37 to 10.40 shows that the author does not have an understanding of the substantial (material) derivative of fluid mechanics and transport phenomona.
There are some serious mistakes in the treatment of fixed bed adsorber systems (pp.490-498). For example, equations 15.51 and 15.65 are incorrect. There is also a mistake in Equation 15.57. There are other more fundamental mistakes. The author seems confused here. I advise readers to consult Weber or Benefield et al. to study this subject.
Despite the above criticism, this book's treatment of many topics is more comprehensive and satisfactory than that of many a textbook in this field. It is a valuable and wellcome addition to the textbook literature. In preparing the second edition, however, the author should have the chapter on mass balances and reaction kinetics completely rewritten (possibly by someone from the chemical engineering faculty).
Very practical book of reference and good basic theory.......1998-08-17
A very easy to consult reference book. In most cases in water and wastewater engineering, the book will help you to give you the right direction in solving an engineering problem. As a basic book very good in use.
Easy to understand without neglecting theory.......1998-04-09
Droste provides a very good overview with good description of the theoretical background. I find this book most helpful for more unusual problems in (water and) wastewater treatment. Very good value: covers almost everything you need to know in one book.
Book Description
In addition to facilitating active learning, Organizational Behavior: Key Concepts, Skills & Best Practices meets the needs of those instructors looking for a brief, paperback text for their OB course, who do not want to sacrifice content or pedagogy. This book provides lean and efficient coverage of topics such as diversity in organizations, ethics, and globalization, which are recommended by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP). Timely chapter-opening vignettes, interactive exercises integrated into each chapter, four-color presentation, lively writing style, captioned color photos, cartoons, and real-world in-text examples make Organizational Behavior: Key Concepts, Skills & Best Practices the right choice for today’s business/management student. The topical flow of this 16-chapter text goes from micro (individuals) to macro (groups, teams, and organizations). Mixing and matching chapters and topics within chapters in various combinations is possible and encouraged to create optimum teaching/learning experiences.
Book Description
This supplement outlines the key sections of each chapter, and it provides students with a set of questions and problems similar to those in the text and in the Test Bank, along with worked-out solutions.
Customer Reviews:
Bad Editing & TONS of MISTAKES!.......2007-10-16
Practice problems are the best way to learn Financial Managment, and this book is useful because it not only gives the answers, but provides step-by-step solutions that walk you through the problem.
HOWEVER, the sample problems are littered with editing mistakes which will waste you valuable time when studying. For example, in the Self-Test Problems, questions will often refer to a previous problem, as in Chapter 6: "Refer to Self-test Problem 2. What would rx be if investors expected the inflation rate to increase by 2 percentage points and their risk aversion increased by 3 percentage points?"
Did the problem once. Got the wrong answer, Tried it again, still got the wrong answer. Reviewed the step-by-step solution provided. Realized that it SHOULD have read, "Refer to Self-test Problem 3" NOT 2. The result? A complete waste of time. This has happened to me more than a dozen times, and I'm not even 1/4 the way through the chapters.
Don't buy this study guide; it was clearly thrown together quickly and sloppily and they did an awful job of quality control and editing.
The difference between an A and a B.......2007-01-29
Halfway through my first semester of finance I was trying to understand why so many of my classmates were no longer struggling - turns out they had ordered this study guide. Generally I am not a fan of study guides, but this one is very comprehensive and gives wonderfully detailed explanations to all of its self-test problems - not just the answers. I ended up using this more than my actual text book and I highly recommend it to every student taking Finance.
Book is Okay.......2006-03-03
I thought that this study guide would follow the actual text book to the tee, but it does not. I was hoping it would follow the problems at the end of the chapters and explain in detail the problems.
Best Study Guide.......2004-10-09
This study guide was extremely helpful to me. It gives you all the main points and helps you understand the text better. I wish all study guides were this good!
Average customer rating:
- Organization Change book review
- There has to be something better then this book
- comprehensive text on change
|
Organization Change: Theory and Practice (Foundations for Organizational Science)
W. Warner Burke
Manufacturer: Sage Publications, Inc
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ASIN: 0761914838 |
Book Description
"Burke manages to integrate the extant theories of organizational change with case examples that make the theories come alive. He skillfully combines his strong interests in the abstract with his four decades of practical, personal experience in facilitating large-scale organizational change efforts. This book is clearly the work of a master at the peak of his career."
—LEONARD D. GOODSTEIN, Consulting Psychologist and Former CEO, American Psychological Association
Organizations change internally at a much slower pace than the external environments in which they function, and must continually evolve to keep pace. Further, these environments are in constant flux and challenge the assumption of continuity on which organizations are created and developed. Now more than ever, there is a clear need for a greater understanding of how to understand, lead, manage, and change organizations.
Organization Change: Theory and Practice provides an overview of the theoretical and research foundation for our current understanding of organization change, including the nature and types of change organizations experience. The author reviews various models, including a new model developed by Burke-Litwin, and uses cases to demonstrate how these models can be used to diagnose change issues in organizations. Emphasizing planned, revolutionary change over the typical gradual, evolutionary change organizations experience, Burke combines and integrates theory and research with application for insight into all aspects of organization change.
This book will prove invaluable to students and professors of MBA-level courses in organization change, organization psychology, industrial psychology, and organizational behavior. It will also benefit professionals and consultants in need of a reference for analyzing organizations.
About the Author:
W. Warner Burke is Professor of Psychology and Education and coordinator for the graduate programs in Social-Organizational Psychology, in the Department of Organization and Leadership, at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York. He is also senior advisor to the organization and change strategy practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
Customer Reviews:
Organization Change book review.......2007-01-04
I found this book to be boring and slow at parts, but educational. It was an assigned read for a Human Services class, and I would not have read it on my own if I didn't have to.
There has to be something better then this book .......2006-02-25
I had to buy this book and use it for a class. I find the book to be filled with a wide range of simple common sense theories. It is not a book I would recommend to anyone if they are looking for clear and valuable techniques to utilize there has to be something better then this.
comprehensive text on change.......2002-12-01
So much of the literature on change is often a simplistic cookbook claiming change can be executed in 7 easy steps. Burke provides the reader with the theoretical background and takes one through the multiple considerations when executing organizational change. I applaud Dr Burke for revealing the complexity of change and providing insights into the practice of change management.This is a primer for all who are engaged especially in large scale transformational change as it clearly provides one the background to help one educate others on why the change agent does what she does.
Average customer rating:
- A classic that is very relevant today
- Checkland's masterpiece
- Really worthwhile
- Where it all began...
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Systems Thinking, Systems Practice: Includes a 30-Year Retrospective
Peter Checkland
Manufacturer: Wiley
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Ackoff's Best: His Classic Writings on Management
ASIN: 0471986062 |
Book Description
Systems Thinking, Systems Practice "Whether by design, accident or merely synchronicity, Checkland appears to have developed a habit of writing seminal publications near the start of each decade which establish the basis and framework for systems methodology research for that decade." Hamish Rennie, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1992 Thirty years ago Peter Checkland set out to test whether the Systems Engineering (SE) approach, highly successful in technical problems, could be used by managers coping with the unfolding complexities of organizational life. The straightforward transfer of SE to the broader situations of management was not possible, but by insisting on a combination of systems thinking strongly linked to real-world practice Checkland and his collaborators developed an alternative approach - Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) - which enables managers of all kinds and at any level to deal with the subtleties and confusions of the situations they face. This work established the now accepted distinction between 'hard' systems thinking, in which parts of the world are taken to be 'systems' which can be 'engineered', and 'soft' systems thinking in which the focus is on making sure the process of inquiry into real-world complexity is itself a system for learning. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (1981) and Soft Systems Methodology in Action (1990) together with an earlier paper Towards a Systems-based Methodology for Real-World Problem Solving (1972) have long been recognized as classics in the field. Now Peter Checkland has looked back over the three decades of SSM development, brought the account of it up to date, and reflected on the whole evolutionary process which has produced a mature SSM. SSM: A 30-Year Retrospective, here included with Systems Thinking, Systems Practice closes a chapter on what is undoubtedly the most significant single research programme on the use of systems ideas in problem solving. Now retired from full-time university work, Peter Checkland continues his research as a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow.
Customer Reviews:
A classic that is very relevant today.......2007-06-13
I originallay read (and wrote a paper about) Checkland's ideas in 1990 whilst I was studying for my MBA. Then his ideas seemed revolutionary, insightful and impractical. Re-visiting his book nearly 20 years on little has changed in my view of its content, but the world has moved on and what seemed impractical now appears possible.
I would urge anyone involved in creating modern systems based on distributed and dynamic principles to study Checkland.
Checkland's masterpiece.......2004-10-23
When I first read this book I thought it to be revolutionary, ahead of it's time (as others have) and insightful. Despite the fact that Checkland has in large moved away from the ideas and the model of this book - to me it represents the original vision of SSM (soft systems methodology) more so than his later books. Checkland presents a history of systems thinking in the book then goes onto to discuss the need for a new approach - that of SSM. With extreme elegance of style Checkland delivers a long and stinging critique to Hard Systems thinking and presents a coherent and thoughtful argument for his own version SSM. Further he creates a platform for real world problem solving that is useful and interesting. A lot of his ideas have appeared in American texts (like the fifth discipline for example) and rarely are they credited or made use of in that regard. This book is a good place to start exploring the real world of problems with but I would highly recommended that before you go to his two other books you start here. This in my opinion has not been bettered in any systems context to date and I am not sure it ever will or could be. Having said that you really do need to read it and find out for yourself. Be warned it's not for those who want to be challenged in their thinking - especially those of you who don't like the qualitative stuff.
Really worthwhile.......2004-07-02
This book is a gem. The basic concepts of systems, hierarchies and emergent properties are developed from the methodologies of physical and social sciences in chapter 3, and makes for fascinating reading. I'm currently writing a master's thesis on it! =)
If you're studying management of information systems or something similar, you are probably sick and tired of overly theoretical approaches to the subject which seem to be just excuses for academics to publish rubbish (eg. structuration, actor network theory, etc). This book may save you from a nervous breakdown.
Where it all began..........2002-07-12
Well, since I've been on a bit of a 'systems' binge lately, I might as well review this old gem...
Checkland's book was the first to introduce the differentiation between 'soft' and 'hard' systems analysis. Soft analysis is much more akin to a general, somewhat philosophical approach to the methodology whereas hard analysis is the development of usable engineering models.
First off, this book is actually two books - the first is a fairly long paper that neatly sums up the systems approach over the 30 years it has been explored. The consensus? Things looked really promising at the beginning but unfortunately the approach simply got hung up on the very thing it was trying to escape: science's current preoccupation with reductionism. That is, the hard systems approach attracted the most attention and it quickly succumbed to the very trap it sought to escape starting with its use of rigidly-defined symbols right up to the detailed diddling with mathematical models that, similar to earlier approaches, did not model reality at all due to assumptions and oversimplification.
Checkland is much more interested in the soft approach and he consistently laments the fact that systems methodology is not being taught even though it holds so much promise to solving many of our pressing problems. The overview presses this point home and should be required reading for anyone in management or engineering.
The second section, the original book with a few revisions, is still very relevant. Checkland's focus, soft systems, never was given a chance given our preoccupation with reductionism. Given the recent failures of reductionism, particularly the genome-mapping fiasco, cast systems theory in new light.
Checkland starts out with an excellent overview of the history of science from a (mostly) philosophical perspective. This very readable overview leads directly into his discussion of the history and early development of systems theory. He then focuses on systems methodology (soft systems theory) with some general applications.
The approach is very readable and should be easily understood by anyone - in fact, Checkland stresses the importance of having a wide base of knowledge to help solve real-world problems and points out that much work has been done by people who 'migrated' from other fields. Smuts, one of the pioneers, was actually a politician and only wrote a systems book after losing an election...
It is unfortunate that there are no references to Robert Rosen here since his work, more of a 'hard' approach to systems theory, fully supports Checkland's ideas. In fact, there is a lot of material that should be included as 'backup' for why the systems approach is important as a new direction away from reductionism. Perlovsky's work in cybernetics, Jopling's recent work on self-knowledge, Prigogine's work in thermodynamics and even Kauffman's attempts in biology now point to hypotheses that are only compatible with a systems methodology.
This book, as mentioned above, should be required reading these days. Certainly for anyone contemplating management or engineering it is a very important reference. In fact, the book could basically be used in high-school with a bit of help from Weinberg's systems books. For those looking for more application-specific information I recommend von Bertalanffy's original, Rosen's work, and perhaps a side helping of Weinberg and Gharajedaghi for more ideas.
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