Mgmt Knowledge

ProvenModels’ Digital Model Book presents digitalised management models categorised in a clear and consistent standardized information structure to improve the usability and reusability of management literature. 

Management models are important generalisations of business situations when applied in context and are powerful tools for solving business issues. The transparency of paper based management articles and books in firms depends largely on individual memory and effort, and is thoroughly inadequate in today’s time pressured, digital work environment. Business professionals can quickly sift through our Book’s digital knowledge base and locate appropriate concepts for their assignment. 

Registered members are able to incorporate our adjustable Microsoft PowerPoint or Excel versions of models directly into their presentations or proposals to save them valuable time and effort. Check it out!

We all know Professor Michael Porter as a renowned Harvard Professor and the father of the Five Forces Model on Industry Analysis. Here with Charlie Rose he speaks for 1 hour on leadership, management and naturally competitive advantage. Many thanks to Charlie Rose for bringing this management guru to us in video!

Some of you might not know the name of Mary Parkere Follett. However, she is a woman who lived during the turn of the last century who is now recognized as a pioneer of many of today’s avant garde management principles. Both Peter Drucker and Gary Hamel give her praise as being a foundational contributor to management thinking. Take a moment to investigate her research and writings and it will provide you with a more rounded appreciation of the world of management and its history. Her biography from the Follett Foundation is is reprinted below:

Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) was a visionary and pioneering individual in the field of human relations, democratic organization, and management. Born in Massachusetts, in 1892 she entered what would become Radcliffe College, the women’s branch of Harvard. She graduated from Radcliffe summa cum laude in 1898. Follett’s intensive research into government while at Radcliffe was later published in her first book, The Speaker of the House of Representatives (1909), which was lauded (by, among others, Theodore Roosevelt) as the best study of this office of government ever done.

From 1900 to 1908, Follett devoted herself to social work in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. In 1908 she became chairperson of the Women’s Municipal League’s Committee on Extended Use of School Buildings, and in 1911 she helped open the East Boston High School Social Center. She was instrumental in the formation of many other social centers throughout Boston. Her experience in this area helped to transform her view of democracy. Follett later served as a member of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Board, and in 1917 she became vice-president of the National Community Center Association. By this time, however, she had turned most of her attention to writing for a wider public regarding what the social centers had taught her about democracy. In 1918 she published her second book, The New State, which is concerned with the human nature of government, democracy, and the role of local community.

In 1924, Follett published her third book, Creative Experience. This work addresses more directly the creative interaction of people through an on-going process of circular response. From this point until her death in 1933, Follett found her most enthusiastic audience in the world of business. Admiration and respect for her work grew on both sides of the Atlantic, and she became a leading management consultant. (Peter Drucker, who discovered Follett’s work in the 1950’s, is said to have referred to Follett as his “guru.”) Her various papers and speeches in this context were published in 1942 by Henry Metcalf and Lionel Urwick in a book called Dynamic Administration. Another celebration of her work in this context is Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management, which was edited by Pauline Graham and published in 1995. In 1998, The New State was re-issued by Penn State Press, with a preface by Benjamin Barber. A biography of Follett, written by Joan Tonn, a professor at the College of Management, University of Massachusetts, Boston, is expected to be published next year.

Follett is increasingly recognized today as the originator, at least in the 20th century, of ideas that are today commonly accepted as “cutting edge” in organizational theory and public administration. These include the idea of seeking “win-win” solutions, community-based solutions, strength in human diversity, situational leadership, and a focus on process. However, just as her ideas were advanced for her own time, and advanced when people wrote about them decades after her death, they remain too often unrealized. We recognize them as an inspirational and guiding ideal for us today, at the beginning of the 21st century. It is the intention and the design of the Foundation’s programs to continue the effort to bridge ideal and practice in a continuous process that gives rise to true freedom.

Source: Follett Foundation

The world’s first Management Lab is a unique initiative with an equally unique and powerful perspective. Co-founded by professor Gary Hamel, “the world’s leading expert on business strategy” (Fortune) and Julian Birkinshaw, Professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School, the Lab is a pioneering attempt to create a setting in which progressive companies and world-renowned management scholars work together to co-create “tomorrow’s best practices” today. The goal: to dramatically accelerate the evolution of management processes and practices that will define competitive success in the 21st century.

At MLab you can find resources on research and books as well as sign up for management newsletter filled with nformation and perspectives.