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all. Special attention here is given to enlisting participation and commitment, symbolic actions, rewards and recognition, and finally some advice on how to go about building a comprehensive cultural system for soc?al control. The middle three chapters, on the congruence of organization with strategy, basically talk about building a decent fit between the two when strategic direction changes. While a one-on-one fit is essential for short-term operational effectiveness and efficiency, what is missing here, and what is explored in the final third of the book, is the organization’s need to embrace, if not generate, multiple and often inconsistent cultures within the same paradigm when longer-term ada;?tations to changing strategic realities are taken into account. This brings us back to the proactive stance to be taken by the ideal enterprise, with respect to organizational renewal which is addressed in the last three chapters of this book. Chapter 7, “Managing Innovation Streams in Ambidextrous Organizations,” opens by repeating that “internal congruence can trap an organization in its past and lead to catastrophic failure as technologies and markets shift.” The ideal firm, in consequence, must pursue different streams of innovation simultaneously. These streams center on incremental innovation (small extensions of existing technology), architectural innovation (reconfiguration or combinations of existing technologies), and discontinuous innovation (new operating principles in core subsystems and/or discontinuous process innovation). As might be expected, directing each of these innovation streams is subject to different planning horizons and entails different types as well as degrees of managerial risk and uncertainty. The authors conceptualize the issues involved here in terms of both technology and productlife cycles. (While these concepts are certainly not new, the clear, managerially-oriented charts and figures of this section are worthy of special note.) Building and managing such an ambidextrous organization takes up the balance of this chapter, with special emphasis given to the coordination or harmonization of these discrete innovation streams at the senior executive level of the enterprise. Senior executives please take note of the above: What is rightfully their responsibility to balance these streams is all too often abdicated to more junior, but more articulate, advocates of short-term relatively certain incremental innovation only. The paradox here, of course, is that when the longer term is considered, preoccupation with incremental innovation is the most uncertain and

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risky course or action of all. This is the authors’ “success trap.” The last two chapters of the book, chapters 8 and 9, “Implementing Strategic Change,” and “Winning Through Innovation” respectively, are basically reprises or summaries for the policy-level executive of the detailed guidelines provided earlier. Thus, Chapter 8 reviews the mechanics of reorganization in terms of critical tasks, people, culture, and the formal organization. Special attention here is devoted to the real nature of leadership in such situations, political considerations and implementations, benchmarks for planning purposes. The last chapter is a straight-forward summary from the same perspective of the various points made throughout the book. This isn’t necessarily bad. As the old advice in Rhetoric phrases it, “When you’ve got a strong argument to make, One, tell’em what you’re going to say. Two, say it. Three, tell’em what you’ve said-and leave!” Overall, this book can be recommended unreservedly to anyone concerned with reconciling new strategic imperatives with established but inappropriate organizational modes reflecting past successes and obsolete realities. While senior business executives are its intended audience, middle-level managers, service providers, and academics could also profit by its clear articulation of concepts and issues such as the success trap, innovation streams, organizational congruence, and the responsibilities of top management for the survival and growth of the enterprise over the long term. Robert R. Rothberg Rutgers Graduate School of Management Human Resource Skills for the Project Manager: The Human Aspects of Project Management, Volume Two, by Vijay K. Verma. Upper Darby, PA: Project Management Institute, 1996. 268 pages. $24.95. The Project Management Institute has published three volumes in a series on The Human Aspects qf Project Management. Their purpose is to go beyond a traditional, linear approach to project management and show how to unleash higher levels of creativity, productivity, quality, and commitment from the project team by considering the human aspects. This volume offers a conceptual framework that can serve as a reference for managing projects successfully through managing human resources effectively. The target audience for this book is anyone who

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believes in management by projects, regards that as a competitive way to manage organizations, and wants to learn the human skills needed to interface with people and achieve synergy. Because the book draws so heavily on material from other sources with minimal supporting examples or personal experiences, however, I believe it can best be used by newcomers to the field or by project management educators and academics who want to cover a broad spectrum of concepts and skills. Experienced practitioners will find little new about how to implement the concepts but will get a complete refresher course. The ideas presented apply to projects in any industry. Each chapter in the book covers a basic aspect of people skills: communication; motivation; understanding conflict; managing and resolving conflict; negotiation; stress; leadership, power, influence and politics. The Appendix provides six self-assessment exercises to help diagnose a person’s style, personality, and power orientation. The references are extensive and point to major works on people management. Quite a few graphs and charts help to illustrate the concepts. The book synthesizes research from many disciplines and is well organized. Verma is a registered professional engineer and is a group leader for a planning department at the University of British Columbia. He teaches courses, provides project management services, and speaks at professional conferences. I found myself skimming the early chapters because I was familiar with the concepts, such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, active listening, and guidelines for negotiating. Every so often he adds a specific gem for an application to project management such as varying communication or leadership styles during stages of a project life cycle. Many of the key concepts are presented in bulleted form; the points are important and come from a wealth of validated experience, but the reader gets little in the way of background information, persuasive argument, or example. It was not until the final chapter that I started highlighting specific statements. Chapter 7 on Leadership, Power, Influence, and Politics in Project Management came closest to helping me get new learnings or reinforce forgotten ones. The author’s treatment of this subject was useful for me when debating with colleagues about the role of leadership in projects. He reminds the reader of sources of power and the patience required to persuade others. Verma defines and applies the concepts directly to the field of project management: “project leaders do the right things and project managers

are those who do things right” (p. 221). He offers several bold statements: “Management activities such as planning, organizing and decision making are ineffective in a project until a project leader inspires and motivates the project participants and directs them towards goals” (p. 222). When prescribing tolerance for ambiguity and change, he even manages to step out of character-“Sometimes it seems that project leaders are expected to read minds, operate a Ouija board and read a crystal ball” (p. 229). One of the best elements of this book is the profuse use of pithy quotations in subheadings throughout the chapters, such as “Politics is the science of who gets what, when, and why” (Sidney Hillman, p. 239). If you are mentoring a new project manager, hand him or her this book to read and then take the time to discuss why or what in your experience makes certain concepts so important. The book in itself is not compelling but the concepts in action certainly are. Randy Englund Hewlett-Packard

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And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared: TRIZ, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (Second Edition), by Genrich Altshuller, translated by Lev Shulyak. Auburn, MA: Technical Innovation Center, 1996. 171 pages. $46.00. The Science of Innovation: A Managerial Overview of the TRIZ Methodology, by Victor R. Fey and Eugene I. Rivin. Southfield, MI: The TRIZ Group, 1997. 81 + vi pages. $27.00. The value of these books is that they provide for the first time a somewhat accessible explanation of TRIZ (the Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). TRIZ has been highly touted as an innovative panacea but only explained briefly in articles [e.g., 21 and some conference presentations to Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) audiences in recent years. For those who are completely unfamiliar with TRIZ, an advocate explains: “TRIZ offers . . . a very systematic way of defining problems or discontinuities within any engineered system . . . (providing) analogies that have solved similar situations as depicted in the worldwide inventions” [3]. If you database of . . . two million want to learn a bit more about this technique, either of these thin books may be a place to start. The Altshuller book is a readable account by the