Others might furnish in-house training or executive education from outside the company. Managerial specialisation has caused a proliferation of management writing. Hundreds of management books are now published each year, offering a multitude of cures for corporate ills, real and imagined. Most large management consultancies produce glossy journals that display their ideas alongside those of academics or journalists. Magazines that embrace the new economy give hysterical warning of relentless change and the obsolescence of cherished assumptions.
Any manager seeking knowledge is deluged by information.
Mastering Management aims to help by offering readers an antidote. The series will cover the main functions required of most managers and introduce the new skills for a changing business environment. Each topic will be spread over a series of weeks, highlighting the common links with other topics in the series. Core areas such as strategy and marketing appear in the earlier parts of the series, followed in later weeks by broader concerns such as leadership, ethics and corporate governance. Seasoned readers of the Financial Times will remember the Mastering Management series of 1995.