MBA In A Day-- Steven Stalser Ph.D. -- Review

MBA In A Day by Steven Stralser, Ph.D. served its purpose for me. It gave me an outline of the management functions of an MBA.

Each chaptered covers a specific aspect of business management. There are a wide variety of subjects covered, human resources, organizational behavior, leadership and team building, ethics, negotiation, accounting and finance and many other subjects. At the end of each chapter there was a short bibliography of recommended reading.

The chapters contained many definitions of business theories. I found the section on leadership styles covering autocratic, democratic, laissez faire, transactional, and transformational leadership to be interesting. I think the new director would like to turn the library into a "high performance organization." The section on Quality Management was also quite enlightening.

The main complaint I have about this book is I thought that it did a rather weak presentation of the internet and ecommerce as well as management information systems function. It seemed to be limited in its coverage.

This book is useful if you want to understand what an MBA does. It gives an outline of the different functions of business administration as well as basic definitions of the central ideas behind current business management.

There is nothing new or exciting in this book. It was written in 2004. It is more of a practical book than anything else. There is an index and some pages have black and white diagrams. The book is well laid out, making it easy to follow. It is clearly written for a professional like a lawyer, doctor, or small business owner.

Thoughts On Self Education

I received a comment yesterday sitting on the train while I was reading MBA In A Day. Some guy said, "I learned more from reading books than I did spending six years in college, it is more efficient and faster." I never got the guys name. But, I think in many ways this is correct. Teaching yourself to learn for your own purposes is a gift. Not everyone is self directed. Libraries are a boon to this kind of thinking.

Anyways, I am off to work. I will be finishing up reading MBA In A Day will give my thoughts on the book later tonight or tomorrow.

Today has managed to be pretty busy. I am one of two librarians at the reference desk, so I have spent a lot of time answering peoples questions today.

There are also two programs going on today. I helped them find some anime dvds for the teenagers to take out, Wings of Honnemaise, Ghost In The Shell, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Our Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, The Castle Otranto, Castle In The Sky, Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, Tenchi Muyo, Fist of the Northstar and other anime classics which we have as part of our film collection. A few other titles were checked out already like Neon Genesis Evangelion and The Animatrix. A lot of stuff by Hayao Miyazaki. I hope they like the program.

The other bit of business was helping make sure a SCORE Marketing workshop was done correctly. We signed up nine people to attend the program. Seven people are currently listening to the speaker. A lot of it was calling all the people who signed up for the program to ask them to come the day before. We set up the tables in a u shape, much like a big conference table. Light refreshments were put out as well. We get juice, water, and cookies for people to drink and eat.

Right now I am doing the night shift at the reference desk. I have three unopened magazines sitting next to me, the May 15, 2008 Library Journal, the May 19, 2008 Publishers Weekly, and the May 15, 2008 Booklist. I am kind of reluctantly looking at them. I took a quick look through them. I chose a few reference books to order and put a book on hold, In The Court of the Crimson King by S.M. Stirling. I am a bit intrigued by God's Demon by Wayne Douglas Barlowe. However, I am a bit wary of the content. Wayne Barlowe's site is really fascinating http://www.waynebarlowe.com/

I am off tomorrow, because I work this Saturday, luckily our time is a bit flexible where I work. We don't get overtime, but we do get some flexibility with our time arrangements so it evens out in the end.

Daily Thoughts

I have been reading a bit more of MBA In A Day. We have a new director at our library. She has a Masters in Administration. I am trying to figure out what exactly goes into the masters degree. Most librarians don't have administrative training. They tend to have a masters in library science. This creates a kind of odd distinction in our library. Understanding the strategies being used to change where I work should be quite helpful.

One of the books I requested has come in, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. I am looking forward to reading this. I haven't read any books by him yet. Many of his books were banned in Muslim countries for their content. He is supposed to write in the style of magical realism.

I had a chance to read the latest New York Times Book Review and look throught the various bestseller lists. I put a few more books on hold, America's Hidden History by Kenneth C. Davis, and American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent. The title American Nerd has a very nice ring to it. It is very attention getting. That is why I became interested in the book almost immediately. Plus, I secretly harbor ambitions to nerdom, I am one of those outliers on the borders.

Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson is in the catalog. There is a record but there are no copies attached to the record. This means I will eventually be able to put the book on hold. These things always are a matter of patience.

I also put Little Brother a new book by Cory Doctorow on hold. Cory Doctorow can be pretty radical sometimes. I am looking forward to reading something a bit different in this title. It is a young adult title.

For those of you who like pictures, I was looking at Pulp Gallery today, it has thousands of images of old pulp fiction covers. It can be quite intriguing. Spicey Adventure, Famous Detective, The Shadow, The Spider, Argosy, Doc Savage and many other covers are shown there. It really gives a sense of nostalgia for yesteryear.
http://picasaweb.google.com/pulpgallery

My Technorati favorites came back. My fans are back. Technorati is working again. It took about eight days. They were polite and fixed the problem.

Morning Thoughts

I have started reading MBA In A Day by Steven Stralser, Ph.D.. It really can't teach you how to be an MBA in a day. I've figured this out. It appears to be an outline of all the different mangement functions which an MBA might do in an organization. The descriptions are brief and to the point. I have been able to follow the writing pretty closely.

I sometimes like to read the Avon Romance Blog. I think Avon Romance as a company is quite innovative. They are on Entrecard. There is no other publisher trying out Entrecard. I think they can often be more savvy than other publishers concerning what people want to read. They are also doing a much better job with the concept of social networking than many other publishers if you look at their blog closely. Romance is after all the most popular fiction genre.

I was looking at a title on their blog, One Foot In The Grave, it looks quite interesting. http://avonromanceblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/one-foot-in-grave.html I think they are doing a really good design with the way they present their blog. The blog also feeds into the authors website which is just as interesting to look at. http://www.jeanienefrost.com/ I may suggest the title for purchase.

On another note, I have been having some trouble with Technorati. About six days ago, I lost all my fans. I also could not add or look at my favorites. They gave me back my fans. I have twenty seven of them right now. However, they have not restarted the favorite function for me. It has been six days. They claim that it is due to technical difficulties. I have been thinking about whether or not to end my service with them or switch to another service. My rating is still going up. I am not worried if they ask me to leave, my service has been effectively terminated.
http://support.technorati.com/discussions/topic/3590?replies=11