This compendium of brief essays on the current concerns of corporate managers appears to have several goals. Written by faculty members and successful graduates of the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business and business leaders who have attended seminars or given speeches there, it delves into growth and innovation, information systems, industrial strategy, risk management, foreign trade, corporate governance, and leadership. The topics, briefly treated, give a sense of the state of thinking in the field. The writing is crisp, often elegant, and usually intriguing.

Chapters of the book raise dilemmas, then use empirical data to solve them. The results sometimes leave one wanting to know more. For example, in describing methods of pricing goods by time period – which airlines use to price seats that have to be sold before the plane takes off – is a theory analogous to pricing slowly rotting bananas. But knowing the system exists is scarcely a key to making it work. An essay on international business ethics, wise as it is in urging companies not to pay bribes, suggests that what the good corporate citizen of the world needs is a culture devoted to doing the right thing. That’s a platitude.

Managing for Success is far better than the mass of business books that gush into the market with the latest flavours of management theory. Well written, well edited, and sound in its advice, it is an advertisement for the business school that put it together. On the bottom line, Managing for Success tells readers that if they want to know more, they can sign up and learn directly from the profs in the book. That’s smart marketing for a school that proudly announces that one in six of its graduates has climbed to the top of the corporate ladder.