There are hundreds of books on management. This is not just another book about what makes an effective manager. Becoming a Better Boss highlights why well-known advice on good management is so rarely heeded.

By focusing on management through the eyes of an employee, Julian Birkinshaw gives us insightful and helpful advice on what we might do differently - both as individual managers of others, and as architects of the organizations in which we work. To achieve this, Birkinshaw has spent time working "in the trenches" to remind himself what life as an employee feels like, as well as interviewed hundreds of employees and managers and undertaken surveys which have received responses in the thousands.

The resulting book is a radical new look at what makes good management which is applicable to both manager and employee. It takes managers out of their comfort zone and shows how you can do things differently. It shows how the employee can help themselves be managed more effectively and explores the limitations and pathologies of the organizations we work for.

Julian Birkinshaw is Professor and Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School. He has PhD and MBA degrees in business from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, and a BSc (Hons) from the University of Durham. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Stockholm School of Economics, 2009. Professor Birkinshaw's main area of expertise is in the strategy and management of large multinational corporations, and on such specific issues as corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, subsidiary-headquarters relationship, knowledge management, network organizations, and global customer management.