Hat tip to Mark Lin on pointing me to leading management consulting firm, Bain & Company, and their Management Tools 2007: An Executive’s Guide publication (note PDF). As context from the publication (bracketed text added by me for clarity):
Every year or two since [1993], we’ve interviewed senior managers and conducted research to identify 25 of the most popular and pertinent management tools. We’ve defined the tools in this guide and, based on a detailed survey of managers, we explain how the tools are being used. We determine the rate of success for each tool. We also conduct one-on-one follow-up interviews to learn the circumstances in which each tool is most likely to produce the desired results. …
Our efforts to understand the continually evolving management tools landscape have led us to add five tools to this year’s guide—Consumer Ethnography, Corporate Blogs, Lean Operations, Mergers and Acquisitions and Shared Service Centers. While none is new, per se, each tool is growing in use and playing an increasingly important role in today’s business world.
Hey Steve, I just wanted to let you know that the link to the Bain report is broken. Here it is: http://www.bain.com/bainweb/publications/pdf.asp?id=25509
A german speech about Bain:
http://www.netzwerk-des-wissens.de/ArtikelZusammenstellen_DB.php?artikel_id=30