Graeme Salaman is Professor of Organisation Studies, Director of the Business Studies programme, and Director of Programmes and Curriculum at the Open University Business School. He has written over 50 books and articles, including Human Resource Management: A Strategic Introduction (with John Storey and Chris Mabey, Blackwell Publishing, 1998) and Strategic Human Resource Management (1998). He has also worked as a consultant in eight countries for clients such as Sun Microsystems, Willis, BAT, Government of Ethiopia, Fujitsu, Allianz, Ernst and Young, Rolls ROyce, Morgan Stnaley.

David Asch is Pro Vice-Chancellor Strategic Management Planning and Resources at De Montfort University in Leicester. He has writtenover 50 articles and books, including New Economy, New Competition (2001), Managing Strategy (1996) and Financial Planning(1996). He has worked with the senior teams of a range of firms including Cornhill, Ernst and Young Fujitsu/ICL, and Sun Microsystems.

Modern managers and students of management are inundated with advice on how to change organisations in order to improve their effectiveness. This book makes sense of all this competing advice, considering the best ways for organisations to develop their strategic capabilities in a fast-changing world.

The authors map all the major routes to organisational improvement and classify them into a number of basic categories. Five separate categories, each with its own theoretical provenance, are identified, and each type of approach is assessed and evaluated. The authors' approach draws on both strategy and human resource management, and highlights the interesting and subtle relationships between strategy and capability.

The book is highly practical, enabling the manager or HR professional, through an informed understanding of the advice available, to assess which solutions are most appropriate for their organisation.