Machiavellian Management - A chief executive's guideBased on Machiavelli's "The Prince", this modernisation describes what modern capitalists need to know to be able to get and hold onto corporate power.Machiavelli's original notorious and amoral guide was written for one of the Medici princes. It was probably one of the world's first management books. Following in Machiavelli's steps, this new "chief executive's guide" leads us through all the important skills recommended in acquiring, defending and extending control over your organisation. It deals with many of the subjects which confront the modern manager and executive every day: managing hatred, contempt, and opposition, eliminating your enemies, successful deceit, cruelty, compassion, corporate independence, opportunism, self-reliance, useful management expedients, managing managers and employees, taking and ignoring advice, using consultants, the brokerage of influence and the careful use of brutality.Machiavelli's credentials are impeccable: as an advisor to the Borgia and Medici families, his advice, as distilled in "The Prince", was published with the express permission of the Medici pope Clement VII. In his time, Machiavelli moved in the most powerful circles in Europe, but he was also a man of great observation and acuteness. He missed very little of what happened in the courts of his powerful employers. This ability to observe became Machiavelli's supreme literary gift to us all.Although the light of almost four centuries has been focused on "The Prince", its problems are still debatable and interesting today, because they are the eternal problems between the ruled and their rulers. Such as they are, the ethics of "The Prince" are those of Machiavelli's contemporaries. And yet these ethical standards cannot be said to be out of date. As long as the governments and corporations in the Western world rely on material greed, rather than on moral forces to make their decisions, then Machiavelli is alive and well!This modernisation of "The Prince" seeks again to shed some light into the darker corners of the reasoning used by the powerful "corporate princes" of our own generation, in the same way that Machiavelli attempted to enlighten the dark world of power that maintained the ruthless Borgia and Medici families.
About the Author: Malcolm Coxall, the author, is a management consultant and systems analyst with more than 30 years experience. Starting with a career in industrial dispute arbitration for the International Labour Organisation, Malcolm later became a free-lance systems consultant, working in mainland Europe and the Middle East. With experience working for many of the world's largest corporate and institutional players, Malcolm has acquired a ringside view of the human, organisational and management methodologies used by medium and large businesses in industries as diverse as banking, oil, defence, telecoms, manufacturing, mining, food, agriculture, aerospace, textiles and engineering. Malcolm has published articles on sociology, political manipulation, sustainable agriculture, organic food production, forest biodiversity, environmental protection and environmental economics. He is active in European environmental politics and was a successful private complainant in the European Court of Justice in several cases of national breaches of European environmental law. He now lives in Southern Spain from where he continues his IT consultancy work and writing, whilst managing the family's organic farm.