Executive Chess

Bennett (Playing Hardball with Soft Skills and literary agent Snell present here a series of hypothetical, critical business problems (e.g., What is your next move when your onetime protege goes off to a new job taking key personnel and top accounts?). To find solutions the authors invite comment by such executives as the presidents of Reebok and Campbell Soup, a vice-president of Sony Corp. and the publisher of Venture magazine. The panelists sometimes differ widely in their recommendations for dealing with product competition, overexpansion in mail-order retailing, the difficult balance in high-tech industries between unhurried academic research and short-term profit results, and so on. On one thing there is agreementin a bosom-buddy or family business, success and failure alike can destroy human relationships. (August 25)