Organizational Restructuring by Dr. Yash Paul Soni identifies itself in the preface as a “practical and realistic approach to the study of organization restructuring.” In eight chapters, Dr. Soni aims to identify organizational strategies for companies trying to shift along with fast-moving global trends.
It’s clear that Dr. Soni speaks from a place of academic expertise as well as real-world experience. In his biography at the back of the book, Dr. Soni shares his journey growing up in India during the 1950s and his family’s struggle to help him travel to the UK to pursue a better life. Once in the UK, Dr. Soni earned an MBA and then launched and sold many successful businesses and charitable institutions. He also traveled to the U.S., where he earned a PhD.
Despite an impressive resume, however, the book falters. The author’s ideas are broad and shallow. Perhaps this is partly the result of Dr. Soni trying to fit a lifetime of knowledge into one tome. Chapter 2, “Diagnosing the Problem Evaluation of Organizational Business Divisions,” for example, discusses everything from the changing nature of the retail sector to the impact of the Internet on trade to SWOT analysis to Blue Ocean Strategy — all in a matter of a few pages.
The book’s prose is also problematic, featuring sentences such as: “Dreaming a restructure by shifting things and number would be so great, but that can only be possible at an imaginative land.” In addition, chapter organization suffers in places: For example, in Chapter 2, there are two almost identical sub-headings less than 10 pages apart: “Analysis of the Competitive Forces of Porter,” and “Analysis of Porter’s Competitive Forces.” All told, these issues, combine to create an extremely challenging read.
Organizational Restructuring tries to represent the hard-won knowledge of a gifted businessman. Unfortunately, due to the problems mentioned, it yields little more for readers than a compendium of concepts to explore further elsewhere.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
