"Managers yearn for clear, unequivocal messages, but that is no longer what they receive. They are deluged by reports and books on creating the global organization, at the same time as they are still asking what that means. When it comes to the huge international corporations detailed in case study after case study, our knowledge is extensive but highly fragmented. What do we really know and understand about GE? There is a feeling that companies such as GE and Toyota possess something, but no one can quite encapsulate the entire message. There is no one great management book – though Peter Drucker came pretty close to providing it. What one commentator pompously labeled ‘the over-arching meta-narrative’ is usually notable by its absence. Management continues to defy the theorists who would like to guide it into a corner and nail it down. It continues to escape. It carries on slipping though our fingers."