Dilemmas, Dilemmas: Practical case studies for Company Directors
by Julie Garland McLellan
ISBN: 9781449921965, Publisher: Great Governance, USA, March 2010
Reviewed by: Sheila Deethi
I'm not a company director and never will be. I'm not on any boards. The largest entity I've ever run was a scholastic chess club. But Julie Garland McLellan's book, Dilemmas Dilemmas: Practical case studies for company directors, still made interesting reading for me. Writing from Australia she includes advice and examples from Australia, England and America, where laws might differ but people remain the same. Her advisers have a nice mix of experience and qualifications. Her examples, despite occasional strange sets of titles and initials -- CEOs, directors, Ministers, etc -- all read naturally like sitting in on a discussion on TV. And the format, with a question sheet for each "case," involves the reader directly in considering what rings true or false to them.
The case studies are given one-line explanations in a table at the start of the book, making it easy to find situations relevant to any given problem. They range from possible legal issues to interpersonal relationships, major businesses to tiny family concerns, big profit to non-profit, and stable to faltering. The laws may change between the lands, but ethics and business concerns remain the same. What fascinated me as an outsider was seeing how three different advisers can give such different advice based on the same premise, and how interpersonal relationships and style will probably determine eventual outcomes.
Even without experience or pre-conditioned interest, I found the book fascinating and thought-provoking. A final disclaimer explains the intent is "to educate and entertain," not to provide a comprehensive guide. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself both educated and entertained; my only complaint would be that I wished the table of cases had included page numbers so they'd be easier to find.
iSheila Deeth grew up in the UK and has a Bachelors and Masters in mathematics from Cambridge University, England. She moved to the United States with her husband and three sons twelve years ago and recently became a US citizen. Sheila has self-published several books on www.lulu.com/sdeeth. She has also had stories in www.nightsandweekends.com, www.theshinejournal.com and www.joyfulonline.net.