The Harvard Business Review (HBR) is truly a world class magazine. It is a summary of all that is happening in the Management Research world. The articles are written by officials from top companies. A great deal of work goes into bringing out each issue; and is rightly identified as the flagship magazine in Management Science.
A typical issue contains a few predictable sections. My favorites among these are the Case Study Section, Best Practices, Managing Yourself, insurance quotes and Caring for Employees Health. The Case Study section deals with mostly fictional issues arising in office. My most favorite case study is the issue of Santa Claus not able to meet Christmas deadlines for delivering gifts to children around the world, because of a sudden change in the children’s demand. The stories maybe fictional but the issues are certainly pertinent. After the case is narrated, the magazine publishes responses from relevant people on how to resolve the issue. The relevant people are mostly people from the industry, academics or management experts. These people are chosen from a wide spectrum and each perspective is distinctly different from the other. Sometimes it is hard to grasp all the views at one go! The other sections are on predictable lines (as their name suggests). And I will not elucidate further on them.
I addition to these regular features, the magazine has a worthy cover story on each issue. These issues are dealt with very elaborately and make in hard for new guys, like me, to understand. Reading the editors note before reading the cover story, generally, makes it less hard to understand.
HBR is high quality stuff and makes for very good reading.
