Jones and George are dedicated to the challenge of "Making It Real" for students. The authors present management in a way that makes its relevance obvious even to students who might lack exposure to a "real-life" management context. Their goal is to relate management theory to real life examples to drive home the message that management matters both because it determines how well organizations perform, and because managers and organizations affect the lives of people who work inside them and people outside the organization, such as customers, communities, and shareholders.

Essentials of Management concisely surveys current management theories and research. Through a variety of real world examples from small, medium, and large companies the reader learns how those ideas are used by practicing managers. The organization of this text follows the mainstream functional approach of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling; but the content is flexible and encourages instructors to use the organization they are most comfortable with.

One of the most popular features of the book has always been its focus on the "Manager as a Person," which discusses managers as real people with their own personalities, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and problems. In the 2nd Edition, the authors expand on this theme by discussing the importance of management competencies -the specific set of skills, abilities, and experiences that gives one manager the ability to perform at a higher level than another in a specific context. The themes of diversity, ethics, globalization, and information technology -all areas of importance that make up the workplace realities that today’s student will encounter in the course of a career- have also been greatly expanded in the 2nd Edition in the text, photographs, "unboxed" stories, and the end-of-chapter material.