BOOK REVIEW / Dressing up an old idea in new clothes: The management audit: How to create an effective management team - Sir Michael Craig-Cooper and Philippe de Backer. Financial Times/Pitman Publishing, pounds 35

FEW words in the business lexicon have been devalued as much as 'audit'. The concept is expanding in various directions. Apart from the financial audit, we now have environmental audit, by which an organisation appeases the green lobby. Then there is the social audit, through which a business discovers how decent it is, particularly on trade with developing countries. Recent months have sprouted marketing and communications audits. Now there is the management audit.

Like the other newcomers, it is essentially a review. Using the term audit appears to be little more than a ruse to add gravitas. But the management audit differs from the others in that, while its predecessors have been developed to meet modern demands, it is really an attempt to dress up something old in a new uniform.

True, the authors say that it is a method to be used in the 'management of change', but the components of this technique are for the most part so basic that it is hard to believe that any self-respecting business has not already made great use of them.

The basic question the audit asks has two parts, the authors say: Is the management team in good shape for the changes that lie ahead? Is the management in good shape for current challenges? But, even allowing for the lack of attention given in business to human resources, surely organisations are pondering these questions all the time.

Messrs Craig-Cooper and de Backer would respond that such an approach is fundamentally flawed. To obtain a genuine answer you need to involve outsiders - consultants like themselves. And in trying to prove their case, they offer plenty of examples.

Desirable as case studies are for a 'how to' book, they often fall short of the mark.

For instance, the US aircraft maker Boeing is cited as proof of the theory in action because it transformed the 737 from 'a lame duck product' into its best-selling model through creating a crack team comprising engineers, financial experts and marketing people to tackle the problem.

However, is this not evidence of the effectiveness of 'project management' and 'working in teams', two other concepts in vogue in management circles?

Those looking for genuine insights into dealing with fundamental management problems should skip to the back of the book, where Sir Graham Day, Sir John Egan and Sir Peter Levene explain how they tackled the people issue among all this upheaval in such organisations as British Shipbuilders, BAA and the Civil Service.

Far more telling than the graphs and theorems about the need for information that litter the rest of the book are, for example, Sir Graham's contrasting tales of the Cammell Laird finance director who said he would need weeks to determine the company's cash position and was told to clear his desk and George Simpson, the divisional managing director who went on to head Rover after presenting his new boss with succinct briefing papers on the part of the business for which he was responsible.

The authors - until recently colleagues at Carre Orban International, a management consultancy with a strong executive search division that has merged with Korn/Ferry - insist that the value of the process is that it is forward-looking rather than retrospective. 'It raises all key issues perceived by management and provides a feedback which is objective, neutral and discreet.' But they admit there is a risk that - having raised expectations by using consultants to seek managers' views on a variety of topics - the senior executives will do nothing.

To their credit, they include an instance of failure. A Continental bank at the time of Big Bang decided to acquire a small investment and brokerage business based in London and asked the consultants to evaluate the management team and report on 'possible organisational synergies'.

The management audit recommended exchange of personnel and language courses. The deal went ahead without the consultancy's advice being heeded - and the acquiring company lost a lot of money.

But it was not the consultants' fault, you understand. 'The danger of a management audit results not from the audit itself but from the failure of senior management to observe and implement its findings.'

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