The Management Myth: Debunking Modern Business Philosophy

by Matthew Stewart

Overview

"A devastating bombardment of managerial thinking and the profession of management consulting…A serious and valuable polemic." —Wall Street Journal

Fresh from Oxford with a degree in philosophy and no particular interest in business, Matthew Stewart might not have seemed a likely candidate to become a consultant. But soon he was telling veteran managers how to run their companies.

In narrating his own ill-fated (and often hilarious) odyssey at a top-tier firm, Stewart turns the consultant’s merciless, penetrating eye on the management industry itself. The Management Myth offers an insightful romp through the entire history of thinking about management, a withering critique of pseudoscience in management theory, and a clear explanation of why the MBA usually amounts to so much BS—leading us through the wilderness of American business thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393338522
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/16/2010
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	355,355
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Matthew Stewart is an independent philosopher and historian who has written extensively about the philosophical origins of the American republic, the history of philosophy, management theory, and the culture of inequality. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, among other publications. In recent years he has lived in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, and is currently based in London.

Table of Contents

The Accidental Consultant 1

I Doing Things with Numbers

The Whale 17

The Pig-Iron Tale 27

College Man 43

The Truth about the Pigs 47

The Art of Hunting Whales 61

The Management Idol 73

Return to Shore 81

II Putting People First

Independence Day 87

The Ideological Origins of the Humanist Revolution 97

The Counterrevolution 122

The Proper Study of Humankind 127

The Pyramid and Its Discontents 139

III Thinking Ahead

How Strategy Became a Business 151

A Case Study in Strategy 169

Planning While Rome Burns 177

How to Profit from Planning 188

What Consultants Talk about When They Talk about Strategy 194

Consultant, Consult Thyself 199

Strategy in the Classroom 202

The Market Value of Strategy 220

IV Striving for Excellence

Tom Peters Talks to God 229

Free at Last 235

The Science of Excellence 242

The Trial 252

How to Become a Management Guru in Five Easy Steps 261

The Promised Land 282

The Future of Management Education 289

Selected References 305

Bibliographical Appendix 313

Notes 317

Acknowledgments 329

Index 331

Editorial Reviews

"Consistently entertaining and enlightening."

Harvard Business Review

"Entertaining and slightly shocking."

The New Yorker - Jill Lepore