The Management Myth

Matthew Stewart, writing in The Atlantic, is my kind of guy. He says most of management theory is inane and if you want to succeed in business you should study philosophy not get an MBA. Of course, he is a philosophy graduate. He makes the case in this well written article that the need for the MBA is a myth. New fads are promoted with maddening papal infallibility and lack of empirical data.

He points back to Mary Parker Follett in the 1920's for attacking "departmentalized" thinking and advocating the "integrative" organization. Rosabeth Moss Kanter picked up the torch in 1983.

"Between them, Taylor and Mayo carved up the world of management theory. According to my scientific sampling you can save yourself from reading about 99 percent of all the management literature once you master the dialectic between rationalists and humanists. The Taylorite rationalist says: Be efficient! The Mayo-ist humanist replies: Hey these are people we're talking about! And the debate goes on."

He calls MBAs a way for businesses to outsource hiring.

In the end he has three recommendations for academic philosophy departments that he says will bring them back to be the educators of management - their "rightful" place:

• Expand the domain of your analysis! Why so many studies of Wittgenstein and none of Taylor, the man who invented the social class that now rules the world?
• Hire people with greater diversity of experience! Not just someone from another university, someone with another world view.
• Remember the three Cs: communication, communication and communication! Remember Plato: Its all about dialogue!

My comment: I have to agree that organizational leadership demands a broad range of skills and backgrounds and there really is no common set of tools for getting there. It would be interesting to put the requirements for an MBA up against the list of skills of innovators from the previous post. I think you would find that there are many, many places where they do not relate.