The Management Myth Debunking Modern Business Philosophy

by Stewart, Matthew

• ISBN13: 9780393338522
• ISBN10: 0393338525
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-08-16
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Matthew Stewart is a former management consultant and the author of the acclaimed The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. He lives with his family in Santa Barbara, California, and is the Gilder Lehrman Fellow in American History at the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library for 2010-11.

Table of Contents

The Accidental Consultant	p. 1
Doing Things with Numbers
The Whale	p. 17
The Pig-Iron Tale	p. 27
College Man	p. 43
The Truth about the Pigs	p. 47
The Art of Hunting Whales	p. 61
The Management Idol	p. 73
Return to Shore	p. 81
Putting People First
Independence Day	p. 87
The Ideological Origins of the Humanist Revolution	p. 97
The Counterrevolution	p. 122
The Proper Study of Humankind	p. 127
The Pyramid and Its Discontents	p. 139
Thinking Ahead
How Strategy Became a Business	p. 151
A Case Study in Strategy	p. 169
Planning While Rome Burns	p. 177
How to Profit from Planning	p. 188
What Consultants Talk about When They Talk about Strategy	p. 194
Consultant, Consult Thyself	p. 199
Strategy in the Classroom	p. 202
The Market Value of Strategy	p. 220
Striving for Excellence
Tom Peters Talks to God	p. 229
Free at Last	p. 235
The Science of Excellence	p. 242
The Trial	p. 252
How to Become a Management Guru in Five Easy Steps	p. 261
The Promised Land	p. 282
The Future of Management Education	p. 289
Selected References	p. 305
Bibliographical Appendix	p. 313
Notes	p. 317
Acknowledgments	p. 329
Index	p. 331
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