The first charge against management theory its lack of self-criticism we happily accept. Indeed, one of the points of this book is to provide just such criticism. The second charge that much of it is incomprehensible gobbledygook we also happily accept. Another of the purposes of this book is to translate managementese into something approaching English. There seems to be something in the water in business schools or at management conferences that destroys peoples capacity to speak plainly or write clearly. Read the following paragraph for example, written by Gary Hamel and C.K.Prahalad, two of the better gurus:
Wave participants involved their direct reports in the discovery process. Each wave appointed a few linking pins responsible for interacting the waves work with that of the other waves. Change team members acted as coaches to each wave. The output of every wave was thoroughly debated by the other waves and with the Leadership Council. Finally, an integration team, made up of some of the more convergent thinkers across the waves, boiled the work down to its essence and produced a draft strategic architecture that again was widely debated in the company.
Obfuscation and jargon is not just confined to the printed word. The idea for this book sprang out of a symposium held at the Swiss management forum, where a room full of German businessmen endeavoured heroically to understand what an American guru was on about. Every direct, practical query from the floor received an ever vaguer response from the podium. Specific questions along the lines of How should we apply your ideas? were answered by philosophical musings about what words such as apply meant and an invitation to the whole room to discuss apply. A few incomprehensible diagrams were produced just as a loose framework. Interestingly, the German businessmen blamed themselves for not understanding.
What then of the third, more substantial charge that underneath this convenient cloud of obfuscation, most of what the gurus say is blindingly obvious? Too often to outside eyes, management gurus seem to be dealing in applied common sense (the customer is king) many of their catch phrases )total quality management) now seem trite. They often claim to be predicting the future when all they are doing is describing the present. Just Lenins Imperialism: the Highest Stage of capitalism predicted the outbreak management gurus are forever prophesying a future that has already arrived.
There is an element of truth in this, but less than critics allege. Some of the things that strike us nowadays as blindingly obvious were anything but obvious when far-sighted management theorists began to talk about them. Peter Drucker, for example, was predicting the decline of the blue-collar worker and the rise of the knowledge worker back in the 1950s. People have stopped preaching about total quality management not because quality has gone out of fashion, but because everybody is striving for it. Besides, there is nothing inherently wrong with stating the obvious. One of the arguments for hiring management consultants is that they can see what is obvious to an outsider but incomprehensible to an insider.
However, the most common criticism of management theory focuses on the fourth charge: its fadishness. Management theorists have a passion for permanent revolution that would have made Trotsky or Mao Ze Dong green with envy. Theorists are forever unveiling ideas, christened with some acronym and tarted up in scientifc language, which are supposed to guarantee competitive success. A few months later, with the ideas tried out and competitive success still as illusory as ever, the theorist unveil some new idea. The names speak for themselves: Theory Z, Management by Objectives, Brainstorming, Managerial Grid, T Groups, Intrapreneurship, Demassing, Excellence, Managing By Walking Around and so on.
The fashion in theories is mirrored by a fashion in companies. Gurus are constantly discovering companies that seem to have found the secret of competitive success. A few years later these miracle organisations are faltering, troubled or even bankrupt. In 1982 Tom Peters In search of Excellence identified forty-three excellent American companies and tried to distill the sources of their success. But fewer than five years after the books publication two thirds of the companies studied had ceased to be excellent. Some, such as Atari and Avon, were in serious trouble, others, like Wang and Du Pont, were no longer outstanding. IBM was well advanced in its serious decline. But rather than taking a vow of silence, Tom Peters produced yet more books, advocating different solution to Americas problems.
These theories seem to have a large and willing (if confused) audience among manager. In 1995 a survey by Bain & Co. a consultancy of what use managers around the world made of twenty five leading management techniques found that the average company used 11.8 of these techniques in 1993 and 12.7 in 1994. The managers were on course to use 14.1 techniques in 1995. Though Americans are usually singled out as the worst offenders, their consumption rate (12.8) was only slightly higher than France (11.4) and Japan (11.5) and behind the biggest binger, Britain (13.7)
Management fashions seem to be growing ever more fickle: the life-cycle of an idea has now shrunk from a decade to a year or less. Humble businessmen trying to keep up with latest fashion often find that, by the time they have implemented the new craze, it looks outdate. The only people who win out of this are the theorists, who just go on getting richer and richer. Indeed it is not hard to construct an Oliver Stone movie out of the available evidence for a concerted conspiracy. Established gurus, with jetset lifestyles to support, are always looking for ways to update their arguments, would be gurus, be they overworked management consultants dreaming of spending some time with their families or under-employed business professors dreaming of first, class travel, are always trying to invent the revolutionary ideas that will establish their reputations; and everybody in the business is desperate to keep the wheel turning
The contradictory corporation
All the complaints about faddism miss the point. There is nothing necessarily wrong about trying out ideas. Rather like jogging or pumping iron, a new theory forces companies to exercise their corporate muscles (General Electrics Jack Welch even dubs one of his management systems work out implying that managerial change is good for corporate health ) The problem comes when these ideas contradict each other. The real problem with management theory is that it is pulling institutions and individuals in conflicting directions.
For every theory dragging companies one way there are two other theories dragging it another. One moment, the gurus are preaching total quality management - and the importance of checking quality and reducing defects the next, they are insisting that what matters is speed (which means being a little less painstaking about checking quality). One moment, they are saying that what gives a company its edge is its corporate culture, the more distinctive the better the next they are ordering companies to become more multicultural in order to be able to hold up a mirror to the rest of society. One moment, companies are urged to agree upon and then follow a single strong vision the next they are being warned that they live in an age of uncertainty. where following any single vision can be suicidal. Most management theorists have not worked out whether it is important to be global or local to be big or small, to be in the interests of shareholders or stakeholders. Usually, they end up by telling managers to do both.
The contradictions are particularly poisonous when they involve a companys relations with its staff. One of the more fashionable words in management theory is trust - it is this, we are told, that will keep knowledge workers loyal and inspire them to come up with ideas. Yet all the gurus also preach the virtue of flexibility, which is usually shorthand for sacking people. Indeed, there is a growing contradiction between the interests of companies and those of their employees. What companies do to make themselves secure - laying off workers, putting them on short term contracts or introducing flexible schedules - is precisely what makes those workers feel insecure.Meanwhile the only person who could sort out these contradiction is the one who thanks to all that delayering - has the least time to do it: the boss.
These contradictions within firms reflect a deeper intellectual confusion at the heart of management theory, which has left it not so much a coherent discipline as a battleground between two radically opposed philosophies. Management theorists usually belong to tone of two rival schools, each of which is inspired by a different philosophy of human nature, and management practice has oscillated wildly between these two positions. Scientific management isbased on the idea that the average worker is a lazy dolt who is redeemed only by greed. The job of the manager is to break down jobs into their component parts, so that even the dumbest can master them, and design incentive systems, so that even the laziest will exert himself.Humanistic management, on the other hand, is based on the idea that the average worker is a model human being, intelligent, creative and self-motivating. The job of the manger is to ensure that work is interesting enough to bring out the best in his employees, by dint of devolving
decisions to shop-floor workers, creating self-managing teams, and encouraging workers to make suggestions about how the company might be improved. This, in essence, is the debate between hard and soft management.
The first theory held sway until the Second World War, in the guise of scientific management, the second gained ground in the 1950s and 1960s under the banner of the human relations movement. In the 1980s the humanists pointed to Japan as a country that devolved power to workers and eschewed scientific management. This soft approach was increasingly overshadowed by hard realities. for all their kind words companies everywhere began to chop back staff. By the early 1990s the dominant management theory was re-engineering. which tried to adapt Taylorism to the age of the computer
The contradictory corporation has had two alarming effects. The first has been to reinforce anxiety, from the boardroom down. American managers have an acronym which captures the effect of all the changes BOHICA or bend over, here it come again. Business week quoted one American manager delivering his verdict on management fashion: Last year it was quality circles.this year it will be zero inventories.The truth is, one more fad and we will all go fads and their ability to contradict one another has increased considerably.
The second problem is to do with language and commitment. As contradictory theories zip past them, mangers have learned how to pay lip service to theories without really understanding them, let alone bothering to implement them. Many managers are rather like Soviet bureaucrats, living in a dual world the real world and the world of officially sanctioned ideology. Thus they talk about empowerment but habitually hoard power, or proclaim that they are re-engineering their organisations when they are really just sacking a few of the more lackluster workers.
This doublespeak matters because management theory is the language of the international elite. An increasing number of people who rule our companies and our countries speak in its terms. For the young and ambitious, a business school education is looking more and more of a necessity (and a spell at a consultancy more of a probability). Eavesdrop in the business class lounge of any airport from Shanghai to San Francisco and you will hear a familiar vernacular. In politics, the old battles between left and right no longer seem to matter. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair won office largely by adopting the rights policies on everything from welfare to job creation. Instead the battleground has become one of managerial efficiency. who will manage the economy, who will restructure government, who has the necessary leadership skills and so on. If this debate is carried out in terms that are contradictory or empty, then we all suffer.
Some would argue that all these contradictions mean that management theory is itself a contradiction in terms. We would rather see it as an immature discipline, prevented from growing up partly by its enormous financial success. n
The Witch Doctors
By John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Published by Mandarin Paperbacks, UK
Distributed by Rupa & Co
Price: Rs 190 (paperback); Pages: 408
