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Title: False Prophets: The Gurus Who Created Modern Management and Why Their Ideas Are Bad for Business Today by James Hoopes ISBN: 0-7382-0798-5 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 15 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Insightful!
Comment: Despite its title, this book doesn't say much, or much of substance, about business today. Instead, it concentrates on lively professional and personal profiles of eight twentieth century management theorists of varying impact. Hammer and Champy, who launched the 1990s re-engineering movement, are mentioned only in the conclusion, and the gurus behind managing for shareholder value aren't mentioned. A little less detail about peccadilloes of the long dead and a little more about crucial management ideas that have shaped contemporary business might have made the book more relevant. Interestingly, it indicates that slave owners anticipated some of the progressive ideas in modern management but the author leaves it to the readers to make the connection: voila, contemporary workers believe the cant of empowerment about as much as the slaves believed the plantation master's pieties. We recommend this book for its anecdotal, gossipy entertainment value. It will make you cautious about management consultants - but if you aren't already, you can't have spent much time in business.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Myth of the Democratic Workplace Exposed
Comment: Hoopes does an very good job deconstructing the neo-managment concept of a democratic workplace, contrasting it with the juxtaposition of top-down power in an ostensibly democratic society. If one believes that the US is a democratic society (it's not, it's a republic), then one might take umbrage with his not novel revelation that the workplace functions best in a top-down style. Americans, in particular unionized America, has a big problem accepting this. His examples support this, but further, add light to the discussion that top-down power must be mitigated to some degree (the adage of absolute power corrupting withstanding). After reading his book I beleive that top-down power within a workplace that changes its policies as needed based on the demands and needs of the workers while fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities, is the best mix for success: keep you eye on why the institution exists (profit and/or service), but take care of your workers to accomplish your goals, and yes, management is in charge... This book helps illuminate how we got where we are, without burying the reader.
Rating: 5
Summary: Can't wait for the Prequel & the Sequel.
Comment:
I had to read this book twice.
First time with my jaw hanging and the second time highlighting, annotating and working up a storm of sticky notes so I could go look up the names & the fames.
The ripple effect has been tremendous, and I'm looking forward to Dr. Hoopes moving his socio-managerial microscope back to the Middle Ages to dissect vassalage and explain the pathology of serfdom and its parallel to today's corporate structures as well as why this phenomenon persists (prequel).
Then, I'd really like to see him turn the scrutiny on managers of the Great Shareholder Abandonment of the 2000's (WorldCom, CSFB, Enron, Global Crossing, etc.) and prescribe some remedies (for example, a vigorous enema would be just the ticket for Quattrone). I'd also like to see him attend to the waves of college graduates whose opportunity has been sold out from under them to the third world countries with the best Washington lobbyists (this book would be the sequel).
As it is, FALSE PROPHETS is a righteous "Perils of Pauline" cliffhanger, ending with Pearl White (who did all her own stunts, btw) tied to the tracks.
Or, to upgrade the reference, FALSE PROPHETS stops at a corporate "Empire Strikes Back" chapter, with dutiful nonexempt employee Han Solo frozen in a block of schmutz while all the jobs are being offshored and the middle class is posing for the picture that will decorate milk cartons.
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Title: Beyond Certainty: The Changing Worlds of Organizations by Charles Handy ISBN: 0875847633 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Strategy Process (4th Edition) by Henry Mintzberg, Joseph Lampel, James Brian Quinn, Sumantra Ghoshal ISBN: 0130479136 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 02 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $134.00 |
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Title: Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World Revised by Margaret J. Wheatley ISBN: 1576751198 Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Pub. Date: 15 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Executive Eq: Emotional Intelligence in Leadership and Organization by Robert K. Cooper, Ayman Sawaf ISBN: 0399524045 Publisher: Perigee Books Pub. Date: 15 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-To-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern Wor by Walt Anderson, Walter Truett Anderson ISBN: 0062500171 Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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