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The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic) reflects on his unconventional path to becoming a successful management consultant—despite a complete lack of business knowledge or experience, let alone an MBA. He offers an insider's perspective on the industry, revealing the astonishingly high routine consultant fees and the absurdity of leading firms depending on consultants fresh out of school to tell them how to run their business. Following in the footsteps of shamans, consultants envelop their work with an aura of sacred mystery and outrageously unjustified levels of self-confidence to add to their perceived expertise. Gleefully revealing the magician's tricks, Stewart takes readers on a whirlwind tour of how this industry came to be a powerhouse. Filled with fascinating insider anecdotes and featuring a who's who in the consulting world, including Peter Drucker, Michael Porter and Bruce Henderson, this wry, absorbing book will enlighten executives about the value consultants actually bring to their clients. (Aug.)

Review

A devastating bombardment of managerial thinking and the profession of management consulting. As a former management consultant, Mr. Stewart lived long enough in the belly of the beast to know its nature. (Philip Delves Broughton - The Wall Street Journal )

Gleefully revealing the magician's tricks, Stewart takes readers on a whirlwind tour of how this industry came to be a powerhouse. Filled with fascinating insider anecdotes and featuring a who's who in the consulting world, including Peter Drucker, Michael Porter and Bruce Henderson, this wry, absorbing book will enlighten executive about the value consultants bring to their clients. (Publishers Weekly )
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (August 10, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393065537
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393065534
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #74,786 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews
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3.9 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An expose of the fallacies of management thinking, August 13, 2009
By Stephen C. Long (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Matthew Stewart takes on three major tasks in this book. He writes an expose of the management consulting industry; an historical account of the development of modern management; and an expose of the fallacious methodology of modern management. All three of these tasks are interspersed with an interesting account of his own personal experience in management consulting.

Stewart came to the management consulting industry straight out of college. Interestingly, his academic work was in philosophy and not management. Needing money, he submitted a resume to a management consulting firm and much to his surprise was hired. As an "outsider", and particularly as a result of his philosophy education, Stewart brings unique insight to this field.

My own undergraduate work was a BBA and in the thirty-some years since then I have kept up with developments in management during the course of a law practice that often involved advising businesses. This book challenges everything I thought I had learned about management.

The book is structured around Stewart's own foray into the management consulting industry. He discloses the way the industry works, the outrageous fees that are charged, and the worthlessness of the advice. I have no experience that would qualify me to evaluate those claims.

The entire "science" of management, according to Stewart, is truly only pseudoscience. Beginning with Frederick Taylor and Elton Mayo and progressing through Peter Drucker and Tom Peters, Stewart reveals in great detail the methodological fallacies of management theory and its shaky foundation in pseudoscience.

Stewart maintains that "management" belongs more properly in the humanities and in particular to the study of philosophy. "Management theorists lack depth," he writes, "because they have been doing for only a century what philosophers and creative thinkers have been doing for millennia."

The danger of modern management, Stewart contends, is that it offers pretended technological solutions to what are basically moral and political problems. When this happens, "it conjures an illusion ... about the nature and value of management expertise" and makes it harder to check the abuses of corporate power. "Above all," he writes, "it contributes to a misunderstanding about the sources of our prosperity, leading us to neglect the social, moral and political infrastructure on which our well-being depends."

Considering the economic scandal and crisis into which modern managers have led this country, his thesis deserves careful consideration. I will be watching for rejoinders to Stewart's thesis by others in the management field.

The book was enjoyable and entertaining to read. I will be pondering its thesis for a long time to come.

I believe the book would have been more useful if, as a conclusion, Stewart had provided more insight into the best way to learn to practice good management. However, he does make suggestions regarding business education.
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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars More of the Con, September 6, 2009
Save yourself 25 bucks and find Stewart's original article debunking management theory. It was published in 2006--Atlantic, I think--and is online. He gives it away in the opening of the book in the 80-20 rule applied to books like this. No doubt we need critics like Stewart, but the extended tale of his litigation with his firm and not-so-valiant quest to get every penny he could, then his gloat over every penny he got, suggests that he's just another opportunist. For years Stewart by his own admission ripped off his clients by providing them with a "service" they didn't need. He seems to take pride in his own lack of principle--that he knew he was simply a parasite while other, perhaps younger, colleagues actually believed they were doing some good. (If you actually get to the later chapters, you'll see that he quits the consulting life not because of any anguish over being a con man but because he realizes the lifestyle has given him a paunch!) I've looked at Stewart's history of philosophy, so I know he has read Plato, but I don't think he took anything Socrates said to heart. He lived the life of the sophist, gutting the treasuries of as many companies as he could, cashed out, became a philosopher and critic of the profession that made him wealthy. I'm sure there's some more technical term for this within moral philosophy, but amongst hoi polloi it's called "having your cake and eating it too."
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Rant, August 26, 2009
By Jeff Swystun (Ottawa/New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Beyond the fact that I awarded the book three stars, I want to state that I did enjoy it primarily because of my own experiences in management consulting. And I agree that business schools need reform as Professor Henry Mintzberg has been pointing out for some time. However, the book is a long drawn out confessional combined with a chronological charting of the strategy consulting business which has been covered many times before and more insightfully. Stewart's criticism of the consulting industry and its contribution to flawed management fails to recognize its actual value - objectivity. Without a doubt consulting is a business, a big and mostly profitable business. It only becomes a sham when the purveyors of advice act in their own best interest and not in the interest of their clients. Where the author and I are in violent agreement is in the understanding that the development of business strategy is more a creative process than a reductive one.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A much neglected problem
With forty years of management experience, I was gratified to see someone, finally, addressing the problem. The implications are much broader than Stewart suggests. Read more
Published 1 month ago by steve steinburg

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh, well-written and insightful
Stewart is spot-on. He knows his subject inside & out. Book has a good, critical review of the history of "management science" and management consulting. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Donalbane

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't let your MBA students read this book ...
... because if they read it, they may quit your program.

As a university professor guiding MBA and Doctor of Management courses, I encourage only my more capable and... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Dr. James J. Stewart

4.0 out of 5 stars Forget the MBA?
The Management Myth: Why the "Experts" Keep Getting it Wrong
Matthew Stewart has found his strategic niche. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Jay C. Smith

1.0 out of 5 stars Minus Two Stars for Insincerity
If you love to hate management consultants and newly-minted MBAs, you might enjoy this book. If, however, you are hoping for useful analysis from this philosophy student turned... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Bryan K. Long

3.0 out of 5 stars Management Mirth
It seems as though everybody hates micro-managing, but it's still very much alive and well throughout corporate America. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Larry Underwood

5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth Be Told
I loved this book. Finally someone stood up and stated the obvious: the science of business management is a sham. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Donald S. Waller

2.0 out of 5 stars Good information with sub-par delivery
Matthew Stewart has had an interesting run and has a story to tell, but this work suffers from an excessive jumble of non-specifics, followed by detailed yet irrelevant personal... Read more
Published 4 months ago by J. Hall

4.0 out of 5 stars Funny and educational
Four stars seems a little generous but three would seem way too harsh (3.8 stars?). The chapters alternate between the author's own experiences as a management consultant and a... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Michael Funk

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific example of critical thinking
I fully enjoyed this book. As a guy who worked in the services industry and as a management consultant, I found this a great critical review of management "science" and... Read more
Published 5 months ago by David R. Rice

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