the management myth debunking modern business philosophy

For this type of coin, management experts are supposed to provide organizations with valuable advice that is guaranteed to work. Many CEOs continue to abide by the maxim “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” Second, experts promise to fix what ails their clients. First, hiring a prominent consultancy or guru is widely viewed as safe. Even junior McKinsey consultants bill upward of $300 per hour.ĬEOs pay these exorbitant sums for two reasons. For his part, Collins can command as much as $100,000 for a daylong seminar, not including first-class accommodations. Ditto for gurus such as Tom Peters, Jim Collins, and Guy Kawasaki. Corporations pay handsomely for elite management consulting firms such as Bain Capital, McKinsey, Accenture, and the Boston Consulting Group. It’s a contentious issue with enormous stakes. Even now this is an open debate: Is management a true science? Perhaps Taylorism’s crowning achievement was that it represented the earliest known attempt to apply science to the field of management. Today you’re unlikely to meet one of his acolytes, but Taylor remains an influential if controversial figure a century after his death.

Over the years, many critics have attacked Taylor’s theory. In 1959, for example, the highly influential Gordon and Howell report on the state of business education called for a reinvigoration of the scientific foundations of business educations. Although Taylor and his doctrine fell from favor at the business schools as his name became associated with public controversy, his fundamental idea that business management is an applied science remained cemented in the foundations of business school. The management idol continues to exert its most direct effect on business education. For example, in The Management Myth: Debunking Modern Business Philosophy, Matthew Stewart describes Taylor’s posthumous impact: Taylor passed away in 1915, but his significance in the business world has persevered. This became the basis for his theory of scientific management.

That information would further his ultimate goal: to improve-in fact, to maximize-economic efficiency, especially labor productivity.

He was on a quest to find the one best way to do each job. He was working, recording everything he saw with his stopwatch. Taylor wasn’t bored, nor was he a voyeur. In the late nineteenth century, he spent a great deal of time watching factory workers performing manual tasks. Long before the Bobs in Office Space, Taylor was arguably the world’s first efficiency expert. By trade, Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer, but he’s not renowned for that.

The management myth debunking modern business philosophy