NEXT year marks the 500th anniversary of the event which, more than any other, ga

ve birth to the modern world: Martin Luther promulgated his 95 theses and called
the Catholic church to account for its numerous theological errors and institut
ional sins. Revisionist historians have inevitably complicated the story (includ
ing questioning whether he did actually nail his proposals to the door of All Sa
ints Church in Wittenberg) but the narrative remains clear. The church was ripe f
or change. It was sunk in corruption and divorced from the wider life of society
. And by unleashing that change, Luther brought the Christian faith, including R
oman Catholicism itself, a new lease of life.
The similarities between medieval Christianity and the world of management theor
y may not be obvious, but seek and ye shall find. Management theorists sanctify
capitalism in much the same way that clergymen of yore sanctified feudalism. Bus
iness schools are the cathedrals of capitalism. Consultants are its travelling f
riars. Just as the clergy in the Middle Ages spoke in Latin to give their words
an air of authority, management theorists speak in mumbo-jumbo. The medieval cle
rgys sale of indulgences, by which believers could effectively buy forgiveness of
their sins, is echoed by management theorists selling fads that will solve all
your business problems. Lately, another similarity has emerged. The gurus have l
ost touch with the world they seek to rule. Management theory is ripe for a Refo
rmation of its own.
In this section
What DeepMind brings to Alphabet
Alphabets Google is searching for its next hit
Behind the bid for Sky is a less powerful Murdoch empire
Frances corporate raider, Vincent Bollor, makes a bid for Italys biggest broadc
aster
Food packaging is not the enemy of the environment that it is assumed to be
In Germany mature workers are answering to young supervisors
The management style of Amancio Ortega
Management theory is becoming a compendium of dead ideas
Reprints
Related topics
United States
Business
Economics
Martin Luther
Globalisation
Management theories are organised around four basic ideas, repeated ad nauseam i
n every business book you read or business conference you attend, that bear almo
st no relation to reality. The first idea is that business is more competitive t
han ever. Skim popular titles such as The End of Competitive Advantage (by Rita Gu
nther McGrath) or The Attackers Advantage (by Ram Charan) and you will be left with
the impression of a hyper-competitive world in which established giants are con
stantly being felled by the forces of disruption.
A glance at the numbers (or indeed a trip on Americas increasingly oligopolistic
airlines) should be enough to expose this as fiction. The most striking business
trend today is not competition but consolidation. The years since 2008 have see
n one of the biggest-ever bull markets in mergers and acquisitions, with an aver
age of 30,000 deals a year worth 3% of GDP. Consolidation is particularly advanc
ed in America, says a report in 2016 by the Council of Economic Advisers, which
also showed how companies engaged in consolidation are enjoying record profits.
Technology is high on the list of industries that are concentrating. In the 1990
s Silicon Valley was a playground for startups. It is now the fief of a handful
of behemoths.

A second, and related, dead idea is that we live in an age of entrepreneurialism

. Gurus including Peter Drucker and Tom Peters have long preached the virtues of
enterprise. Governments have tried to encourage it as an offset to the anticipa
ted decline of big companies. The evidence tells a different story. In America t
he rate of business creation has declined since the late 1970s. In some recent y
ears more companies died than were born. In Europe high-growth ones are still ra
re and most startups stay small, in part because tax systems punish outfits that
employ above a certain number of workers, and also because entrepreneurs care m
ore about work-life balance than growth for its own sake. A large number of busi
nesspeople who were drawn in by the cult of entrepreneurship encountered only fa
ilure and now eke out marginal existences with little provision for their old ag
e.
The theorists third ruling idea is that business is getting faster. There is some
truth in this. Internet firms can acquire hundreds of millions of customers in
a few years. But in some ways this is less impressive than earlier roll-outs: we
ll over half of American households had motor cars just two decades after Henry
Ford introduced the first moving assembly line in 1913. And in many respects bus
iness is slowing down. Firms often waste months or years checking decisions with
various departments (audit, legal, compliance, privacy and so on) or dealing wi
th governments ever-expanding bureaucracies. The internet takes away with one han
d what it gives with the other. Now that it is so easy to acquire information an
d consult with everybody (including suppliers and customers), organisations freq
uently dither endlessly.
Flat Earth society
A fourth wrong notion is that globalisation is both inevitable and irreversibleth
e product of technological forces that mere human decisions cannot reverse. This
has been repeated in a succession of bestselling booksmost notably Thomas Friedm
ans The World is Flat of 2005and propagated in corporate advertising such as HSBCs The
Worlds Local Bank campaign. But a look at history shows that it is nonsense. In 1
880-1914 the world was in many ways just as globalised as it is today; it still
fell victim to war and autarky. Today globalisation shows signs of going into re
verse. Donald Trump preaches muscular American nationalism and threatens China w
ith tariffs. Britain is disentangling itself from the European Union. The more f
ar-sighted multinationals are preparing for an increasingly nationalist future.
The backlash against globalisation points to a glaring underlying weakness of ma
nagement theory: its naivety about politics. Modern management orthodoxies were
forged in the era from 1980 to 2008, when liberalism was in the ascendant and mi
ddle-of-the-road politicians were willing to sign up to global rules. But todays
world is very different. Productivity growth is dismal in the West, companies ar
e fusing at a furious rate, entrepreneurialism is stuttering, populism is on the
rise and the old rules of business are being torn up. Management theorists need
to examine their church with the same clear-eyed iconoclasm with which Luther e
xamined his. Otherwise they risk being exposed as just so many overpaid peddlers
of dead ideas.
com
NZVPtVUhRt
31 mins ago
The Schumpeter column heralds a post-ideas world to accompany the post-truth one
already apparently in existance. Schumpeter takes issue with management thinker
s and their faith in entrepreneurs, speed, globalization and the changing nature

of competitiveness. Of course, following the journalistic rubric of simplify th

en exaggerate, Schumpeter doesn t profer an alternative.
Our experience is very different. Business thinking is having a direct impact. I
deas are how the world improves. Schumpeter might be aware that creative destruc
tion is an idea.
In the last few months we have been in Malaysia hearing about the country s Nati
onal Blue Ocean Strategy; in California with a company putting the idea of open
innovation into practice; and in China talking with one of the world s best read
CEOs (Zhang Ruimin of Haier). These individuals, companies and governments appr
eciate that ideas can be the source of competitive advantage and of improved per
formance.
It is true that, in common with other creative and scientific endeavours, manage
ment thinking is variable - not every idea is revolutionary. But that doesn t ma
ke its aspirations any less valid or valuable. The world continues to change and
new ideas are needed to help business and the rest of us make sense of those ch
anges.
Schumpeter might like to contemplate a world without ideas or people willing to
develop and share ideas.
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guest-eonoiance
Dec 18th, 23:26
Don t fully agree with all of it but direcionally spot on - a well argued and th
oughtful article. Economist back to the quality I used to value it for.
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YAjXE7KbTb
Dec 18th, 16:12
No, management theory is not dying. Neither do I agree with the article argument
s that globalization and competition have more or less become obsolete and repla
ced as management pillars, the former by nationalistic elements while the latter
by mergers and consolidations.
Globalization is an economic force that has its origins in the optimization of t
he markets and as such will not cease to exist and exert its pressures on any wa
lled countries. Mergers and acquisitions have not been all that successful. Thei
r failures and the resulting economic loss is for most companies an avoidance le
sson rather than a new principle of management theory to take the place of compe
tition. Furthermore mergers are a phenomenon in a few large countries and theref
ore cannot be generalized as a basic idea to cover the numerous other smaller co
untries that live without them.
Finally we must not forget that a business is an economic organ of society and i
ts nature, therefore, cannot be devoid of any new societal happenings and trends
.
Panikos Sardos (Sardos Business Solutions Int.)

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guest-ajlmawia
Dec 18th, 14:23
Universities are poised to play a greater role in developing courses that critic
ally examine the role of business in society. We have entered an era of consciou
s capitalism where shared values should trump shared value.
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guest-niwwwli
Dec 18th, 06:17
I dont think this article is reflecting a complete reality of what management th
eorists are doing, nor does the author appear to be updated with the strategic m
anagement literature... Not one journal article or land mark study was critiqued
, preferring instead to use a few popular books and focusing purely on a few con
venient geographic areas... Nothing is more evident on how off the mark and how
ill-informed this article is to me than their argument that management theorists
assume that the world is flat and that globalisation is inevitable. Especially
given that Thomas L. Friedman is heavily critiqued in the international business
literature by the likes of Pankaj Ghemawat, the late Alan Rugman and Alain Verb
eke: the recently appointed editor in chief of the Journal of International Busi
ness Studies. Studies by Heather Berry, Srilata Zaheer, Mike Peng and Oded Shenk
ar all focus on the imperfections and idiosyncrasies in the international busine
ss context, and how they enable and constrain international business phenomenon.
... Yes there is no denying that some studies and findings are open to criticism
and the extent of their relevance to the real world can indeed be questioned. H
owever, I expected a more in depth and more accurate critique of this matter by
a paper of The Economist s calibre.
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Langosta
Dec 18th, 05:17
"The most striking business trend today is not competition but consolidation. "
The USA used to have an aggressive Antitrust Division of the Justice Department
that not only blocked companies from becoming monopolies by buying out the compe
tition, but also busted companies into independent units before they became mono
polies.The Antitrust Division became defunct during Reagan s administration and
was never revived, not even by Democrats Clinton and Obama. Japan has at least a
dozen major auto companies. The USA has two. Which country has the superior aut
o business?

The notion that we can prosper as a nation of entrepreneurs is also over-blown.

The USA only prospered when we STOPPED being a nation of entrepreneurs. We were
an entrepreneurial nation in 1900 when 50% of our people were self-employed dirt
farmers, and the other 50% were small-time merchants, blacksmiths, barkeeps, an
d restaurateurs. The middle class did not come into its own until 75% of our peo
ple became employees of large corporations. Entrepreneurship is essential, but o
nly 3% of the people are really cut out for it. The other "entrepreneurs" run ni
ckle-and-dime businesses as a last resort when they can t find employment anywhe
re else.
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5 Whys
Dec 18th, 05:04
TOP-DOWN:
Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism (ego
tism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), Sadism
(pleasure in the suffering of others);
BOTTOM-DOWN:
MBA
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Connect The Dots
Dec 18th, 00:10
Most entrepreneurs in America do not come from Harvard, Yale or Chicago.
If you want to generate a vibrant entrepreneur culture, do not look to business
schools and their theories of entrepreneurship.
The secret to Entrepreneurship Culture are immigrants--but they have to be selec
ted from smart, educated, hard working, and ambitious cultures. (***Specifically
China, India, Israel, Lebanon, South Korea)
Only 2% of Western populations are entrepreneurs but the rates are up to ten tim
es higher for immigrants from some countries!
===
Immigration is not homogeneous and uniform world wide, but rather heterogeneous
and complex.
Not all immigrants are the same.
Some immigrants are hard working, educated, and full of promise.
Others will not integrate, are ignorant and unteachable, and will only burden th
e welfare costs. And at worse are sleeper cell terrorists waiting for radicaliza
tion.

Immigration could be a powerful selective tool to increase skills, education and

competitiveness.
Or it could blow up in your face.
Immigrants risk a lot to immigrate to a new foreign culture.
They see the risk of starting a business and failing to be negligible compared t
o their other risks.
They see opportunity that natives do not see directly in plain sight.
They are hard working 24/7/365.
They do not take a sick day or vacation day all year long.
They earn every penny, and do not expect a cushy job with benefits.
They sleep in the shop/store to save on rent.
He employs his wife full time as a worker and does not pay her.
And employs his kids again without pay.
Immigration entrepreneurship can dwarf domestic entrepreneurship
in particular in highly entrepreneurial immigrant cultures like Israel, Greece,
Lebanon, India, and China.
--Remember Apple, Yahoo, YouTube and Google all were started by first generation i
mmigrants.
Steve Jobs, son of a Syrian immigrant student.
Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan immigrant student.
Elon Musk, immigrant from South Africa, and founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors.
Ebay, founded by Iranian American Immigrant.
--Being a first generation or zero generation immigrant is a bigger motivation to
be a successful entrepreneur than possessing an MBA from Harvard.
Simple cure to lackluster entrepreneurship and a poor economy:
Open up immigration to Chinese and Indians particularly MBA students with advanc
ed technical degrees.
Israeli entrepreneurs.
Taiwanese and South Korean merchants.
Cultures are not equal, for instance the Jews and their gift to America.
ie Einstein and the A-bomb; Gershwin, Copeland and Bernstein and the American Sc
hool of Classical Music; and Hollywood.
Some are more brainy, talented, and entrepreneurial.
Get the best brains in the world to build a dynamic future--but be selective and
smart about it.
Australia, Canada and Chile have smart immigration programs that will boost thei
r competitiveness and entrepreneurship.
It is a world wide competition for the best talent.
Western countries can no longer be the future home for the tired, hungry, poor a
nd downtrodden who have no ambition, no skills and no future.
===
Proposed New Criteria for Immigration:

1. Applicant must have $1 million dollars in cash and proof of deposit within th
e host country. Encourage investments in local businesses and services.
2. Start a business that employs at least two workers from the host country.
3. Or have a world class proven talent like book authors, university professors,
scientists, Olympian athletes, Guinness World Record holders, soloist academy b
allerina, concert musician, or advanced graduate degrees like a PhD.
4. Use resumes as criteria for entry. Language proficiency. Job interview skills
. Critical technology skills. These are ESSENTIAL SKILLS that the immigrant MUST
have anyway to participate in the workforce and economy.
5. Seek immigrants from known highly entrepreneurial cultures: Lebanese, Koreans
, Indians, Jews and Chinese. They are also known as Mom-and-Pop Hole-in-the-Wall
, Bootstrap Businesses. They are the Shopkeepers. But they are the the seeds of
future small business, large business, prosperity and wealth. (I would downgrade
online type businesses since they are harder to evaluate and have less capital
commitment.)
===
Entrepreneurs are as rare as Olympic athletes and concert pianists.
And they are far more essential to an economy than even top business school grad
uates.
It is not theory, it is everyday reality. Immigrant business populate poor ghett
o neighborhoods.
And it is not pie in the sky, it is the cold reality of the streets.
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Langosta
in reply to Connect The Dots
Dec 18th, 05:21
It s interesting that you mentioned the 2% figure for people who are natural ent
repreneurs, while I mentioned 3%. We re pretty close on estimating that number.
.
One of the reasons that foreigners are more entrepreneurial than Americans is th
at most foreigners who become entrepreneurs in the USA are educated, accomplishe
d people who owned businesses and accumulated money in their home countries. The
y bring money and business skills into the USA and take up where they left off b
ack home. Legal immigration does not bring us a cross-section of foreign populat
ions, but only the best and brightest, who were middle class business owners in
the old country. My family is all Hispanic-immigrant, and that is because they w
ere all business owners from families of considerable wealth before they came he
re.
.
Illegal immigration and "refugees" are another story.
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reply
Langosta
in reply to Connect The Dots
Dec 18th, 05:27
I also agree 1000% with your proposed criteria for legal immigration, especially
the $1,000,000 entry fee. I ll even go you one better. Make it a $2,000,000 ent
ry bee, with the first $1,000,000 being paid into our treasury to pay down the d
ebt. That way we will be making sure that the people who come here invest in the
USA at the outset.
If we did that, we could open the country to an additional 500,000 immigrants pe
r year, while still maintaining some quotas for family reunification. The family
reunification must be limited to young people though. Many immigrant families b
ring their elderly parents and grand parents here just to dump them onto Medicar
e and Medicaid at taxpayer expense. That s got to stop.
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jusdoc
Dec 17th, 22:49
Myths abound. There is no such thing as a "free market." All markets and all bus
inesses have constraints. There is no such thing as a "rational man." Our specie
s is inherently irrational. While self interest is a constant, what informs or m
isinforms that self interest varies considerably. Added to these myths are those
imposed by governments, such as "money is speech" and "corporations are people.
" Neither is accurate or true. Both are dysfunctional.
The 500 pound bears in the room are "public" corporations which are "owned" by t
he stock holders. Functionally, corporations are run by their management, largel
y to the benefit of top management. "Stakeholders" seldom come into play except
to placate, while "stock holders" have minimum influence, albeit theoretical own
ership.
Every society and every organization and every time period needs Luthers. Curren
tly, we are in dire need of a whole bunch of Luthers to get us back on the road
to functionality, and focus on basics like effectiveness and efficiency. This ap
plies to both the public and private sectors, government at all levels, and priv
ate aka public corporations.
Change is in the air, and basic change is desperately needed in both governement
and our corporations. Let s just hope that the baby is not thrown out with the
bathwater That s the challenge! Change based on misinformation and false news, a
s well as on current myths, can and will bring new disasters to both our governm
ent and our private sector.
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john4law
Dec 17th, 21:15
Blaming business for trends which are deeply linked to the unproductive EXPLOSIO

N of Government over the past forty or more years is wrong headed and empiricall
y contrary to any set of statistics one can produce. Big Government is inherentl
y hostile to agile and hard to control much less tax to the breaking point Small
Businesses. Big Government needs to concentrate economic activity into highly c
ontrollable and taxable corporate behemoths in order to tax, regulate and distri
bute economic vote buying favors and goodies through corporate surrogates and in
strumentalities. Try running a Small Business ( less than 100 employees and 15 m
illion dollars in gross revenues) and "complying" with a MILLION or more tax, en
vironmental, employment and employee benefits regulations and associated taxes a
nd fees. It CAN T be done. Just as the Church was TOO big and TOO controlling fo
r the Modern Age to emerge as the Age of Discovery dawned, the Government is the
biggest obstacle to robust growth or ANY growth whatsoever in 21st Century. For
get Global Warming as Humanity s BIGGEST obstacle to sustainable growth: Cancero
us Growth of Unproductive Government threatens the Modern World with the same sc
enario of stagnation followed by collapse that the late Roman and other Empires
experienced in their Over Mature phases.
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guest-nooeeoj
Dec 17th, 15:33
Mainz, here we come! About time too. And I m not even a Trumpite.
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umghhh
Dec 17th, 11:09
Managers and business were not naive or forgot about politics - they bought them
. What they forgot about is polis. Or maybe they did not do that either and just
thought it will all be ok. So in fact they were naive as
the chocking society and economy spits blood and dead bodies. This happens once
in a while and sometimes a new order comes in as a result. That is just a fact
. Happened many times before.
We will see how progressing automation will affect all this - including the choc
king of society and economy.
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The Economist Loyal Reader
Dec 17th, 08:55
this is the best article TE has written since Zanny joined.
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Big Owl
Dec 17th, 07:32
The article says that Silicon Valley was a place of multiple startups in the nin
eties but is now dominated by a few large firms. I guess the firms the author re
fers to could be Facebook (founded in 1998) and Google (founded in 2004). One mi
ght speculate that these firms could ]someday disrupt the economic models of ven
erable institutions such as magazines like the Economist (founded in 1843).
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bampbs
Dec 17th, 05:15
The underlying problem is the dream of simple and universal directions through a
very partially understood present and an unknown future.
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maguro_01
Dec 17th, 05:05
A difficulty in a single or just a few mainstreams of management theory is that
it makes for businesses organized and thinking on similar lines. IT software pac
kages do the same but are only trying to match the market. Managers are given a
common vocabulary and expectations - a sort of culture that can exclude others.
But evolution requires variation to select from. Technology continues to force c
hange - in the US corporations seem to have a limited lifetime for that reason.
Today s Industrial Revolution replaces people as such a basic feature that new i
ndustries that will arise as they did in previous Industrial Revolutions will al
so need few people.
The profits from a robot accrue to the owner - there is much less labor in sight
. The oncoming auto-driving vehicles - robots - were a way to discuss the subjec
t that would be understood by everyone, but politicians are unwilling to do it.
It will happen and has unquestionable benefits, but here in the US over 4 millio
n drivers will be redundant. That redundancy is really one big reason all the R&
D is being paid for. For many it was a last resort job.
In many ways our economies would seem to need reinvention in the coming years. M
ost such invention will be a result of further innovation and entrepreneurialism
, that is, Main Street. For instance, we might see manufacturing done by compani
es analogous to integrated circuit fabs - and the work done by robots and develo
ped 3-D printing, submitted by software generated design files. The submitters c
ould be numbers of relatively small, local, design firms - effectively artisans
with a keyboard.
Perhaps the innovations would need an economic/legal environment discouraging co

rporations from acting to quash it, not by competition, but by chess playing lik
e monopolistic distribution, say, or even litigation with no "merit" save the ex
pense to the defendant. Or difficulties in getting funding from banks and so on.
Also the US Pay-To-Play political system, now truly ascendant, can thwart neede
d change.
In any case, we need variation for evolution to select from for Capitalism/Marke
ts to really do its necessary work.
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guest-oaoeisw
Dec 17th, 05:00
So...
...if you are so good at this, and all-seeing...
....then what would you propose as the alternatives?
If you look around the world, you will find an exception to each of your critici
sms:
1. Entrepreneurship on the streets and in the mobile networks around the world i
s at record levels in terms of the number of global citizens involved.
2. Companies are dying and being replaced by new ones as quickly as ever in hist
ory.
3. Your comparison to Ford is simply wrong. The world went from near zero mobile
phones to literally 95% per capita penetration of mobile phones among 7 billion
people in less than 25 years. The spread of genomic engineering is astounding.
Growth in global apps markets are far more widespread than twisted pair phone sy
stems. Etc.
4. Globalisation is not retreating at all. It is just being shifted to an epicen
ter in China. China has control or contracted access to more than half the commo
dities on Earth. It has trade tentacles into more than 70 nations.
Most of the negatives you cite are owed to government regulation, and government
s in US and EU extracting rents from the productive efforts of citizens.
Travel the world
Don t just read some books.
Most professorial theories are always wrong, but the real-world principles you s
ay are dead are far from dead.
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TooInterestedInComputers

in reply to guest-oaoeisw
Dec 17th, 15:27
Interesting.
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jonnm
in reply to guest-oaoeisw
Dec 18th, 16:59
The difference between the movement to the automobile had a profound effect on s
ociety as a whole. Mobile phones are simply an enhancement of an existing techno
logy and not comparable to the introduction of phones in the first place. To som
e degree it is simply making communication more convenient not changing the para
digm. The internet itself might be considered such a societal shift and it is st
ill centred in the west and is to some degree restricted by language and alphabe
t. Additionally China is restricted from a leadership position in this field by
the restrictions placed on it by its government.
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Tom on West Coast
Dec 17th, 01:41
Stimulating and interesting? Yes. Accurate? Maybe. I would have preferred to see
more analysis and numbers from vetted sources to support the four theories. To
preach against competition does not make sense. It is ingrain in the DNA. Was th
e French-German trade before the WW1 really comparable to the current? Many scho
lars say that if it were, WW1 may not have been as deep and brutal. Where are th
e numbers? ---- But I enjoyed the article.
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Alan101
Dec 16th, 21:01
A slightly provocative article where Schumpeters analysis is as weak as the the
orists he criticizes. A couple of points, related, suppose the purpose of global
isation and its benefits were hidden by a common problem which is egregious comp
ensation to senior executives far in excess of anything paid in the 60s and 70 s
and beyond. Globalisation is driven by cheap labour improving margins, ostensib
ly to compete in that fierce marketplace. And IT driven productivity gains are o
bscured by the same wet blanket that takes both of these substantial savings and
puts them in the pocket of executives, many of whom deserve hardly anything at
all.
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Robert in Houston
Dec 16th, 20:19
As a graduate MBA, I can attest to the ripeness of this comparison -- hubris abo
unds. A further sin is to presume that management is fungible, a set of skills t
hat can be applied to any industry or situation. While the tools are indeed impr
essive, one must not be so blinded by them as to shirk analysis of whether they
are applicable. Many specific practices have evolved over decades for inchoate r
easons that nevertheless must not be ignored.
first previous 1 2
Hawkchurch
Dec 16th, 16:24
I work in management education and the gist of this article is familiar and I la
rgely agree with it but I would suggest that in absence of hyper-competition the
re exists a huge surplus of hyper-activity due to the presence of IT. What I see
is people so absorbed in e-mail messages, texting etc it really bites into thei
r time when they don t do any actual work - they just talk about it or have meet
ings to plan work.
Those who are in work are in my view subconsciously enslaved by the technology t
o the extent wehere they cannot distinguish between work and private lives and t
he emotional toll of all this is yet to be fully felt and when it is it will hav
e a huge impact.
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guest-sloneii
Dec 16th, 15:46
While the reformation was a process of transformation that supported by a wave l
ike (as Alvin Toffler introduced it) change from one civilization to another, re
forms have been used for transitions within one civilization. The similarity of
the Catholic Church and the business gurus is the Groupthink influence, where
consensus is taken as truth, when truth is what support consensus. Behind both t
ransformation processes Peter Drucker identified as the prime mover the third (p
rinting press) and the fourth (electronic computers) information revolutions.
One key outcome that emerged after reformation was Adam Smith s The Wealth of Na
tions. From 1980 to 2008 period, mentioned in the article, the industrial civili
zation Groupthink based on Margaret Thatcher s TINA (There s Not Alternative)
to neoliberalism story has returned the world to the Second Middle Ages.
Now on the four dead ideas, we start with the fourth. The key outcome is on The
Wealth of Globalization for the transformation of management theory. The key man
agement theory we follow, for example, is that of W. Edwards Deming. Before he d
ied in the 1990s he said that we are living under the tyranny of the prevailing s
tyle of management. His answer was the System of Profound Knowledge.
He said that It would be better if everyone would work together as a system, with

the aim for everybody to win. He wrote about broken systems which is what involv
es the first idea. From that we saw that system was a vague concept which we ref
ramed as system only for what Deming suggested and anti-system when they dont wor
k together as a system and management has the aim to win at the expense of other
s. We have expanded his insights to a new win-win civilization of interdependent
countries on The Wealth of Globalization.
The second idea of an entrepreneurial society fits on the new civilization. Thats
where technological companies are coming from. The third idea is that they are
not coming faster because of Groupthink. For more, please Google "A Systemic C
ivilization Global Declaration of Interdependence."
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AtlantisKing
Dec 16th, 14:57
Nice article, with a provocative premise, but it sounds a tad too authoritative
given its shaky factoid bases.
.
For example, claiming that competition is dead is an insult to the hundreds of t
housands of companies which have fallen in the past few decades because of incre
ased competition. A bunch of M&As is hardly evidence of lack of competition. On
the contrary, it can be easily read as a direct response to increased competitio
n: companies may be trying to acquire scale, skills and assets needed to remain
competitive.
.
You comment on entrepreneurialism is a bit too focused on G7 countries. Looking
through the G20 lenses, one might get the opposite idea. Even in G7 countries, t
he naked number of new businesses should be tempered by things like labor force
participation, student debt and even welfare receipts (hint: fewer qualified you
nger professionals create fewer companies). By the same token, businesses ARE ge
tting faster - in some cases, a lot faster. It is not their fault that, in selec
ted areas, regulation and government intervention are becoming even faster.
.
Finally, it is way too soon to declare the death of Globalization. This is not t
he 1910s, and Donald and the Brexiters (there s a good band name for you) are ju
st mounting their horses. I suspect they will find that disentangling themselves
from global supply chains is a lot harder than they imagined. Moreover, consume
rs who have become accustomed to choice and low prices afforded by trade will no
t be beaten back to the choices of the local duopolies. And, of course, the G20
and the rest of the emerging world continues to "globalize" like there s no tomo
rrow...
.
So, my child, repent from your sins, forget this heresy and return to the arms o
f the true faith.
.
AtlantisKing, MBA and travelling friar
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Ohio

in reply to AtlantisKing
Dec 16th, 17:24
Is it damaging to disentangle from global supply chains? Yes.
Is it difficult, politically? Not at all. You just have to be prepared to blame
the chaos and damage on somebody else.
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Ash_7
in reply to AtlantisKing
Dec 17th, 17:03
Interesting comment to an interesting article! :)
(Donald and the Brexiters. I love it. ;d)
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VDgaFxDgWm
Dec 16th, 13:54
This is a nice parallel and an ingenious way to talk about authoritative ideas.
I guess I agree that business books written by self-proclaimed gurus are in a pa
rticular, even peculiar, market and as a result, to compete, they often go over
board with the extreme assertions you debunk so well.
But if you are really looking for thoughtful research on companies, business, th
e economy, business journals and presses tied to some of the top business school
s are actually not too bad. The obvious ones of course are Harvard Business Revi
ew, MIT Sloan Review, Rotman School of Management Review, Stanford Social Innova
tion Review and so on.
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guest-ajlawnow
Dec 16th, 12:33
Alternate title: A treatise on management theory by somebody who couldn t be bot
hered to read management theory. Fad books written by "gurus" have nothing to do
with management theory. Why not just pull out a bunch of Michael Scott quotes?
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guest-ajlawsei

Dec 16th, 10:26

My solution to management fads is I only read books by people that have actually
done something. Iverson, Semler, etc. The one exception would be Jim Collins wh
o basically studies those that have done something.
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Tim Harrap
Dec 16th, 07:59
So Luther s 95 theses may not have been nailed to the church door. But certainly
the Cluetrain Manifesto was "nailed" to the worldwide web in 1999 and remains a
thought provoking set of 95 theses for now. #1 Markets are conversations. http:
//www.cluetrain.com
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guest-niwoiwa
Dec 16th, 05:32
This article is very American . It describes the business trends in the USA and
does not reflect the developing economies. Entrepreneurship is a very strong dr
iving force in Africa, Middle East and South Americas. Consolidation happens les
s in these environments but is inevitable in the long run.
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CA-Oxonian
Dec 16th, 02:56
Management fads are essentially placebos for executives who understand tacitly t
hat they are out of their depth but have little idea what to do to rectify the s
ituation. Ideally the consultant is extremely expensive, thus providing the assu
rance of value that is so important to insecure CEOs.
I suspect that most newly-minted MBAs go through the same evolution I went throu
gh some 30 years ago: subscribe to Harvard Business Review (the bible of managem
ent theorists, plus Apocrypha) immediately after leaving business school, and th
en cancel the subscription after a few months.
HBR is in essence an intelligence test.
If you continue to subscribe, you ve failed the test.
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Kremilek2
in reply to CA-Oxonian
Dec 16th, 09:47
The question is to whom it serves. It is not difficult to imagine that there is
a group of let s say capitalists who design all these management ideas to increa
se their profits. And as it happened the last time they misunderstand the genera
l populace and it seems that have not learned much from the last collapse of the
globalization.
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tficicYWXu
Dec 16th, 01:20
The forces of disruption were first introduced by Schumpeter as creative destruc
tion (your column name).The many cases of present day digital disruption as Koda
k, Blockbuster, Borders, music companies, taxis, motels, PDAs, digital cameras,
etc. are a proof that the phenomea is certainly speeding.
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Skier1
Dec 16th, 01:02
The article is very Western-focused. Very little reference to the 5 billion cons
umers and businesses in emerging markets, like India, Africa, etc.
Western-led management theory needs better self-segmentation. It is clear that m
anagement theory for startups is different to midsized firms and to global giant
s. And it is also different for immature economies (like the US in the 1920s) an
d mature economies (US in the 2010s).
What s more, this article assumes "one school" of management theory, when, in re
ality, there are at least 3, perhaps 4 or more.
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Tokarian
Dec 15th, 23:35
Does anybody still actually buy and read these business / management books these
days?
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guest-oimwena
Dec 15th, 22:54
The foremost wrong organizing idea, at least in popular economic lore, is that o
f The rational consumer. All the work of behavioral economists has so far failed t
o topple this idol.
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guest-nollsns
Dec 15th, 19:04
It s human nature to prefer choices that require nothing of you today, to ones t
hat do, all other things being equal. And uncertain future prospects have made i
t unclear that real investment in loyalty, human capital, and gratitude among em
ployees is at all useful.
In practice, or course, almost all businesses say they value employees and emplo
yee loyalty. Yet the evidence witnessed firsthand by virtually the entire workfo
rce shows, at best, indifference.
Perhaps an emphasis on actual, real loyalty and gratitude, and a willingness to
pay for it (historically absent) would be a worthwhile tack to try in future. Ha
ving fiercely loyal employees helps in a chaotic world.
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guykguard
Dec 15th, 18:58
The article claims that globalisation shows signs of going into reverse. This is
hardly surprising, if true, and long overdue.
On a recent visit to a shopping mall, in Jerusalem, I was struck by how extraord
inarily dull these temples to capitalism have become; how ugly the shops are; an
d how shoddy most of the goods in them are. Shopping, which is alleged to be a p
opular pastime for many people, has become an unrelieved drudge.
Shopfronts across the globe are hideous and the same ones appear everywhere. Man
y even vandalise noble buildings and streets that would enhance the city-dwellin
g experience if only they had been left as they were. The goods the shops sell a
re invariably made in the Far East. The clothes are poorly made, to be sold at r
ock bottom prices raising suspicions over the working conditions of the people w
ho made them. The people who sell the goods try, in the most hostile circumstanc
es, to be civil and helpful but they seldom have any real understanding of what
they are selling.
Reacting to the destructive features of globalisation, I will not buy stuff made
in the sweat shops of the Far East and shipped thousands of miles in colossal c
ontainer ships crossing the globe in a few days to be sold by emporiums by peopl

e who have no clue what they re selling.

Rather, I try to seek out things made by knowledgeable and skillful craftsmen an
d women who understand and care about what they are doing. I may not always succ
eed but I want to do my little bit to roll back the destructive, dreary wave of
globalisation.
How is it that organisations, whether in the public or private sector, persist i
n ensuring that everyday life on the high street is such a drudge?
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RobertoX
Dec 15th, 18:55
Great article, albeit one that has to skate over certain details.
Modern capitalism is not about business but how to create more money on the mar
ket - not the consumer markets that support the enterprise, through the consump
tion of real wealth, but on the international casino of betting other peoples m
oney to create more money- not wealth.
"Money is worthless until it is spent", was one of the first principles I learne
d at the LSE, way back when. So many people today seem not to understand this.
Gambling money is inherently inflation-producing since the true and original pri
ce of a good or service is hyped between original supplier s cost/margin and the
eventual buyer s purchase cost - neither of whom should have the slightest inte
rest in the speculative intervention of the lazy intermediate gamblers, although
we all wordlessly suffer this disgusting situation.
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Tokarian
in reply to RobertoX
Dec 15th, 23:39
So true. Witness the enormous amount of money in hedge funds - essentially betti
ng with little productive use.
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Brendan D
Dec 15th, 17:51
Maybe acquisition is a strategy to counter increased competition, a response rat
her than an alternative? Management theory is like Economics, a thin layer of en
ticing and ever-changing novelty covering a thick layer of indigestible and slow
-moving theory. But unlike Economics, it s very diverse and rooted in the real-w
orld so at least get to test our theories....
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RobertoX
in reply to Brendan D
Dec 15th, 19:00
Of course, acquisition is about having to do less work and make more money.
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Brendan D
in reply to RobertoX
Dec 15th, 19:20
Only when they are successful, which is often not the case. Research shows that
most acquisitions destroy rather than create value - the business case & valuati
ons are rarely realised. They buy time and give the illusion of a growth strateg
y, often just what the CEO wants, no more, no less.
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Eusebius Pamphili
Dec 15th, 17:23
Luther didn t reform the church as he intended.
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RobertoX
in reply to Eusebius Pamphili
Dec 15th, 18:37
But he did enough to stop the intellectual rot ...
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guest-naiames
in reply to Eusebius Pamphili
Dec 16th, 03:11
Martin Luther was a fascist with a profound hatred of the peasants and serfs.